fantasy
joe.muggs
It’s funny how the most high tech music can sound very traditional. In the case of producer / instrumentalist / occasional singer Ziúr, it’s the tradition of her hometown of Berlin that is expressed in her whirrs, clangs and mutated voices. Here – as on her previous records with British labels Planet Mu and Objects Limited and Canada’s Infinite machine, and like most of the roster of her new home, Berlin’s PAN – the sound palette is hyper-detailed: glistening, crackling and booming with the kind of abyssal vastness and obsessional detail that only today’s processing power can generate. But Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Which of Shakespeare’s plays is most plagued by misperception? For my money, I would argue A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Most people encounter it at school age because of the ease with which it can be dressed up as a light comedy involving fairies. Yet at heart this is a deeply primal work which draws upon the raw power of the elements to look at the arbitrary nature of desire and how radically it can rewrite any individual’s life.This aspect of the play has informed the RSC’s latest interpretation, though it is rightly the high-tech nature of its Dream that has dominated all the preview Read more ...
Charlie Stone
It is near impossible to imagine what the world would look like today if slavery and colonialism had never existed, let alone to write a book on the subject. Courttia Newland sets himself this daunting task in his latest novel, A River Called Time. Imaginative fiction rubs shoulders with a naturalistic impulse to create the world of the Ark, an alternate reality in which African cultural influences represent the status quo. Rooted in a decolonised narrative style where every turn of phrase brings forth the weight of its cultural implications, A River Called Time is a deeply thoughtful, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After months of watching movies on computer screens, how delightful to have a press screening at the Waterloo IMAX cinema, albeit under Covid restrictions. Not so delightful was the realisation that Wonder Woman 1984 is crying out for some editing shears (151 minutes! Are they serious?), while the uninspired climax that Gal Gadot’s title character spends so long labouring towards really isn't worth the wait.Whereas 2017’s Wonder Woman found World War One mysteriously arriving at the island of Themyscira, mythical home to the Amazon women, this one (again helmed by Patty Jenkins) leaps forward Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
The first series of the BBC and HBO’s fantasy adventure His Dark Materials felt even more timely than when author Phillip Pullman first published Northern Lights twenty-five-years ago. The second season builds on the heady mix of philosophy and theology, and more than a touch of environmentalism, all delivered as a thrilling adventure yarn in the mould of C S Lewis but with a very different attitude towards religion. The main thrust remains sure-footed in teaching young and old that speaking truth to power is no bad thing when the power is authoritarian in nature. At the centre of Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
A long shadow looms over Robert Zemeckis’ new take on Roald Dahl’s classic 1980s book The Witches, starring Octavia Spencer, Anne Hathaway and newcomer Jahzir Bruno. That shadow is cast by Nicholas Roeg’s strange and terrifying 1990 adaptation starring Anjelica Huston, which expertly captured the wicked humour of Dahl’s book. Roeg’s film may have diverted from Dahl’s original plot in some respects, but it shared the author’s peevish delight in terrifying and delighting in equal measure. Zemeckis’ film is a much more bubble-gum affair, made all the worse by an over-zealous Chris Read more ...
Owen Richards
With Netflix releasing Rebecca on Wednesday, who’d have thought that a kid’s film would be this week’s best adaptation about an estate haunted by the memory of the deceased lady of the manor? Written and directed by the team behind Channel 4’s National Treasure (a very different production), The Secret Garden manages to recapture the warmth and familiarity of a classic weekend family film, with just a pinch of darkness.Based on the classic children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, we find recently orphaned Mary (newcomer Dixie Egerickx) on the way from her parent’s Indian house to her Read more ...
theartsdesk
There are films to meet every taste in theartsdesk's guide to the best movies currently on release. In our considered opinion, any of the titles below is well worth your attention.Enola Holmes ★★★★ Millie Bobby Brown gives the patriarchy what-for in a new Sherlock-related franchiseEternal Beauty ★★★★ Craig Roberts's fantasy conjurs surreal images and magnetic performancesI'm Thinking of Ending Things ★★★★ Charlie Kaufman's eerie road trip through love and lossLes Misérables ★★★★★ An immersive, morally complex thriller set in the troubled suburbs of present day ParisMax Richter's Sleep ★★★★ Read more ...
Owen Richards
Barring a few outliers, British indies tend to follow the same formula: serious subjects told seriously. Whether it’s a council estate, a rural farm, or a seaside town, you can always rely on that trademark tension and realism we Brits do so well. What a shock to the system Eternal Beauty is then, filled with more imagination than almost anything else out this year.Sally Hawkins stars as Jane, a woman struggling to keep a grasp of her mental health. Her issues are compounded by her sociopathic mother (Penelope Wilton), narcissistic sister (Billie Piper), and a fiancée that dumped her at the Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Whilst New Mutants slips surreptitiously into cinemas, Disney’s live-action spin on Mulan arrives with more fanfare on their streaming platform, even if it does come with a price-tag of nearly £20.Director Niki Caro (Whale Rider) and her cohort of screenwriters have ironed out the kinks of the ’98 animation, giving it a greater feminist spin, but losing much of the heart and humour of Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook’s original film. The story focuses on the young Hua Mulan (Liu Yifei), a free spirit who has to suppress her martial gifts for the sake of the Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
The timing couldn’t be more perfect for a series like Lovecraft Country (Sky Atlantic) in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Here we have a spectacular show in which fantasy, horror and America’s racist legacy collide with remarkable results.Adapted from the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, it depicts the journey of a black family in Jim Crow-era America. Across 10 episodes, they must not only survive encounters with supernatural monsters straight from the work of the father of Cosmic Horror, HP Lovecraft, but also contend with real monsters, like racist cops in sundown towns, Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
I have a confession to make: I don’t like Alice in Wonderland. I know, I know, a lot of people disagree. I do appreciate its place in the cultural pantheon – I just find all the caterpillars and tea parties and pointless riddles really, really dull. So it’s hard to be sure if it was the subject matter of Alice, A Virtual Theme Park that left me a little chilly, or its form. Creation Theatre’s Zoom adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s stories is over-ambitious at times, but it works well when it’s reminding us of life’s fundamental absurdity – and how leaning into that can bring us together Read more ...