America
Demetrios Matheou
Within seconds – literally seconds – of Unforgettable it becomes apparent that this is the kind of film that in the late Eighties and Nineties used to be referred to as “straight to video”, a label that covered a plethora of trashy, sexist, by-the-numbers psycho and erotic thrillers that beat a hasty route to Blockbuster. To actually see one in the cinema, released by a major studio, is a disconcerting experience.Those first few salacious and silly seconds involve the police interrogation of a woman, who looks like the victim of an almighty beating but is actually facing a murder rap. Julia Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
It used to be said that the devil had all the best music. But the devil seems to have lost his touch in this ghost-story rock musical from Duncan Sheik, composer of the stage version of American Psycho and the award-laden Spring Awakening. If the plot seems familiar, it’s because it is – in essence, anyway. An isolated location. Childhood innocence in peril. Malevolent ghosts with a score to settle. Another American abroad tied up that narrative package more than a century ago in The Turn of the Screw.But the main problem with Whisper House, which premiered in San Diego in 2010 and here Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was a long time coming, but Homeland’s sixth series at last awoke from its early-season slumbers to put on a late surge over the closing episodes. For a while, it had seemed that the story was barely advancing at all, as the screen was self-indulgently hogged by Carrie Mathison’s emotional life, particularly her anguish over her daughter being taken into care. Yet by the end, she found herself in the teeth of the hurricane as the USA was threatened by a brutal coup d'état.Homeland has always been about the personal cost of undercover work, where commitment to the greater cause tends to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
"An Evening with Pink Martini" consists of two sets by the Portland, Oregon group/mini-orchestra. Of these, the first takes the prize, but only by a very short lead. During it the nine-piece, led by Thomas Lauderdale at the piano, seem to relax and really allow spontaneity to take hold, in a manner that’s both risky and thrilling, in terms of stagecraft. At one point trombonist Antonis Andreou is coaxed to sing a number in Greek that he can hardly remember, which means moments of quiet conflab with lead singer Storm Large. Or there’s Large’s off-the-cuff, innuendo-filled and thoroughly Read more ...
David Benedict
“Then I’ll kiss her so she’ll know.” At the sound of his ringing voice, the girls part to reveal him standing there, a hapless monument of rumpled charm. The audience relaxes in pleasure as an easeful actor joyfully shows what you can do with a command of textual detail, physicality and, above all, character. The trouble is, the excellent Gavin Spokes is playing not one of the leads but the supporting role of Mr Snow. The downside of a performance this assured is that it shows you exactly what has been missing until now.To a degree, this is a gamble that has paid off – the emphasis is on the Read more ...
Saskia Baron
The Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro is a chronicle of the pioneering writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin. Its director Raoul Peck mirrors the intellectual challenge that Baldwin set his audience: the film demands that you pay close attention and listen to a complex argument backed up visually with diverse social and cultural references.Instead of making a conventional biographical documentary, one which would combine archive, interviews with those who knew Baldwin, experts opining on his legacy and a narrator guiding us through the writer-activist’s history in Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Is there something about the recessive life of Emily Dickinson that defies dramatisation? I'm beginning to think so after A Quiet Passion. The Terence Davies film may attempt a more authentic take on the unrelievedly bleak, and also great, 19th-century American poet than the stage vehicle about her, The Belle of Amherst, now long past its sell-by date. But whether serving a film biography or a solo theatre venture, Dickinson seems somehow to elude aesthetic capture, or maybe it's just that she turns out to be as oblique as the landscape of her most enduring poems.On the face of it, Dickinson Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Ben Wheatley’s sixth film in a prolific, unpredictable career is a shoot-‘em-up in the most literal sense. Setting a superb international cast led by Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy down in a big, grim warehouse, he lets them blast bits off each other for 70 of Free Fire’s 90 minutes. After Wheatley’s most obviously ambitious film, his J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise, suggested narrative structure wasn’t always his and co-writer/editor Amy Jump’s strength, this locked-room massacre focuses his skills.The set-up is a gun deal gone wrong in 1978’s USA, a period high on lurid disco fashion and Read more ...
mark.kidel
The baby-boomers, we are told, postpone thoughts of mortality, workaholically keeping the image of the grim reaper at bay. The rock’n’rollers among them keep the teen spirit flowing, rebellious to the last, even though they are now the elders of the tribe, often stuck in old postures of revolt.Bob Dylan still rocks when playing live, but, no longer angry at the world, his heart is fixed on oldies’ music, as he meanders melancholically through the great American songbook: he is now on his fourth album (if you count the seasonal outing Christmas in the Heart from 2009) dedicated to songs made Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Residents' famous fusion of Fred Astaire’s most dapper top hat’n’tails look with a giant eyeball head is a masterpiece of surreal imagery. The subversive California outfit, who’ve been going for over 40 years, have regularly veered into other visual identities, but it’s their classic monocular showman who appears on the front of the latest album.However, if their image is well-known, The Residents’ music is less loved. Even alternative sorts tend to enjoy their conceptual direction more than the sounds. Much of The Residents’ appeal lies in their talent for anarchic satire and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Two Rode Together (1961) depicts the humanising of Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart), a corrupt, mercenary border town marshal, as it builds to a denunciation of white racism. John Ford, who made the film as a favour to Columbia Pictures (and for a $225,000 salary), considered it “crap”. Yet it was a key transitional work in his career – and the bridge between his late masterpieces The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). As such, the new Masters of Cinema dual format release is a must-own for Ford and Western fans.McCabe grudgingly accepts a commission from an army Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Seattle-based rockers Car Seat Headrest finally burst their cult bubble with their 13th album, last year’s Teens of Denial, which found veteran songwriter Will Toledo combining Nineties indie, post-punk nihilism and psychedelic vocal harmonies in a collection of sprawling lo-fi jams. Inside the sold out 1,100 capacity Electric Ballroom, expectations are subsequently set extremely high.The formidable TRAAMS are supporting Car Seat Headrest for their whole European tour, and as one of the most prolific bands in the south of England, they’ve become notable for their live performances. TRAAMS Read more ...