America
Liz Thomson
One of the many dispiriting things about the nine years that span Trumpino’s 2017 inaugural and today is how very few musicians have had the courage to put their heads over the parapet. Certainly not Bob Dylan, perish the thought. Joan Baez has, of course, though she is neither touring nor recording. Steve Earle too, and Jesse Welles, the thirtysomething troubadour whose dusty work boots are planted firmly on the Woody Guthrie road, and Bruce Springsteen, a consistent champion of blue-collar righteousness. And there’s a good deal of that blue-collar righteousness in the work of Lucinda Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Lionel (Paul Mescal; played as a child by Leo Cocovinis) has perfect pitch and is able to name the note his mother coughs each morning. He can harmonise with the barking of the dog across the field. “Early on I thought everyone could see sound.” Sounds bring shapes, colours, tastes too: “B minor and my mouth turned bitter.”Directed by Oliver Hermanus (Moffie; Living), The History of Sound, adapted by Ben Shattuck from his own short story about a gay couple in the 1920s, starts promisingly but its tone is too tasteful and restrained and its faded painterly palette of brown and white, though Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The pitch for this movie might have been “Heat meets Miami Vice”, and it’s to the credit of writer/director Joe Carnahan that the finished result can stand toe to toe with those two without feeling any need to apologise. The Rip is also noteworthy for bringing back together those two grizzled old Bostonians, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who co-star and co-produce (and also negotiated a special bonus deal with Netflix for the cast and crew, depending on the film’s success).It’s a tough, tense tale of Miami cops battling against not only Colombian drug cartels but also shady goings-on within the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
State of Statelessness is the brainchild of the Drung Tibetan Filmmakers’ Collective based in Dharamshala, home to the Dalai Lama and spiritual heart of the Tibetan community in exile. Four short films, each by a different director, address what it means to live in the diaspora without a homeland. And like a short story, each film offers a glimpse into lives spent in perpetual exile.The quartet begins and ends with water. An aerial shot of a ferry crossing the Mekong delta introduces Where the River Ends directed by Tsering Tashi Gyalthang. Waiting for the ferry are Tenzin and his young Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Such is the USA administration’s overwhelming saturation of the news cycle that, even with the comforting presence of an ocean between, it’s hard not to find Talking Heads’ unforgettable lyric relentlessly buzzing through your brain on repeat – “And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?”. It is the mission of The American Vicarious theatre company to “... create art that challenges us to confront the gap between America’s ideals and its lived realities”. Guys, there’s never been a better time.Almost three years on from their electrifying Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley recreated Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Lawlessness and lack of accountability seem, tragically, on the verge of becoming a new American norm, so what better time to re-consider High Noon, the classic 1952 Western that forefronts issues of moral rectitude. Will Kane, the marshal who stays on in his tight-knit New Mexico community to square off against an outlaw whom he sentenced to hanging five years before, possesses a moral propriety akin to the likes of Atticus Finch. And look how often To Kill A Mockingbird lands on stage. On the face of it, you can see the sense in adapting Fred Zinnemann's four-time Oscar-winner to the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As one of the characters tells us: “There are two sides to every story… someone is always lying.” This telly-isation of Alice Feeney’s source novel, created by a quartet of screenwriters and directed by William Oldroyd and Anja Marquardt, picks up that idea and runs with it energetically. It pitches us into a vision of an American rural south which is plagued with deceit, guilt, simmering resentment and murderous intent dating back decades. No-one is entirely innocent, and at least one person is incredibly guilty.The plot orbits around a group of female classmates who grew up in the small Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Lyle Kessler’s 1983 three-hander has embedded itself in the American repertory, attracting a Tony nomination and star casting. Here it was graced with an award-winning turn onstage from Albert Finney, who later starred in a film version. But is it more than an actors’ play?The little Jermyn Street stage brings its simmering tensions straight to your seat, as brothers Treat (Chris Walley) and Philip (Fred Woodley Evans) clash at their Philadelphia row-house. Treat, a self-styled tough guy, is a petty thief who preys on hapless pedestrians, bringing home his booty – watches, cash, jewellery – Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Reviews of The Hunting Wives have been taking the line of “it’s complete trash but I love it!”, which seems a perfectly reasonable response. It’s an everyday story of deceit, murder, weird sex and all kinds of corruption, set deep in the heart of Texas where they have some very strict ideas about guns and religion, especially the entirely taboo topic of abortion.Adapted from May Cobb’s novel by screenwriter Rebecca Cutter, it centres on a tightly-knit group of women in li’l old Maple Brook, TX. Joining them is new kid in town Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow) and her rather uptight and preppy Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If any readers can still remember 2024’s first iteration of Red Eye, they will have an approximate idea of the kind of things they can expect from this second instalment, in short, fast-food drama tarted up with a bit of political skulduggery. Screenwriter Peter A Dowling has cunningly identified a niche in the market for aviation-centric thrillers, though where last year’s model was set almost entirely on board an aircraft en route to Beijing, this one is mostly locked inside the American Embassy in London.Aviation-wise, the McGuffin du jour is an RAF aircraft which has mysteriously crashed Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
It’s 1952 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, seven years after the Enola Gay dropped a bomb on the Japanese empire, but one skinny New Yorker is still waging war against it, armed with street savvy, a motormouth and a traditional table tennis paddle.This is the unlikely subject of Josh Safdie’s first solo directing release, Marty Supreme, loosely based on elements from the life of Marty Reisman (here called Mauser and played by Timothée Chalamet). Most Japanese sportspeople had to observe a post-war travel ban, but not the low-level celebrities of the table tennis world, which was barely Read more ...
theartsdesk
SASKIA BARON1 One Battle After Another2. Sinners3 It was Just an Accident4 Palestine 365 Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight6 April7 Motherboard8 Holy Cow9 The Brutalist10 Pillion It was hard work finding ten films I wholly loved this year, and even then, these have flaws (particularly the last third of The Brutalist). But I’m pleased to find that five of my favourite films were directed by women, each exploring very different genres, and that Sinners and One Battle After Another were such densely visual treats they required repeated viewings. JUSTINE Read more ...