Asteroid City review - desert dreams

★★★ ASTEROID CITY Scarlett Johansson leads Wes Anderson's latest

Scarlett Johansson leads Wes Anderson's latest, a Fifties-set mixture of fetish and feeling

Multi-media meta-layers land fast in Wes Anderson’s 11th film, overriding reality. Here’s Bryan Cranston’s portentous Fifties TV host (pictured below) in black-and-white, boxed Academy ratio, documenting rehearsals for a televised play, whose fictive reality then becomes a widescreen colour train hurtling through the desert. The latter scene's exhilarating cinema still sweeps you up.

Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis, Hayward Gallery review - hope is what we need, but inspiration is a rarity

★★★ DEAR EARTH: ART AND HOPE IN A TIME OF CRISIS, HAYWARD GALLERY  Making good art about climate change proves difficult

Making good art about climate change proves difficult

Dear Earth, Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis is a mixed show of artists who address the parlous plight of our planet. The issue obsesses me, so anyone who braves the pitfalls of exploring this difficult subject has my sympathy.

The Flash review - back to DC, unremarkably

★★ THE FLASH Troubled star Ezra Miller in a troubled DC Comics world

Troubled star Ezra Miller in a troubled DC Comics world

Superhero movies are the nearest equivalent to American holiday parades: they come along with noisy, bright regularity, and crowds either flock to them, many eager persons deep along the sidewalk, or flee to quieter neighbourhoods.

Groundhog Day, Old Vic review - Tim Minchin’s musical returns in full-on style

★★★★ GROUNDHOG DAY, OLD VIC Tim Minchin’s musical returns in full-on style

A bravura turn from Andy Karl propels a tricky piece over its self-created speed bumps

Groundhog Day, appropriately, is back where it started. The hit film about a TV weatherman’s endlessly reiterated day in small-town USA moved to the Old Vic stage in 2016; but then its progress became bumpy, despite the awards showered on it and its lead, Andy Karl, on both sides of the Atlantic. Karl was injured during a Broadway preview and the show's US tour didn't happen.

War Pony review - life on the Pine Ridge reservation in south Dakota

★★★★ WAR PONY Life on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota

Riley Keough and Gina Gammell's impressive directorial debut, written in collaboration with two Native Americans

Set on the lands of the Oglala Lakota in South Dakota, War Pony focuses, in a hazy way, on the lives of 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), who has two toddler sons with two different mothers, and 12-year-old Matho (Ladainian Crazy Thunder) who seems to have no mother at all. Both are struggling to get by. Drugs, violence and chaos rule on the Pine Ridge reservation. The women are mainly exasperated with the men. A poodle called Beast also plays an important role.

Album: Foo Fighters - But Here We Are

The pre-eminent stadium rockers' poignant and heart-wrenching latest is coloured deeply by their loss and grief

In 1995 Dave Grohl returned with a new project and album, called Foo Fighters, following the death of Nirvana band-mate and close friend Kurt Cobain. Given his close connection with Kurt, and his avoidance of the media spotlight, this new album was pored over by many for any reference to Cobain or Nirvana.

Reality review - Sydney Sweeney excels as a whistleblower

★★★★ REALITY Chilling docudrama re-creates Reality Winner's interrogation by FBI agents

Chilling docudrama re-creates Reality Winner's interrogation by FBI agents at her suburban home

The actress Sydney Sweeney’s face in the harrowing docudrama Reality is an ever-evolving map, its contours and pallor altering as it gradually dawns on her character, the real-life American whistleblower Reality Winner, that her conscience has put paid to her freedom for the forseeable future.

Master Gardener review - a Paul Schrader perennial

The auteur's latest masculine investigation dissects a haunted horticulturalist

Gardener Narvel (Joel Edgerton) sniffs soil the way Blue Velvet’s Frank inhaled gas, finding erasure and release. Following Ethan Hawke’s priest in First Reformed (2017) and Oscar Isaac’s titular job in The Card Counter (2021), Paul Schrader’s latest driven protagonist verges on absurd, finding solace in pruning before deploying his secateurs with a prior, particular set of skills.

Hypnotic review - a riotously enjoyable thriller

★★★★★ HYPNOTIC Ben Affleck stars in Robert Rodriguez's cunning brain-twister

Ben Affleck stars in Robert Rodriguez's cunning brain-twister

Masterminded by writer-director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids etc), Hypnotic is a speedy, twisty, riotously enjoyable thriller that seeks to bend your mind into impossible shapes while also delivering more than a few droll wisecracks. Ben Affleck, seemingly reinvigorated as half of  "Bennifer 2", is bang on the money here as Austin PD detective Danny Rourke.