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| | | Julia Roberts's 20 best films – ranked! | | by Anne Billson Sep 1, 2022 | | Ahead of the release of Ticket to Paradise, a romcom co-starring George Clooney, we rate the Pretty Woman’s finest work, from Steel Magnolias to My Best Friend’s Wedding Julia Roberts got flak for her Irish accent (an Irish friend says “she gets away with kinda sorta sounding a bit Irish-ish”), but it’s not her fault this housemaid’s-eye view of the Jekyll and Hyde story is a dud. I blame dreary directing by Stephen Frears and John Malkovich’s monotonous performance as the two-faced doctor. Continue reading... | | | | | Yungblud: Yungblud review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week | | by Alexis Petridis Sep 1, 2022 | | (Locomotion/Polydor Records)
With his second album, the rising pop-punk star shoots for the mainstream yet remains a staunch defender of the disaffected Dominic “Yungblud” Harrison famously gives good interview. He talks passionately about hot-button issues: gender fluidity, transgender rights, mental health. He peppers his conversation with attention-grabbing, self-aggrandising soundbites: “I’m everything that people hate.” “I’m more of a preacher than I am a musician.” “I am a vehicle for other people’s expression.” He admonishes “BBC Radio 6 Music dads”, and hymns his fans as “an army based on a foundation of truth and need and trauma”. Among his most striking pronouncements was something he said to the Guardian in 2020: “If you know Yungblud” – Harrison has a habit of referring to his onstage persona in the third person – “the music is secondary.” It was a comment that Harrison’s detractors, whose number and vociferousness is perhaps an unavoidable consequence of saying things such as: “I’m more of a preacher than I am a musician” whenever a journalist is in earshot, leapt on with relish. Formerly an actor in Disney teen drama, The Lodge, Harrison has long been dogged by questions about his legitimacy as an avatar of punky rebellion. But you could take it as a frank assessment of pop success in an age in which social media engagement is deemed of paramount importance, or an admission that his fans, who call themselves the Black Hearts Club, are as attracted to him because of how he looks and what he says as much as how he sounds – which, as an analysis of how pop fandom works, seems fair enough. Continue reading... | | | | | The Kingdom: Exodus review – return of Lars von Trier's cult hospital horror | | by Xan Brooks Sep 1, 2022 | | Five-part miniseries, premiering at Venice film festival, fuses fear and soap opera with satisfying wildness and weirdness The Kingdom is a gargantuan hospital in downtown Copenhagen, the sort of institution you only visit if you work there or if you have to. There is a forlorn Christmas tree in the lobby, a one-legged goblin in the lift and a pigeon trapped in the revolving doors. The building (all 16 storeys of it) is a temple to modernity and showcases the best of 21st-century medical science. But it is built on a swamp, the site of the old bleaching pools and the ghost of the dead appear to outnumber the living. The pigeon, on balance, is one of the luckier inmates. It at least has a slender chance of escape. “I can see that most of you have been here before,” quips Dr Pontopidan (Lars Mikkelsen) at the lectern – and although he’s addressing the guests at the establishment’s annual Pain Congress he may also be nodding to the audience at this year’s Venice film festival. That’s because Lars von Trier’s five-part miniseries The Kingdom Exodus marks the director’s belated return to the scene of his classic 90s TV drama, a hospital saga which folded the soap opera in with the horror story to devilish good effect. If the old black magic isn’t as potent this time around, The Kingdom: Exodus contains enough wildness and weirdness to satisfy the fanbase. Watching it is a little like the inpatient experience itself: acres of dead time, sudden dumps of head-spinning information, plus a constant, gnawing sense of dread. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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