Henry Hoke: Open Throat review - if a lion could speak

★★★ HENRY HOKE: OPEN THROAT If a lion could speak

Our treatment of animals and their environment comes under scrutiny in Hoke's daring fifth novel

I approached Henry Hoke’s fifth book, Open Throat, with some trepidation. A slim novel (156 pages), it seemed, at first glance, to be an over-intellectualised prose-cum-poetical text about a mountain lion.

Fatal Attraction, Paramount+ review - Adrian Lyne's bunny-boiler blockbuster expanded onwards and outwards

★★★★ FATAL ATTRACTION, PARAMOUNT+  A fascinating series trips over its own ambitions

A fascinating series which sometimes trips over its own ambitions

Directed by Adrian Lyne, Fatal Attraction was the biggest-grossing film of 1987, and gave the world the term “bunny boiler”. Lyne isn’t aboard for Paramount’s new eight-part series, but the film’s screenwriter James Dearden is a major script contributor alongside the show’s creators Kevin J Hynes and Alexandra Cunningham.

Marlowe review - Liam Neeson wearily treads those mean streets

★★★ MARLOWE Neil Jordan leans on threadbare noir pleasures, and his star's burnt-out private eye

Neil Jordan leans on threadbare noir pleasures, and his star's burnt-out private eye

Neil Jordan’s take on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is the first since Bob Rafelson’s Poodle Springs (1998), itself a lone outlier after Michael Winner’s misbegotten The Big Sleep (1978). No one seems to have considered why, or what they might add.

Album: Miley Cyrus - Endless Summer Vacation

★★★★ MILEY CYRUS - ENDLESS SUMMER VACATION The former child star finally in her own

The former child star has finally come into her own

Being a few years more marinated in life than Miley Cyrus, it’s taken me a while to come around to her music. From the periphery, I’ve traversed the annoyance of small folk watching Hannah Montana and the "Hoedown Throwdown", to the bemused horror of watching a young female talent be either so manufactured/exploited by a male-centric music industry or rebelling against it so hard without being safeguarded she seemed intent on implosion.

Creed III review - boxing clever

Rocky is left behind as the ring becomes a crucible for black masculinity

This third Creed film outgrows Rocky, leaving Stallone’s bridging presence behind for a wholly renewed series. Starring again as Adonis Creed, the illegitimate son of Rocky’s late rival Apollo, Michael B. Williams’ directorial debut builds a richly conceived African-American world in and out of the ring.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On review - small fry with a big heart

★★★★ MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON Small fry with a big heart

Charming animated tale of a bereft one-inch shell overdoes the sentiment

Marcel the Shell the Shoes On tells the story of a one-eyed little shell who lives with his grandmother Connie in a house that became an Airbnb after its former occupants divorced. The man inadvertently carried away Marcel’s extended family in a drawer when he left. Marcel pines for them, and he tugs at our heartstrings more relentlessly than should be allowed by a one-inch carapace animated by stop motion.

Album: Skrillex - Quest for Fire

A maturation of sorts, but still a barrage of sounds and ideas from LA megastar producer

Ageing boppers may bristle at the idea of a dance album where the average track length is three minutes. Yet this, Sonny “Skrillex” Moore’s first solo album since his debut nine years ago, is the most groove-based thing he’s done.

Marina Allen, Cafe Oto Review - east London substitutes for 1970s Los Angeles

An assured vision of music cuts across temporal barriers.

When Marina Allen’s second album Centrifics came out last autumn, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter said her voice was the only instrument on the record. She writes on guitar and piano but beyond what she sang, everything else was played by collaborators. Seeing her live might reveal how she saw the songs away from their studio setting – maybe getting close to how they were originally conceived.

Blu-ray: Reservoir Dogs

★ BLU-RAY: RESERVOIR DOGS Tarantino debut's sly technique and visceral violence still grip in 4K

Tarantino's debut's sly technique and visceral violence still grip in 4K

Quentin Tarantino’s is the first voice you hear in Reservoir Dogs (1992), riffing on Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. The gang of fellow robbers we see gathered round his character all talk like versions of the obsessive ex-video store clerk at times, rapping pop culture opinion and relishing pungent language.

Blu-ray: Something in the Dirt

BLU-RAY: SOMETHING IN THE DIRT Moorhead and Benson find cosmic conspiracies and fractured friendship in weird LA

Moorhead and Benson find cosmic conspiracies and fractured friendship in weird LA

Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson deal in the modern eerie and truly weird, placing relationships under supernatural pressure with unsettling empathy. Where genre-schooled peers such as Ti West and Adam Wingard splice post-slacker, naturalistic conversation with skin-flaying horror, Moorhead and Benson scare with cracks in reality, reflecting quietly broken protagonists.