Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain review - revelations of a weird and wonderful world

★★★★ ITHELL COLQUHOUN, TATE BRITAIN Revelations of a weird and wonderful world

Emanations from the unconscious

Tate Britain is currently offering two exhibitions for the price of one. Other than being on the same bill, Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun having nothing in common other than being born a year apart and being oddballs – in very different ways. And since both reward focused attention, this makes for a rather exhausting outing – I’m reviewing them separately – so gird your loins.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review - a modest, well-meant return

★★★ GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE A modest, well-meant return

Comic juice runs low for the stretched '80s franchise, which settles for amiable warmth

Who you going to call? Five films into the Ghostbusters franchise, every persuadable survivor from the ’84 original, plus the ad hoc, Paul Rudd-led Spengler clan introduced in the series-reviving Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). The low-key, humane, borderline dull result bears little tonal relation to that bombastic founding film.

Here, Southwark Playhouse review - award-winning kitchen sink drama goes down the drain

★ HERE, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Characters drown in a surfeit of issues

The prestige of the Papatango Prize cannot rescue a play that fails to transcend its inexplicable limitations

The kitchen sink drama has been a standby of English theatre for 70 years or more, but not always with an actual sink on stage. But there it is, in an everyday home that harbours a secret or two in Clive Judd’s debut play, the winner of the 2022 Papatango New Writing Prize. 

Album: Hercules & Love Affair - In Amber

★★★★★ HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR - IN AMBER NYC dance maven goes fully goth

NYC dance maven goes fully goth with stunning results

A gothic aesthetic is very common in the left field of electronic/club music these days – but it tends to go with fairly extreme sounds: either industrial pummelling, or glitched-out “deconstructed club” as in artists like Ziúr.

Courttia Newland: A River Called Time review - an ethereality check

★★★★★ COURTTIA NEWLAND: A RIVER CALLED TIME Picturing a world without the legacies of colonialism and slavery

Picturing a world without the legacies of colonialism and slavery

It is near impossible to imagine what the world would look like today if slavery and colonialism had never existed, let alone to write a book on the subject. Courttia Newland sets himself this daunting task in his latest novel, A River Called Time.

Krabi, 2562 review - a trance-like visitation

★★★★ KRABI, 2562 Documentary and fiction combine in an unusual guided tour

Documentary and fiction combine in an unusual guided tour

Have you ever visited a destination you saw on film, only to realise it’s not quite how you imagined? Filled with tourists, the scars of mass visitation, and caught between its own culture and staying commercially attractive. The Thai city of Krabi is one such location, made famous by such films as The Beach and The Man with a Golden Gun. New release Krabi, 2562, from festival favourite directors Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers, tackles these issues.

Suspiria review - kindly, slow-motion grand guignol

★★★★ SUSPIRIA Horror shocker remade with heartfelt emotion

Horror shocker remade with heartfelt emotion

The first Suspiria was a sensation, and spectacularly, monomaniacally new. Its young heroine Susie Bannon’s ride from an innately hostile airport through eldritch woods in which a panicked girl ran from her destination, the Markos Academy of Dance, as Goblin’s rock score gibbered and pounded at the senses, was hysterical, relentless film-making.