This genial oddity – its pithier French title is Complètement Cramé, meaning something along the lines of completely burnt out – stars John Malkovich and Fanny Ardant and is directed by best-selling author Gilles Legardinier, who adapted it from his own novel. Its goofiness works, some of the time, partly because of Malkovich’s French, which is fluent yet delivered in a halting drawl with an English/American accent so bad it’s almost good.Still, he does bring a strange zest to the unlikely role of Andrew Blake, a successful English businessman whose French wife died recently. He longs to Read more ...

Star casting has, since the pandemic, done much to restore the fortunes of commercial theatre. And, when they can pull off a similar deal, the same applies to subsidised venues. If the downside is that many smaller institutions get left behind, the upside is clearly visible all over the West End.The latest stars to join Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln in The Lady from the Sea or Brendan Gleeson in The Weir, are national treasures Stephen Fry and Olly Alexander in this West End transfer of the hit National Theatre revival of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 masterpiece, The Importance of Being Read more ...

Into the Groove is Justin Lewis’s follow-up to 2023’s Don’t Stop the Music, in which he traced 40 years of pop history by offering bite-sized facts for every day from January 1st to December 31st, jumping randomly from year to year. I noted in my review for theartsdesk that Lewis was particularly strong on the Eighties, so I was pleased this sequel focuses on that decade, with a similar format, this time going month-by-month through the years that were perhaps the very peak of pop.I am firmly in the ideal demographic for Into the Groove: the 1980s: the Ultimate Decade in Music, having Read more ...

Fans of Alexandra Fuller’s fine memoir of her childhood in Africa may be wary of this film adaptation by the actress Embeth Davidtz, her directing debut. But they should not be. This is an equally fine, sensitive rendering of Fuller’s story, with a miraculous performance by seven-year-old Lexi Venter at its heart.The setting is Rhodesia as it evolves into Zimbabwe after the Bush War ends and, in 1980, the socialist Zanu PF leader, Robert Mugabe, is elected prime minister. The Fullers have a cattle farm near Umtali in the east, near the Mozambique border. They and the other local whites live a Read more ...

The backscreens pop alive. A wall of photographer’s flashguns. On cyberpunk crutches, Lady Gaga stumbles jerkily towards us. She sings her 2009 global smash “Paparazzi”, her arms clad in armour, on her head a metallic skullcap. Her corseted dress has a train that extends, diaphanous, floating back behind her the entire length of the long catwalk into the audience. It disappears into the darkness of an arch.Theatre, yes, but Gaga is committed. Her eyes on the big screen above aren’t smirky or cool. They have a performative, deranged intensity. Lady Gaga is a proper pop star, haemorrhaging Read more ...

In a fair few bars around the world tonight, bands will be playing “That’s The Way (I Like It)”, “Give It Up” and so many more of KC and the Sunshine Band’s bangers. They’ve filled dancefloors for half a century and Harry Wayne Casey (KC to you and me) has a claim to having written the first ever disco hit with George McCrae’s “Rock Your Baby” – Benny and Bjorn’s inspiration for “Dancing Queen” no less!He’s a significant figure in the much undervalued history of pop music. His songbook is a strong foundation for a musical. All you need to add are great singers, great costumes and a great Read more ...

Comedy is strange old thing; it’s supposed to be funny ha-ha, but the laughs can often come from a dark place, as evidenced by Nick Helm’s latest show (which I saw at the Arts Depot in London). His mental health has been a backdrop to previous show, but No One Gets Out Alive is his most personal yet as he references the end of an important relationship some years ago, and charts how his television breakthrough proved to be a false dawn in his career.But before he gets into that, some housekeeping, as Helm rearranges the venue’s seating to fill up a few empty spaces at the front. These Read more ...

The 16-minute album opener “Between the Fingers the Drops of Tomorrow's Dawn” coalesces at the 12-minute point, when clattering percussion meshes with what sounds like a sitar to fashion a hypnotic, repetitive whole. It’s as if Slovenia’s Širom have used the time so far to work themselves into a trance-like state. Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin have surrendered to the drone.In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper is Širom’s fifth album. Not only does it bear a characteristically mysterious cover image and title, it is also long. Over 74 minutes, there are just seven Read more ...

Paul Thomas Anderson’s frantic One Battle After Another is a storm warning for a fascist America and both a lament and a rallying call for revolutionary fervour.Unfurling in the early Obama years and the near future, it’s a late ‘60s/early ‘70s West Coast throwback that channels a gutsy female Black Panthers vibe, Bullitt-style car chases, and an Altmanesque gallery of fanatics and smooth operators on either side of the political divide. It might be the best Hollywood film of 2025; ahead of next year’s Midterm Elections, nothing can touch it as the movie of the historical moment.Extrapolated Read more ...

They say no good deed goes unpunished, so when New York restaurateur Jake Friedken (Jude Law) allowed his wayward and star-crossed brother Vince (Jason Bateman) back into his life, he might have expected to experience a little turbulence. Instead, he finds himself engulfed in a hair-raising struggle to save his career and even his life.While Vince has high-tailed it across country from Reno, where his encounter with a couple of con-artists found him running one of them over (twice) in a parking lot, Jake has been gee-ing up his staff for a visit by the New York Times restaurant critic. A Read more ...

This must be the first time a black artist has been honoured with a retrospective that fills the main galleries of the Royal Academy. Celebrating Kerry James Marshall’s 70th birthday, The Histories occupies these grand rooms with such joyous ease and aplomb that it makes one forget how rare it is for blackness to be given centre stage.“I’m trying to establish a phenomenal presence that is unequivocally black and beautiful,” explains Marshall. “What I’m trying to do in my work is establish presence with a capital P.” And boy does he succeed! Gallery after gallery is filled with pictures that Read more ...

The latest instalment of the ITV drama department’s attempts at trial by television is another anatomy of a scandal, but with little of the emotive power of Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It’s an odd, ungainly construct that attempts to meld two separate plotlines, almost as if two dramas were prepared independently and then belatedly welded together. Jack Thorne is credited as the writer of both, the able author of, among many other TV hits, Adolescence and National Treasure. But even he can’t stitch this unwieldy material Into a coherent, impactful whole.The point of contact between the Read more ...