| | | Here Today review – Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish smile through tears in dementia dramedy | | by Peter Bradshaw Sep 2, 2021 | | Crystal directs and stars in this oppressively sentimental film about a TV writer coming to terms with his condition with the help of an unlikely new best friend Billy Crystal directs and stars in this oppressively sentimental dramedy: a glutinous soup of heartbreaking and heartwarming life-lessons, learned as you smile through your tears. Crystal also co-writes with his longtime collaborator, SNL veteran Alan Zweibel, on whose short story The Prize it is based. Crystal plays Charlie Burns, an ageing New York comedy writer and widower. Charlie created Broadway hits and Hollywood screenplays in his day (some cameos here from Kevin Kline and Sharon Stone), and he is still working on a late-night TV comedy show, though regarded as a dinosaur by the younger writers. Tiffany Haddish plays Emma, a woman who wins lunch with Charlie at a charity auction. Despite her having zero in common with the old guy, there is an intergenerational spark and they develop an odd-couple friendship. Charlie finds that Emma is the only person to whom he can confide his awful secret: he has dementia and the symptoms are getting worse. Continue reading... | | | | | Drake's 30 greatest songs – ranked! | | by Ben Beaumont-Thomas Sep 2, 2021 | | With the release of a new album – Certified Lover Boy – we pick the best tracks from the Canadian rapper and global superstar’s hit-studded career Borne aloft on a blaze of horns and flanked by three all-time greats, this was Drake’s entry to rap’s big leagues: “Last name ever / first name greatest”, is how he opens his verse. It’s a rather corny boast and gets cornier still – punchlines like “at the club you know I balled: chemo” could be included in Christmas crackers, were they not deeply insensitive. But his cockiness connects, and the chorus hook is memorably strong. Continue reading... | | | | | Little Simz: Sometimes I Might Be Introvert review – rich, vital rap | | by Rachel Aroesti Sep 2, 2021 | | (Age 101)
Intensely creative as she discusses race, womanhood and family – and with a cameo from Emma Corrin – Simz’s fourth album feels totally alive Little Simz’s lack of mainstream stardom can appear baffling. The 27-year-old’s inventive rap music has been critically lauded, garlanded with prizes (she has an Ivor Novello, an NME award and a Mercury nomination) and in receipt of much press attention, but her sales figures have never matched up. While peers Stormzy, Dave, J Hus and Headie One have all topped the charts, Simz’s brilliant third record Grey Area only reached No 87. The depressing and stubborn reality is that commercially successful British female rappers remain rare. Continue reading... | | | | | Janine Jansen: Falling for Stradivari review – violin virtuoso on a mission | | by Peter Bradshaw Sep 2, 2021 | | This absorbing documentary follows the brilliant Dutch violinist as she attempts to record an album with 12 of the most exquisite Stradivarius violins in existence There’s such intelligence and connoisseurship in this documentary about the Dutch violin virtuoso Janine Jansen and her recent mission to record an album with 12 of the most exquisite Stradivarius violins in existence – that is, violins made by the great Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), of which perhaps around 500 are now extant. The 12 that Jansen records with are a veritable European Super League of Strads, and the film absorbingly tells us about the great musicians who used to own them. It’s impossible not to be overwhelmed by Jansen’s mastery of her instrument, and the fineness and the delicacy of her response to each Stradivarius; from each she conjures vivid stabs and blocks and twines of sound. (I notice that some of the English musicians she speaks to have that distinctive, eccentric high-classical mannerism of calling these precious violins “fiddles”.) Jansen is a rather remarkable personality; brilliant but entirely without what the English used to call “side”: she is completely candid, open and unpretentious, no false modesty, no false anything. Continue reading... | | | | | Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney review – the problem of success | | by Anne Enright Sep 2, 2021 | | How do you follow two brilliantly acclaimed novels? Rooney examines meaning, art, friendship and the price of fame through the story of two couples There has been such a lot of noise around Sally Rooney’s work, such an amount of fervour and possibly manufactured division. “The cult of Sally Rooney,” says one headline. “Why do so many people hate Sally Rooney?” asks another. The discussion cannot be about the quality of her sentences, which are impeccable, or about her tone, which is thoughtful, often sweet-minded and always rigorous. This is prose you either get or don’t get; for some it is incisive, for others banal. Which makes me wonder if it is so clean, it reflects the readers’ prejudices right back at them. Rooney is certainly interested in accuracy: her first two novels managed to be sexually exact without being smutty, and this is an interesting trick. In its repudiation of shame, the style represents an advance of some kind, and it may be this autonomy that irritates those notional critics who are notionally male and notionally misogynistic. Also – and this really does annoy some people – Rooney writes about love. Continue reading... | | | | | Wildfire review – potent Irish drama about the legacy of violence | | by Peter Bradshaw Sep 2, 2021 | | Cathy Brady’s disquieting film about a mysterious return has an extra layer of melancholy, because it features the last performance by the late Nika McGuigan Two fiercely committed performances are the bedrock of this drama from writer-director Cathy Brady. Nora-Jane Noone plays Lauren, who lives near the Northern Irish border with her partner, and works in a vast Amazon-style fulfilment centre; and Nika McGuigan (from RTÉ’s TV comedy Can’t Cope Won’t Cope) plays her troubled sister Kelly, returning home after a mysterious yearlong absence. This tense reunion revives painful memories of their mother, who took her own life when they were both children. Yet Kelly’s homecoming also appears to relight the wildfire in the hearts of both women, as they challenge the menfolk thereabouts who are still in hock to the macho cult of terrorist violence. This sombre film has an extra shadow of sadness because it marks the final performance of McGuigan, who died of cancer in 2019 at the age of 33. There are powerful moments and surreally disquieting images in Wildfire, which incidentally reminded me in some ways of Pat Murphy’s classic Northern Ireland drama Maeve from 1981, also about a young woman returning home to make a reckoning with the past. I especially liked the strange tableau of Lauren and Kelly in the pub dancing wildly to Van Morrison’s Gloria on the jukebox and then finally stopping exhausted, as if emerging from a dream, to see a bunch of faintly sinister middle-aged guys glowering at them resentfully from the bar. Continue reading... | | | | | Unending horizons: water, air and light – in pictures | | by Guardian Staff Sep 2, 2021 | | Seascapes is a series of photographs made by Paul Rousteau while artist-in-residence on a boat in Australia’s Coral Sea. Inspired by the beauty around him, Rousteau took to the darkroom to invent images of his own to bring out the barest constituent elements of the landscape Continue reading... | | | | | 'There's a lot to unpack': the dark, difficult life of Rick James | | by JIM FARBER Sep 2, 2021 | | In a new documentary, the defining funk artist’s ups and many downs are examined with a clear eye and a lack of sugar-coating In the jarring new music documentary, Bitchin: The Sound and Fury of Rick James, we see a star torn in half. On the one hand, there’s the Rick James who created some of the most popular, distinct and outrageous funk music of the late 70s and early 80s. On the other, there’s a man so lost to his desire for sex, drugs and recognition that his life became an obstacle course laced with landmines. “Rick set up a situation where it would be tough not to have a bad outcome,” said the film’s director, Sacha Jenkins. “It could not have been easy to be Rick James.” Related: ‘Like a horror film’: revisiting the Fyre-esque disaster of Woodstock 99 Continue reading... | | | | | Misha and the Wolves review – Holocaust hoax doc plays like thriller | | by Cath Clarke Sep 2, 2021 | | This film about Misha Defonseca, author of a ‘memoir’ about escaping the Nazis and sheltering with wolves as a child, is propulsively watchable “Sometimes a story is so astonishing it’s unbelievable.” So said a Massachusetts radio presenter in the 90s, introducing Misha Defonseca, a local Jewish woman originally from Belgium. As a child in the war, Defonseca walked hundreds of miles across Nazi-occupied Germany to find her parents. She was one of Belgium’s “hidden children”, taken in by a Catholic family, her identity erased. In her internationally bestselling memoir she described how, cold and hungry, she was sheltered by a pack of wolves. Disney wanted to turn it into a film. Oprah Winfrey’s book club was interested. The thing is: Defonseca was a fake. Never mind a pack of wolves, her whole memoir was a pack of lies; a hoax Holocaust narrative. This documentary assembles the story like a thriller, interviewing the key players, keeping the audience guessing about certain important details until the end. It’s propulsively watchable if a tad light on reflection. And you may feel hoodwinked by one late reveal. Continue reading... | | | | | The Inseparables – read an extract from the newly discovered novel by Simone de Beauvoir | | by Simone de Beauvoir Sep 2, 2021 | | Written 75 years ago but deemed ‘too intimate’ to publish in her lifetime, this exclusive extract from a lost novel by the author of The Second Sex, translated by Lauren Elkin, is based on the ‘passionate and tragic’ friendship she had as a girl with Elisabeth ‘Zaza’ Lacoin When I was nine years old I was a good little girl, though this hadn’t always been the case. As a small child the adults’ tyranny caused me to throw such tantrums that one of my aunts declared, quite seriously: “Sylvie is possessed by a demon.” War and religion tamed me. Right away I demonstrated perfect patriotism by stomping all over my doll because she was made in Germany, though I didn’t really care for her to begin with. I was taught that God would only protect France if I were obedient and pious: there was no escaping it. The other girls and I would walk through the basilica of Sacré-Cœur, waving banners and singing. I began to pray frequently, and I developed a real taste for it. Abbé Dominique, the chaplain at the Collège Adelaïde where we went to school, encouraged my ardour. Dressed all in tulle, with a bonnet made of Irish lace, I made my First Communion, and from that day forward, I set a perfect example for my little sisters. Heaven heard my prayers, and my father was appointed to a desk job at the Ministry of War because of his heart trouble. Related: Lauren Elkin: ‘I felt like I was in De Beauvoir’s body’ Continue reading... | | | | | | | Reservation Dogs: a groundbreaking, hilarious sitcom about Native American teens | | by Adrian Horton Sep 2, 2021 | | The dark comedy from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi set in rural Oklahoma is a watershed for indigenous representation The second episode of Reservation Dogs, FX’s mirthful dark comedy about a ragtag group of indigenous teens in rural Oklahoma, takes place almost entirely at a clinic run by the Indian Health Service. According to the general operating logic of the scant film and television portrayals of Native Americans to date – and there are few – the scenes inside should be dire, either chock full of thinly sketched stereotypes or a portrait of misery. Reservation Dogs, created by the Seminole and Muskogee film-maker Sterlin Harjo and Hollywood jack-of-all-trades Taika Waititi, does neither. Instead, the “NDN Clinic” episode, directed by Navajo film-maker Sydney Freeland, wrings humor out of mundane dysfunction and too-human send-ups of Hollywood’s most consistent Native American tropes (the medicine man, the stoic warrior). Continue reading... | | | | | | | |
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