Patricia Lockwood: No One is Talking About This review - first novel goes beyond the internet

★★★★ PATRICIA LOCKWOOD: NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS First novel goes beyond the internet

You have a new memory: escaping the pull of the portal

This is a novel, says Patricia Lockwood in her Twitter feed, about being very inside the internet and then being very outside of it. At first, I thought the title referred to aspects of the internet and its disappearing history, as in, “'MySpace was an entire life’, she nearly wept at a bookstore in Chicago… ‘And it is lost, lost, lost.’”

Bliss review - simulation or real life?

★★★ BLISS Mike Cahill's sci-fi story of parallel worlds fails to engage

Mike Cahill's sci-fi story of parallel worlds fails to engage

Bliss gets off to a powerful start. Stressed-out Greg Wittle (an endearing Owen Wilson) is in his office, trying to do several things at once: draw his dream seaside home in great detail; talk to his daughter; renew his painkiller prescription by entering long lists of numbers in response to maddening robotic prompts, and get himself out the door to see his boss, whose assistant keeps demanding his presence with increasing urgency.

Malcolm & Marie review - actorly grandstanding in beautiful black and white

★★★ MALCOLM & MARIE Actorly grandstanding in beautiful black and white

Airless two-hander made under the restrictions of the pandemic

Do you want to spend 105 minutes trapped in a house with two people arguing, or do you already feel that your life under lockdown is quite quarrelsome and claustrophobic enough? If your answer is the former, then Malcolm & Marie is the perfect movie for you. Everyone else might be happier escaping elsewhere (I’d recommend Call My Agent if you want to enjoy actors talking about their trade. At least you get some exterior Paris scenes and lashings of wit). 

The Capote Tapes review - lush portrait of the louche writer

★★★ THE CAPOTE TAPES Lush portrait of the 'fairy Huck Finn'

Entertaining documentary portraying a figure once described as the 'fairy Huck Finn'

"A candied tarantula" is one of the many great descriptions of Truman Capote that light up this conventionally made but enjoyable profile of the American author most famous for Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood.

Eddie S Glaude Jr: Begin Again - James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today review - can America avoid the fire this time?

★★★★ EDDIE S GLAUDE JR: BEGIN AGAIN - JAMES BALDWIN'S AMERICA AND ITS URGENT LESSONS FOR TODAY Can American avoid the fire this time?

A historiographical study of the activist and writer, 'the figure we need to turn to in the age of Trump'

I suspect that the work of James Baldwin is not all that familiar to readers in Britain, perhaps not even to black readers in Britain – just as, for a time at least, it seemed that Martin Luther King, a much more visible figure in black history whose words are routinely quoted, became obscured by rather blingier modern-

Album: Eminem - Music To Be Murdered By Side B

★★ EMINEM - MUSIC TO BE MURDERED BY SIDE B Diminishing returns in Slim's Psycho II

Diminishing returns in Slim's Psycho II

Becoming a has-been is Eminem’s main raw material now, the rocket-fuel for his rhetorical flights. He was a folk-devil 20 years ago, then a prescription drug-zombied recluse, then a huge comeback pop star. Extending that third act has been hobbled by social media sneers since the unfocused but often excellent Revival (2018), and a perception that he’s run out of road.

Servant, Apple TV+ review - shocks, shivers and black humour in missing-baby saga

M Night Shyamalan's drama is fascinating and confounding

The oeuvre of M Night Shyamalan has tended to veer between unsettling creepiness and sometimes hilarious misfires, but, working as Executive Producer with screenwriter Tony Basgallop, he’s hit the spot with this unnerving series for Apple TV +. Just back for its second season, Servant homes in on the fraught and freaky lives of Sean and Dorothy Turner.

One Night in Miami review - black history come alive

★★★ ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI Regina King's directorial debut about a momentous meeting

Regina King's directorial debut about a momentous meeting

In 1964, Cassius Clay, NFL superstar Jim Nathaniel Brown, soul legend Sam Cooke and political firebrand Malcolm X gathered for one night in a dingy room at the Hampton Motel. It was a meeting that became a symbol of hope for black Americans. A photo, taken by Malcolm X would make the moment iconic, marking a shift away from the horrors of Jim Crow America to the passing of the Civil Rights Act.