Album: Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club

★★★ LANA DEL REY - CHEMTRAILS OVER THE COUNTRY CLUB More cinematic confessionals from Pop Art queen

More cinematic confessionals from Pop Art queen

Lana Del Rey has turned pop’s volume down, returning hushed intimacy to the music’s heart. Her collaborator Jack Antonoff was also heavily involved in Taylor Swift’s Folklore reinvention, but Del Rey’s idea of Americana remains very different.

Minari review - a Korean family searches for the American dream

★★★★ MINARI Lee Isaac Chung's uplifting, autobiographical fourth feature is a winner

Lee Isaac Chung's uplifting, autobiographical fourth feature is a winner

“David, don’t run,” is the refrain that runs through the first scenes of Lee Isaac Chung’s affecting, autobiographical Minari, acclaimed at Sundance, winner of a Golden Globe for best foreign language film (it’s mainly in Korean) and nominated for several Academy Awards.

Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separation

★★★ AUGUSTÍN FERNÁNDEZ MALLO: THE THINGS WE'VE SEEN Degrees of separation

The B-side of reality comes to the fore in this roving exploration of connection and isolation

Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in those works with elements “non-existent in reality”, which cover various themes “in the context of the supernatural, futuristic, and many other imaginative topics”. All of these apply in some sense to The Things We’ve Seen, the latest novel from Spanish writer Agustín Fernández Mallo.

Wander Darkly review - bold psychodrama falls short

★★ WANDER DARKLY Sienna Miller gives a strong performance, but it’s a weak story

Sienna Miller gives a strong performance but it’s a weak story and the tension is forced

Like the sun-happy LA of this film’s setting, there’s a hard-to-pinpoint sham quality to Wander Darkly. It feels like too much phoney dialogue crept in to the final script of this “serious” film by writer-director Tara Miele.

Blu-ray: Marlene Dietrich at Universal 1940-1942

★★★★ BLU-RAY: MARLENE DIETRICH AT UNIVERSAL 1940-1942 Four films displaying different aspects of the star

Four films that tested the star's durability with the American public

Her glory years as the muse of Josef von Sternberg long gone, Marlene Dietrich had been labelled “box-office poison” and was sulking on the French Riviera when the producer Joe Pasternak summoned her back to Hollywood to star opposite James Stewart in George Marshall's Destry Rides Again (1939). 

Moxie review - likeable if confused high school comedy

★★★ MOXIE Likeable if confused high school comedy

Amy Poehler's sophomore directing effort is both winning and wayward

A teen comedy with a thematic difference, Moxie has enough memorable moments to firmly establish comedian Amy Poehler as a director worth reckoning with in what is her second film, following Wine Country in 2019.

Judas and the Black Messiah review - powerful biopic

★★★★★ JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH Powerful biopic restores Civil Rights story

Well crafted biopic brings another key episode in America's civil rights history into the light

One of the sadnesses of covid is that films like Judas and the Black Messiah have been held over for release in the hope that cinemas will reopen. Immersive, intense features like this deserve to be seen in a darkened theatre with no distractions. But as the pandemic drags on in the UK, distributors are forced to debut big films on the small screen and it’s a real shame in this instance. 

To Olivia review - Keeley Hawes rises above brainless biopic

★★ TO OLIVIA Keeley Hawes rises above brainless biopic

Syrupy take on a tempestuous marriage

Sure, Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but is that any excuse for a film quite so saccharine? He of all challenging and complex men, with a temperament to match, seems an odd subject for the sort of weightless, paint-by-numbers biopic that would be hard-pressed to muster much attention even as TV filler on a particularly dead night.

Music review - a few music videos cobbled together

★ MUSIC Sia's film debut uses autism as a prop for shallow song and dance routines

Musician Sia’s film debut uses autism as a prop for shallow song and dance routines

What did Sia want to achieve with Music, her deeply confused first stumble into filmmaking? The reclusive Australian has enjoyed years of global fame for a successful music career. Was it never enough?

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.’”