class system
Joseph Walsh
Who would have thought that Ken Loach could make a film more heart-wrenching than I, Daniel Blake? His new feature, co-written with his long-standing collaborator Paul Laverty, is a raw, angry and utterly uncompromising drama, showing that, for all the appeal of the gig-economy, the reality is much grimmer.Loach insightfully captures British working-class life with his own brand of politically charged righteousness, waking us up to the suffering and exploitation of an invisible workforce. As has been the case with many of his latter-day features, Loach crafts rounded characters, making them Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Early every evening, Miss Baixiu comes to sit in an isolated café. She is the daughter of Luo Yiming, the respected employee of a successful commercial bank in charge of loans throughout central Taiwan. As a rich man, an aesthete and a philanthropist he enjoys status, power, acclaim. Since leaving his job, the owner of the café, our unnamed narrator, has consciously sought to reduce his life to the smallest confines. He sleeps in a purpose-built mezzanine inside the shop and is lucky to sell two cups of coffee a day. The location of the café was dictated as the being the best spot to wait for Read more ...
Owen Richards
Where would you go for a devastating study on the human condition? The home movies of teenage skaters would be very low down on that list. But most of those movies aren’t filmed, compiled and analysed by Bing Liu, the director of Minding the Gap. Perfectly balancing perspective and curiosity, it’s perhaps the most unexpected achievement on the year.Liu has apparently always been the one behind the camera. From his early teens, he’s been pointing the lens towards his friends, primarily Zack and Keire. They’re both friends we recognise: Zack is the joker, always up for partying hard, and Keire Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Okay, so this is the play that will be remembered for the character names that have unusual spellings. As in Alys not Alice, Kyte not Kite, etc. Anyway, Lucinda Coxon's adaptation of journalist Harriet Lane's 2012 bestseller for the Bridge Theatre starts off with Frances (Downton Abbey's Joanne Froggatt) coming across a fatal car crash in which Alys, a woman she doesn't know, is killed. As all those who have read the book will recall, Frances finds that her life changes when she is contacted by Alys's family, especially her husband Laurence Kyte (Hustle's Robert Glenister), who turns to her Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Ray’s world has shrunk to a single room in a council flat. His life consists of drinking home-brew, smoking, gazing out of the window, listening to Radio 4 and sinking into an alcohol-induced stupour. There’s no need ever to leave his bedroom because his neighbour Sid does all the necessaries. A lone alcoholic asleep in a dingy room may not be the most gripping opening to a new British film Ray & Liz, but the scene is shot with such compelling attention to detail that a kind of squalid dignity is conferred on Ray’s solitary existence. The drama comes later when his estranged wife Liz Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Bea and Dan are a young married couple. They have a mortgage on their small flat in Holloway and met while out clubbing in Peckham. She’s a plain-looking, modest and hard-working psychotherapist; he’s putting in the hours as an estate agent having put his artistic aspirations on ice. Typical millennials. They’re in love. Or rather, we’re told they’re in love. In fact, we’re told rather a lot of things - it seems to be the book’s mode. Dan is mixed-race, was brought up in Peckham by his mum and hasn’t been abroad all that much: “I’m a city boy, aren’t I? And I don’t speak French.” Bea, on the Read more ...
'I’ve told everyone that it’s a comedy – but will anyone laugh?' Jonathan Dove on his new Marx opera
Jonathan Dove
Marx is having a terrible day. He is supposed to be finishing volume two of Capital but he’s distracted by his lust for the maid, workmen are taking away the furniture, his daughter thinks she’s caught a spy.... and what will his wife say when she discovers he’s taken her silver to the pawnbroker? Where is Engels when Marx needs him most?The answers are in Marx in London, my new opera opening in Theater Bonn on 9 December. If the plot sounds a bit like Richard Bean’s play Young Marx, that’s because at one point I asked Richard to write the libretto for my opera, and that gave him the Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Like Ken Loach and the Dardennes brothers, Laurent Cantet is a filmmaker with a keen interest in social issues and themes, often using non-professional actors and a naturalistic approach, but perfectly willing to inject a little plot contrivance to spice things up.The Frenchman’s early, calling-card films dealt with the workplace: Human Resources (1999) tackled industrial relations in a provincial factory and the divisive effect it has on a father-son relationship; Time Out (2001) concerned an executive’s painstaking attempt to fabricate a glamourous new working life Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Considering how the UK prides itself on having created the "Mother of Parliaments" and its citizens having once chopped off a king's head for thwarting its will, remarkably little is taught in our schools about one of the seminal events on the way to fully democratising this country: the Peterloo Massacre.Mike Leigh's spawling, intricately detailed film will give you a good overview of that appalling day in British history; on 16 August 1819 an undisciplined and badly led group of mounted and foot soldiers – whose commanding officer had a more pressing date at the races – charged with sabres Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A whiff of chlorine hits you as you open the door of the Whitechapel Gallery. Its the smell of public baths, and inside is a derelict swimming pool with nothing in it but dead leaves and piles of brick dust. Damp walls, peeling paint and cracked tiles make this a sorry sight. The door to the changing rooms has been sealed shut and some joker has sawn through the wall bars. Where has the pool come from, though? A wall notice explains. This was the Whitechapel Pool, opened in 1901 as an amenity for east enders. It was renovated in 1953, but in 1988, it was closed after losing its funding Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When Kentish hardcore punk two-piece, Slaves emerged with their debut album, Are You Satisfied?, they caused quite a stir with lairy tunes of austerity Britain like “The Hunter”, “Sockets” and the magnificent “Hey”. Since the heady days of 2015, however, they seem to have been somewhat stuck in the musical doldrums, in need of something to reinvigorate their sound. 2016’s follow-up album, Take Control, had great tunes like “Rich Man” and “Consume Or Be Consumed” but proved to be a set to cherry pick rather than cherish. And so, it continues to be with Acts Of Fear And Love.Isaac Holman’s Ian Read more ...
Katherine Waters
When Lea is nervous she picks at the skin near the nail of her thumb. When she draws blood the wound repairs instantly because she is a member of the Second Wave endowed with SmartBlood™ and DiamondSkin™. Aside from this tic she is an otherwise apparently perfect lifer in a future New York divided into those who may live up to three hundred and those who can merely hope to attain a hundred at most.To be perfect is a matter of both appearance and being. Her genes predispose her towards longevity but to be eligible for the optimised life-enhancement benefits is a matter of behaviour: drink your Read more ...