Reviews
David Nice
It sounds like the title of a play by Rattigan. No such luck: “Force Majeure” – a legal term with which all too few will be familiar, in which circumstances beyond anyone’s control cancel a contract – is how Ruben Östlund’s 2014 film Turist is known beyond Sweden (an American remake with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, not good by all accounts, has much the best title, Downhill).This tragicomedy about the consequences of a husband and father running away from his family when an avalanche seems about to overwhelm a ski-resort restaurant has been adapted for the stage by Tim Price and Read more ...
David Nice
One of the galvanizing wonders of the operatic world happened when David McVicar’s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was new, back in 2006: the sight and sound of Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano in seamless dual role as conductor and recitative fortepianist.Now he’s back, and better than ever, with more than a gimmick to offer in this latest revival: there are no big names in the cast, but six out of the eight principals are Italian – this Figaro is, of course, sung to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s original, dazzling adaptation of Beaumarchais’ play – and young when the characters Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A small film that packs a significant wallop, The Humans snuck into view at the very end of 2021 to cast a despairing shadow that extends well beyond the Thanksgiving day during which it takes place. Adapted from the much-traveled Tony-winning play of the same name, writer-director Stephen Karam's screen iteration of his own one-act seems even bleaker in this iteration than it did in my twofold experience of it on stage (including at the Hampstead, with its original New York cast, in autumn 2018). .Those who think American drama too often offers its characters the easy way out won't find that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Gun Club were true originals and Jeffrey Lee Pierce a genius. They were the inspiration behind many bands, I myself never thought about being a singer until I dropped the needle on Fire Of Love and in that instant I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Jeffrey was funny, smart and generous. He taught me so much about songwriting that I could never repay.”Mark Lanegan’s tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce – who died in 1996 at age 37 –and the band he co-formed is revealing as it makes plain an often unacknowledged truth. Now it’s said, it’s obvious. The spirit of Pierce, his LA-born band and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When business and politics collide, the result may very well be corruption. Such is the case in this taut, streamlined thriller from Norway, one of many gems from the Walter Presents stable.Ida Waage (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, pictured below) is the Chief Financial Officer at Oslo law firm Biermann & Gude. A diligent wife and mother and a level-headed professional, she seems the perfect fit for this seemingly exemplary and prestigious outfit. However, when she’s asked to pay an invoice for 450,000 kroner to a company called Klant Consulting, which supposedly Biermann & Gude don’t do any Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
A Hero, set in the ancient city of Shiraz in southwest Iran, revolves around Rahim (Amir Jadidi), a weak man with gleaming white teeth and a permanent smile. He’s on leave from prison for the weekend, an odd concept in itself, as there are no restrictions to his movements and the whole set-up seems surprisingly lax and polite for what we might expect from an Iranian jail. As soon as he gets out he runs for a bus and misses it, still smiling, which serves as a kind of metaphor for his limp stance in life. His criminality isn't very intriguing, as he's just serving time for owing Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“Will they never learn?” people must have been screaming as they watched the opening episode of the 16th series of The Apprentice – I certainly was. After all these years, the hopefuls vying to take Lord Sugar's £250,000 to invest in their business idea seem blissfully unaware of how daft they look with their strutting boasts. I know it's a competition, but not in how to sound the most foolish.So we had the usual bombast bingo list. “I'm the complete package”, “I would compare myself to a Ferrari”, “Failure is not an option” and “I'm so confident to the point people think I'm deluded”. Bless Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Cecil Sharp, heritage hero or imperialist appropriator? If you attended school in the first half of the 20th century, you would have sung from his collections of English folk songs, and probably gritted your teeth and performed the country dances he recorded, too. Not far from the Hampstead Theatre, where Nell Leyshon’s play about him, Folk, has premiered in the Downstairs studio space, there is a world-renowned centre named for him and dedicated to the English folk traditions he helped salvage.Or did he? Sharp’s legacy has divided academic opinion since the 1980s, attracting complaints that Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
In 2021 TikTok became the most visited website in the entire world. Spending too much time on TikTok is probably bad for all sorts of geopolitical, ethical and spiritual reasons. But if you want to understand how we listen to and discover music in 2021 - it is the most important place to navigate.The app is not just a tool for record labels and artists to push new singles. It’s also become a space where music from the past is constantly being repurposed in bizarre and fascinating ways. For example, this year a Fleetwood Mac song re-entered the charts and became a Zoomer hit thanks to a guy on Read more ...
theartsdesk
Like every other artform, cinema suffered greatly in a year of lockdowns. But despite an ever-changing outlook, theartsdesk still managed to review over 130 films in 2021!Long-awaited blockbusters and no-budget indies fought for screen space big and small, but only a select few achieved five star status. Here are the 2021 releases our critics deemed perfect:The Dig (28 January 2021)This adaptation of John Preston’s novel features Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes and Lily James in a haunting exploration of time and timelessness.Our reviewer Adam Sweeting said: “The Dig really is a story for the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This latest outing from the astonishingly prolific Jack and Harry Williams (The Missing, Baptiste, The Widow, Strangers etc) gives itself a huge leg-up by exploiting the epic lonely spaces of the Australian Outback.The opening sequence of episode one was a blinder, a self-contained mini-drama about a motorist stopping at a decrepit service station to use the facilities, then finding himself pursued by a malevolent articulated truck, looming ever larger in his rearview mirror as he sings along to "Bette Davis Eyes" on the car radio.The cat-and-mouse pursuit was shot with filmic grandeur, as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title borrows from the lyrics of Siouxsie and the Banshees’s August 1978 debut single “Hong Kong Garden”: “Harmful elements in the air, Symbols clashing everywhere.” It also refers to Marcus Garvey’s prediction that on 7 July 1977 two sevens would clash with damaging consequences, a forewarning acknowledged that year by Culture’s Two Sevens Clash album.Yet Jon Savage's 1977-1979 - Symbols Clashing Everywhere collects “Voices,” “Hong Kong Garden’s” B-side, and Two Sevens Clash producer Joe Gibbs’s single “Prophesy Reveal,” a version of "Two Sevens Clash" voiced by Marvin Pitterson in his Read more ...