drugs
Beautiful Boy review - well-acted but a slogFriday, 18 January 2019
The tortuous road to addiction and back again – or maybe not – makes for a faintly tedious experience in Beautiful Boy, notwithstanding the committed performances of an A-list cast. On the road to his second consecutive Oscar... Read more... |
CD: Ex Mykah - 16, 17Wednesday, 24 October 2018
Ex Mykah is a multi-instrumentalist and producer on the LA music scene who’s worked with the names such as Mark Ronson and Miike Snow. His own debut album sounds very far from either of those. Instead it comes from the warped, alt-hip hop end of the... Read more... |
CD: Hawkwind - Road to UtopiaSaturday, 15 September 2018
Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt... Read more... |
Yardie review - Idris Elba shoots straight in his directorial debutFriday, 31 August 2018
The first significant British film to explore the influence of Jamaican sound systems in London was Babylon. Shot in 1980, its street patois was deemed impenetrable enough to merit subtitles. Times change. Yardie revisits the same world and era – it... Read more... |
Silk Road (How To Buy Drugs Online), Trafalgar Studios review - Geordie chancer comes of ageWednesday, 08 August 2018
The Dark Web has an intriguing sound about it. Like something out of JRR Tolkein or JK Rowling, it suggests a netherland peopled by strange creatures, and maybe even dangerous monsters. As indeed it is. Television writer Alex Oates’s 60-minute... Read more... |
Sicario: Day of the Soldado review - violent, explosive and nihilistic thrillerThursday, 28 June 2018
The issue of immigrants being smuggled across the Mexican border into the USA is currently live and inflammatory, and this second instalment of the feds-versus-drugs cartels saga hurls us right into the centre of it. This explosive thriller is... Read more... |
CD: Kanye - YeFriday, 01 June 2018
Would it come as a terrible surprise to learn that this record is highly problematic? Well, duh. Kanye West is the sad clown narrating the global tragicomedy, a troll on an epochal scale, a bundle of contradictory drives all attempting to express... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Nick MulveySaturday, 25 November 2017
Nick Mulvey (b.1984) is a singer-songwriter who draws from a refreshing and unexpected palette of global roots music, modernist classical and electronica. His second album, Wake Up Now, was released earlier this year, and showcases a man on a quest... Read more... |
Mae Martin, Soho Theatre review - life is a drugTuesday, 19 September 2017
She’s only 30, but Mae Martin has been at this comedy lark for a long time. By her own admission she was a rather strange child; she became obsessed with stand-up after her parents took her to a comedy club when she was 11, and she started... Read more... |
Sigrid Rausing: Mayhem review - you want it darker?Sunday, 03 September 2017
There is fictional Nordic noir. And then there is this, the real thing. Subject matter really couldn’t be much darker than that of Mayhem: A Memoir in which publisher, philanthropist and heiress Sigrid Rausing gives her perspective on her younger... Read more... |
American Made review - Tom Cruise flies againThursday, 24 August 2017
How funny are gun-running, drug-smuggling and money-laundering? It depends who’s doing them. In American Made none other than Tom Cruise gets behind the controls of a twin-engine plane and flies back to the 1980s, a sepia-tinted yesteryear when all... Read more... |
It's So Easy and Other Lies, Sky Arts review - uneven rock bio outstays its welcomeSaturday, 22 July 2017
Duff McKagan is a survivor. He’s a bass player too, from the fledgling Seattle punk/proto-grunge outfit 10 Minute Warning to the stadium-filling behemoth of Guns N’ Roses, but if you were judging by the narrative weight of this 2015 documentary, you... Read more... |
