America
Justine Elias
Live-action movies for the under-12 set are rare. Rarer still are those that capture the anarchic spirit of middle-grade children gone wild. Writer-director Weston Razooli made a splash at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals last year with Riddle of Fire, an adventure tale that draws inspiration from Disney’s earnest, spirited TV fare of the 1970s.Set in the mountains of Wyoming, it follows three young friends as they rage around the great outdoors on dirt bikes, armed with paintball guns and plenty of ammo. They begin with a warehouse heist, in which best pals Alice, Jodie, and Hazel steal Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Begin the mission and the funds will come,” says feisty, tubercular nun Francesca Cabrini (Christiana Dell’Anna; Patrizia in Gomorrah) to Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) in 1889. She specialises in defying expectations, especially when men tell her she should stay where she belongs. She became the first American saint, canonised in 1946.Directed by Christian conservative Alejandro Monteverde, whose Q-Anon-approved movie Sound of Freedom about child sex-trafficking was, disquietingly, a controversial hit last year, this biopic is overlong, sanitised and sepia-toned, awash with angelic Read more ...
Tim Cumming
At 91, Willie Nelson is about to tour the US with The Outlaws, AKA Minnesota youngster Bob Dylan, 83, the even younger Robert Plant, 75, with Alison Krauss, a mere 52, and 72-year old John Mellencamp (plus a trio of 21st century artists in Celisse, Southern Avenue and Britney Spencer). Willie’s setlist contains songs that are older than some of those artistes, but you can bet a silver dollar that one or two from his excellent new album, The Border, will stray out onto the stage with him and his fabled guitar, Trigger.There’s a wonderful and affecting song here about dreaming of being Read more ...
David Nice
Catchy even when the lyrics are at their cheesiest, the Jerry Herman Songbook serves up a string of memorable tunes: you’ll probably find that, like me, you recognize about 80 per cent of the material in Jerry’s Girls. But is it enough when you (read I) have fallen in love with productions of Dear World and La Cage aux Folles but haven’t yet seen Hello, Dolly! or Mame on stage? The appetite still needs gratifying.All’s well that ends well in Hannah Chiswick’s decent staging. But the first stretch will be a vexation to some spirits. It’s an over-extended tits-and-teeth mélange which has you Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
He’s not the kind of actor who has paparazzi following him around Beverly Hills or staking out his yacht in St Barts, but Eddie Marsan, born into a working class family in Stepney in 1968, has amassed a list of acting credits that your average superstar will never be able to match.On the big screen he has appeared in such diverse productions as Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, V for Vendetta, Me and Orson Welles, Warhorse, Atomic Blonde, Hancock and Entebbe, and he plays Amy Winehouse’s father Mitch in the new biopic Back to Black.He’s also part of Guy Ritchie’s regular stable, having appeared in Read more ...
graham.rickson
Glance at The Holdovers’ synopsis and you might suspect that Alexander Payne’s latest effort is a slice of lightweight seasonal schmaltz. Yes, it is set at Christmas, and contains tear-jerking moments, but Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson throw so much more.The period detail has been much commented on, the early 1970s setting recreated with unfussy aplomb. Even the opening credits look vintage, the film’s digital footage processed to look like grainy analogue. Early scenes give little sense of where Payne will take us; what looks like a high-school comedy with a large cast quickly Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich, deepening milieu. Director Wes Ball again offers serious sf, just as much as Dune, considering the consequences of another species’ dominance, and outraged humanity’s resistance.We are unspecified centuries after Matt Reeves’ War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), with Caesar’s reign now a font of vaguely remembered ape faith. Human civilisation – and its weaponry – has fallen away, leaving a green world, with mysterious skyscraper skylines sheathed in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
To mark the 40th anniversary of New Jersey’s second-greatest gift to rock’n’roll, Disney+ have served up this sprawling four-part documentary which tells you more about Jon Bon Jovi and his band of brothers than you ever needed to know. Or, possibly, wanted to.One has to conclude that it has been created in the image of Jon Bon himself, in all his obsessive, control-freak glory. Far from a hell-for-leather rock’n’roller, too fast to live and too young to die, he comes across as a sober, thoughtful workaholic who has maintained a steely grip on his career virtually since he learned to walk. He Read more ...
Justine Elias
Somewhere along a desert highway in the American Southwest, where there's not much to do besides get drunk, shoot guns, and pump iron, a stranger comes to town.In Love Lies Bleeding, a smart, sexy neo-noir, the drifter is a weightlifter named Jackie (Katy M O’Brian), who’s out to score a short-time cash gig to fund her way to bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. On Jackie’s first night training at the local gym, though, there’s trouble: she fights off a handsy jock’s advances, preferring to lock eyes with the gym’s lonely manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart). This is New Mexico, 1989: two women Read more ...
Jane Edwardes
Small-scale shows, nurtured in offbeat places, are becoming all the rage in the West End. Red Pitch, Operation Mincemeat, For Black Boys… have already made their mark, and now this quirky musical for just two performers joins them.It’s been a long journey, starting in Norwich and Northampton and followed by Kilburn, where the show opened last Christmas at the Kiln Theatre. Appropriate timing, since the musical is set in December with one entertaining song about the insistent horrors of the Xmas musical standards, but it works just as sweetly in the Criterion in April.Illusions and reality Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great jazz pianists, was called Songs from Home, released on the New York indie jazz label Palmetto Records towards the end of 2020. Silent, Listening, released this month on ECM could not be more different in it moods and in its aims.Songs from Home was recorded at the time of the pandemic at Hersch’s home in Pennsylvania. The pianist sought solace from a “loss of identity” (and loss of work) by recalling the songs which had been around during his youth. As a “child of the 60s” he remembers, “when the craft of Read more ...
Cheri Amour
For most people’s 40th birthday celebrations, they might get a few friends together, rustle up a cake, and toast to another turn around the sun. But when musician Lail Arad realised the stars had aligned with her beloved Joni Mitchell's own 80th birthday, she knew she had to mark the milestone moment with something special.Thus, The Songs of Joni Mitchell was born, an intimate evening celebrating the iconic singer-songwriter as part of this year’s In The Round festival. Mitchell was one of the first women in modern rock to achieve enviable longevity and critical recognition. Her works Read more ...