America
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the good AmericanTuesday, 04 March 2025
Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk architects of what became Americana. Now he’s 61 and playing in a sold-out pub back-room in Hassocks, a... Read more... |
The Last Showgirl review - Pamela Anderson stars as a middle-aged Vegas dancerFriday, 28 February 2025
Shelly (Pamela Anderson) is a dancer. She’s been with Le Razzle Dazzle, an outdated Las Vegas show that’s full of “breasts, rhinestones and joy”, in her words, for 30 years. And now it’s closing. Where can she go, at the age of 57?The third feature... Read more... |
Mickalene Thomas, All About Love, Hayward Gallery review - all that glittersWednesday, 26 February 2025
On walking into Mikalene Thomas’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery my first reaction was “get me out of here”. To someone brought up on the paired down, less-is-more aesthetic of minimalism her giant, rhinestone-encrusted portraits are like a kick... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Drugstore CowboyTuesday, 25 February 2025
Rehab people will tell you there are three stages to drug abuse: fun; fun with problems; problems. There’s also a fourth phase, where there aren't any problems, because you’re dead.Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy maps out the territory between... Read more... |
The Capulets and the Montagues, English Touring Opera review - the wise guys are singing like canariesMonday, 24 February 2025
A year ago, after a deeply disappointing Manon Lescaut at Hackney Empire, I wrote here that English Touring Opera had often excelled in the past, and would do so again. The company hasn’t taken long to prove the point.Severe critics might argue that... Read more... |
The Monkey review - a grisly wind-upSaturday, 22 February 2025
Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian mood, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs serial-killer yarn into a more slyly awful tale. Osgood Perkins’ hit fourth horror film seemed sure to elevate his career, but follow-up The... Read more... |
Zero Day, Netflix review - can ex-President Robert De Niro save the Land of the Free?Thursday, 20 February 2025
It seems that esteemed former US President George Mullen is subsiding gently into retirement on his luxurious country estate, with a publishing contract for his memoirs if he can ever manage to knuckle down and write them, when fate throws a curve-... Read more... |
Noah Davis, Barbican review - the ordinary made strangely compellingThursday, 20 February 2025
In 2013 the American artist, Noah Davis used a legacy left him by his father to create a museum of contemporary art in Arlington Heights, an area of Los Angeles populated largely by Blacks and Latinos. But his Underground Museum faced a problem; it... Read more... |
East Is South, Hampstead Theatre review - bewildering and unconvincingWednesday, 19 February 2025
Our humanity is defined not only by our use of language, but also by our sense of the spiritual. Whether you are a believer or not, it’s hard to deny the attractions of religion for billions around the world. Sounds portentous? Yeah. Okay, you’re... Read more... |
Hacks, Season 3, NOW review - acerbic showbiz comedy keeps up the good workWednesday, 19 February 2025
Dying is easy, comedy is hard, according to the Georgian actor Edmund Kean. Luckily, everybody involved with the much-awarded Hacks understands precisely the creative anguish that top-flight comedy demands, and in its third season the show puts... Read more... |
Captain America: Brave New World review - talking loud, saying nothingFriday, 14 February 2025
In his first weeks in office, Harrison Ford’s US president survives an assassination attempt inside the White House, goes to war with Japan and mutates into Red Hulk when he gets mad, trashing said White House with a Stars and Stripes flag-holder.... Read more... |
Bowling For Soup, Civic Hall, Wolverhampton review - nostalgic, celebratory funTuesday, 11 February 2025
Bowling For Soup are celebrating their iconic album, A Hangover You Don’t Deserve, on a fun-filled, energetic tour for its 20th anniversary. Their sold out stop at Wolverhampton’s Civic Hall was a joy to experience from start to finish, the light-... Read more... |
