America
Nick Hasted
Ben Wheatley’s sixth film in a prolific, unpredictable career is a shoot-‘em-up in the most literal sense. Setting a superb international cast led by Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy down in a big, grim warehouse, he lets them blast bits off each other for 70 of Free Fire’s 90 minutes. After Wheatley’s most obviously ambitious film, his J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise, suggested narrative structure wasn’t always his and co-writer/editor Amy Jump’s strength, this locked-room massacre focuses his skills.The set-up is a gun deal gone wrong in 1978’s USA, a period high on lurid disco fashion and Read more ...
mark.kidel
The baby-boomers, we are told, postpone thoughts of mortality, workaholically keeping the image of the grim reaper at bay. The rock’n’rollers among them keep the teen spirit flowing, rebellious to the last, even though they are now the elders of the tribe, often stuck in old postures of revolt.Bob Dylan still rocks when playing live, but, no longer angry at the world, his heart is fixed on oldies’ music, as he meanders melancholically through the great American songbook: he is now on his fourth album (if you count the seasonal outing Christmas in the Heart from 2009) dedicated to songs made Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Residents' famous fusion of Fred Astaire’s most dapper top hat’n’tails look with a giant eyeball head is a masterpiece of surreal imagery. The subversive California outfit, who’ve been going for over 40 years, have regularly veered into other visual identities, but it’s their classic monocular showman who appears on the front of the latest album.However, if their image is well-known, The Residents’ music is less loved. Even alternative sorts tend to enjoy their conceptual direction more than the sounds. Much of The Residents’ appeal lies in their talent for anarchic satire and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Two Rode Together (1961) depicts the humanising of Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart), a corrupt, mercenary border town marshal, as it builds to a denunciation of white racism. John Ford, who made the film as a favour to Columbia Pictures (and for a $225,000 salary), considered it “crap”. Yet it was a key transitional work in his career – and the bridge between his late masterpieces The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). As such, the new Masters of Cinema dual format release is a must-own for Ford and Western fans.McCabe grudgingly accepts a commission from an army Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Seattle-based rockers Car Seat Headrest finally burst their cult bubble with their 13th album, last year’s Teens of Denial, which found veteran songwriter Will Toledo combining Nineties indie, post-punk nihilism and psychedelic vocal harmonies in a collection of sprawling lo-fi jams. Inside the sold out 1,100 capacity Electric Ballroom, expectations are subsequently set extremely high.The formidable TRAAMS are supporting Car Seat Headrest for their whole European tour, and as one of the most prolific bands in the south of England, they’ve become notable for their live performances. TRAAMS Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Dream or nightmare? Bay of Pigs, assassinations, Vietnam, space race, Cold War, civil rights, AIDS, legalised abortions, same-sex marriage, ups, downs and inside outs. From JFK to The Donald in just under 60 years, as seen in 200 prints in all kinds of techniques and sizes by several score American artists (although, shush, a handful are – shock, horror – immigrants).In The American Dream: Pop to the Present we are rushed through the isms from pop to agitprop, Conceptualism and Minimalism to figurative Expressionism and photorealism with a bow to geometric abstraction along the way Read more ...
Saskia Baron
From the opening shot of a distant train making its slow journey toward the camera across flat plains ringed by Montana’s mountains, the audience knows they’re in for one of those subtle, low-key American art films. Kelly Reichardt, who doesn’t just direct her movies but edits and writes them too, is the queen of the slow-burn 21st-century Western. Subtly feminist, she paints a portrait of women making their way in a male landscape, steeped in pioneer history and overshadowed by economic disappointment. Certain Women is adapted from three short stories by Marile Meloy, but it could have Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Theatre increasingly uses digital delights to enhance audience enjoyment. And you can easily see why. Visual effects that mimic the experience of plunging into virtual reality inject a much-needed wow factor into otherwise quite mundane stories. And if there are plenty of British companies who use such effects, currently it’s American playwrights, such as Jennifer Haley, who are leading the way in the art of the eye-popping visual. The latest arrival - at the National Theatre - is Lindsey Ferrentino’s play, Ugly Lies the Bone, which was first staged in New York a couple of years ago and now Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The X-Men films have frequently managed to bring a shot of ethical awareness and emotional engagement to the superhero party, but even so this swansong for Hugh Jackman’s Logan (aka Wolverine) is likely to take your breath away. With James Mangold at the helm as director and co-writer, this is a haunting elegy for times past, battles fought and comrades lost, as Logan finds himself grudgingly dragged out of a drink-sodden semi-retirement as a limo driver.Elsewhere in the Marvel and DC universes, they’re permanently upping the ante in terms of firepower, cities destroyed, and the number of Read more ...
Matt Wolf
There's something to be said for encountering a playwright fresh out of the starting gate. Since his debut play Speech & Debate premiered Off Broadway almost a decade ago, Stephen Karam has gone on to write two altogether wonderful plays, the most recent of which, The Humans, won last year's Tony. This fledgling effort isn't in that league but has its charms, and Tom Attenborough's defibrillator production further marks out the fast-rising Patsy Ferran as a talent busily making her own way towards the big time. Ferran's success in the play's pivotal part of Diwata is doubly notable Read more ...
Alison Cole
It may be a cliché to say that this is a “timely” exhibition, but America After the Fall invites irresistible parallels with Trump’s America of today. The exhibition showcases American painting of the 1930s, documenting the intense anxiety precipitated by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, the rise of Fascism in Europe, and the rapid social and economic changes brought about by mechanisation, industrialisation, immigration and mass urbanisation - and the hardships experienced by those left behind.On the one hand these paintings celebrate American rural values – hard, honest work and Read more ...
David Nice
Those of us who saw the first, 1977 TV adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots in our teens still remember the shock and horror at its handling of a subject about which we knew little, American slavery. We know a lot more now, but the visceral reaction to inhumanity and injustice is no less strong. That's thanks to the high production values of the latest version, its gift for finding the right actors, and the often giddying cinematography of an honourable mainstream parallel to a towering masterpiece among movies, 12 Years a Slave.Roots, originally commissioned by the History Channel, may be more Read more ...