Reviews
Creed III review - boxing cleverMonday, 06 March 2023
This third Creed film outgrows Rocky, leaving Stallone’s bridging presence behind for a wholly renewed series. Starring again as Adonis Creed, the illegitimate son of Rocky’s late rival Apollo, Michael B. Williams’ directorial debut builds a richly... Read more... |
Daisy Jones & The 6, Amazon Prime review - hit rock'n'roll novel doesn't make great TVMonday, 06 March 2023
Based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six is the rags-to-riches-to-wreckage story of the titular Seventies rock band, supposedly somewhat based on Fleetwood Mac. Their journey from their fashion-defying... Read more... |
Woolf Works, Royal Ballet review - Wayne McGregor's modern classic impresses all over againMonday, 06 March 2023
The more Wayne McGregor’s superb Woolf Works is staged, the richer it seems to become. It has started a third run at Covent Garden since its premiere there in 2015, which, considering the house lost over a year of performances, is some achievement.... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Welsh National Opera review - Mozart remodelled and remuddledMonday, 06 March 2023
So why not rewrite The Magic Flute with a new text and a heavily reconstructed plot? After all, the original was just a pantomime, albeit one that embodied one or two big issues of the day (1791), but essentially popular theatre with a text by a... Read more... |
Album: Fever Ray - Radical RomanticsMonday, 06 March 2023
According to the press release for Karin Dreijer’s third album as Fever Ray, its completion was preceded by many hours of therapy with the result new things are known. Amongst them that Dreijer “can be struck by despair but also by the big feeling... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's 1980-1982 - The Art Of Things To ComeSunday, 05 March 2023
Jon Savage's 1980-1982 - The Art Of Things To Come continues a series which began in 2015 with 1966 - The Year The Decade Exploded, a compilation springing off from Savage’s book of the same name. A follow-up looked at 1965, but after that the... Read more... |
In The Realms of Sorrow, London Handel Festival, Stone Nest review - disappointed love has all the best tunesSaturday, 04 March 2023
Raw, muscular, visceral, haunting – this was Handel as you’ve never experienced him before. In this striking entry for the London Handel Festival, an uncompromising production by Adele Thomas with conductor Laurence Cummings took four of the... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's Globe review - clever concept never quite catches fireSaturday, 04 March 2023
As course after course of Noma-style creations are served up to Leontes and his guests – curious mouthfuls with their accompanying spoons, edible branches as though straight from the tree, elaborate miniatures ritually revealed from beneath a cloche... Read more... |
Will Harris: Brother Poem review - writing the poems that could have beenSaturday, 04 March 2023
You shouldn’t always judge a book by its cover, but you can get pretty far with an epigraph. The epigraph to Will Harris’s new collection, Brother Poem (following his T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted RENDANG in 2020), is a brief but telling prelude, an... Read more... |
I'm Fine (Thanks for Asking) review - quietly impressive debut filmSaturday, 04 March 2023
I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is an object lesson in how it was possible to make a feature on a tiny budget despite the restrictions of the pandemic lockdown. The film-makers stuck to the classical unities (time, place, action), cast themselves... Read more... |
Suzanne Vega, Royal Festival Hall review - the years melt awayFriday, 03 March 2023
It’s almost 40 years, but I still vividly remember the excitement of hearing Suzanne Vega for the first time. Singer-songwriters had always mattered to me, even though I grew up in the vacuous era of glamrock and insipid teen idols such as David and... Read more... |
Album: slowthai - UGLYFriday, 03 March 2023
The years since slowthai’s Mercury Prize nominated debut have been patchy. There was the public reckoning after his oafish behaviour at the NME awards, but then he scored his first number one album a year later. He’s become a father but also... Read more... |
