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EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

LSO/Frang/Pappano review – tragic and thrilling Shostakovich and silky and spiky Korngold

Barbican Hall, London Vilde Frang revealed the expressionistic bones of Korngold’s Violin Concerto in her performance of this 1945 work, part of a concert that included Imogen Holst’s Persephone and a drama-filled reading of Shostakovich’s 5th Persephone, which Imogen Holst wrote as a student in 1929, starts off sounding so familiar that you might think you have wandered into a concert of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé by mistake. But so what? The music that follows that opening passage of suspiciou…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

‘Packaging evil into something funny’: is making fun of Trump now just ‘clownwashing’?

As the president’s second term has wrought new horrors, comedians reflect on whether humor can still ‘deflate the strongman’s image’ During Donald Trump’s first term, as his lies distorted reality and gaslighted Americans, Stephen Colbert said his goal was to remind his audience: “Hey, you’re not crazy.” But watching political comedy during Trump’s second term – be it a deranged Saturday Night Live impression of a cabinet member, or a rapid-fire late-night monologue full of ICE jokes – it’s har…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Andy Kershaw obituary

Broadcaster who brought world music to a mainstream audience on BBC Radio 1 and travelled widely to report on conflict and the cultures that fascinated him Andy Kershaw, who has died aged 66 after undergoing treatment for cancer, made his name as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 by bringing world music to a wide audience, and established himself as a journalist reporting for radio on wars and horrors in far-flung places. “I think initially Radio 1 wanted another [John] Peel,” he told the Independent in 2012…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Asif Kapadia to direct 70 Up, last chapter of influential ITV documentary series

Film-maker says it is ‘incredible honour’ to pick up baton from Michael Apted who died in 2021 Asif Kapadia will bring the long-running ITV documentary series Up to an end with a concluding instalment that will air this year. The series, which began in 1964 and was voted the most influential UK TV show of the last 50 years in 2024, has followed a group of people from childhood to adulthood at seven-year intervals and now checks in on them as they approach old age. Continue reading...

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Sean Shibe: Vesper album review – ever-imaginative guitar virtuoso brings mind-expanding flights of fancy

(Pentatone) This thoughtfully curated programme of work by three British composers explores the guitar’s expressive potential, and new arrangements of Harrison Birtwistle’s piano originals are a revelation On his new album, Sean Shibe surveys the guitar’s expressive potential through the lens of three British composers. There are interlocking themes here – Spain, 20th-century painters, antique musical forms – but this thoughtfully curated programme can be equally enjoyed piece by piece as a ser…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The Flying Dutchman review – delusion, torment and menace in detailed and finely sung Wagner

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Jack Furness’s unconventional staging for Welsh National Opera sees the orchestra play up a storm under Tomáš Hanus in Wagner’s legend of the man condemned to sail the oceans for eternity In 1839 the 26-year-old Richard Wagner almost drowned during a perilous voyage across the Baltic from Riga. It was this experience that he claimed inspired The Flying Dutchman, the legend of the man condemned for eternity to sail the oceans in his ghost ship gave him the narrat…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Racheal Crowther review – unnerving installation attacks your mind … and your nostrils!

Chisenhale Gallery, London The Irish artist scrambles your brain by cleverly combining calming pastel pinks with austere military health units and suffocating smells The Chisenhale Gallery smells weirdly sweet. Somewhere between butter and Parma Violets, but more acrid, intensely chemical. It’s an olfactory assault, half soothing and familiar, half violent and unnatural. That’s the strange, unsettling middle ground that young London-based artist Racheal Crowther likes to inhabit. Just look at w…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

‘We don’t just point at scallops. It’s full on!’ Grace Dent and Anna Haugh take over Masterchef

It has long been soured by scandal, but MasterChef is back with new judges – and they don’t want anyone to have a bad time. Grace Dent and Anna Haugh talk about eating like T rexes and why they don’t think about the show’s past Grace Dent grew up with MasterChef. She and her dad would watch it together at home in Carlisle. “We used to laugh our heads off at the critics,” she says. “Just utterly ridiculous people, with their overblown egos, thinking their opinions on food matter. Who are these p…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The man who saw the future: the legacy of cultural theorist Mark Fisher

Touching on everything from late-stage capitalism to Adele, the work of the late writer is proving increasingly influential. Now a documentary on him is looking to live up to his ideals Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? was published in 2009 to critical silence. Journalists and academics initially dismissed Mark Fisher’s book, ignoring the cultural theorist’s requests for coverage and interviews, and even the then owner of his publisher, Zer0 Books, lamented that it was unmarketable.…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Keeper by Tana French; The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman; Mrs Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung; A Killer in the Family by Amin Ahmad; The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary The Keeper by Tana French (Viking, £16.99) The final book in French’s Cal Hooper trilogy sees the retired Chicago detective drawn into a power struggle for the future of the small Irish town he has made his home. Ardnakelty is a place where everyone is interconnected, with grudges and loyalties lasting for generations…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Add to playlist: the sweaty, unvarnished electropop of Punchbag and the week’s best new tracks

The sibling duo’s follow-up EP spikes their off-kilter pop with new darkness, adding atmospheric balladry to their glorious racket From South London Recommended if you like Charli xcx, Confidence Man, Klaxons Up next UK tour starts 21 April If this was April 2008, Punchbag, AKA south London siblings Clara and Anders Bach, would be headlining an NME tour alongside Alphabeat and Frankmusik, while the Popjustice forum would have hailed them as the new face of “wonky pop”. The sonic calling cards o…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Huw Fyw review – take a sentimental journey around a war veteran’s living room

Dance House, Cardiff Tudur Owen’s Welsh-language play about a second world war veteran is unashamedly heartfelt and anchored by very fine performances This play by Tudur Owen tells the story of a curmudgeonly second world war veteran, an unexpected windfall, a clogged toilet and an entire Welsh village’s trip to London in 1994. It has the air of a fable that veers into more anguished terrain. PTSD, generational trauma, social exclusion and the weight of irreconcilable grief are never far from t…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Petal passion, super-surreal Polaroids and Billy Childish’s California – the week in art

Expertly curated flower paintings, the garage-rock star’s hazy expressionism and a masterpiece from a Morrisons receipt – all in your weekly dispatch Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today Jim and Helen Ede, founders of Kettle’s Yard, cared almost as much about the fresh cut flowers in their gallery as the art. This show looks at artists who share that floral passion, from Henri Rousseau to Lubaina Himid. • Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 25 April to 6 September Continue reading...

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Give theatre choreographers and movement directors their own awards, says union group

‘If we celebrate the impact of physical storytelling, we must acknowledge the artists behind it,’ says Equity body, calling out the lack of movement categories in major awards Choreographers and movement directors in theatre are undervalued by awards ceremonies and deserve greater acknowledgment, says the Equity group representing both disciplines. At last weekend’s Oliviers ceremony, the award for best theatre choreographer went to Fabian Aloise for Evita at the London Palladium. In a statemen…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Olivia Rodrigo: Drop Dead review – a maximalist rush of infatuation that’s just a bauble short of festive

(Geffen) On this giddy first taste of the US pop star’s third album, she sets aside her rock bona fides to revel in the opulent flush of a crush-come-true. But why does it seem so doomed? Is there anything better than an ink-fresh pop lyric so nailed-on that you can’t believe 60 years of songwriters didn’t get there first? Or like, at least 20, ever since Googling crushes became an entirely normal component of modern romance: “One night I was bored in bed / And stalked you on the internet,” Oli…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Couture review – Angelina Jolie’s courageously personal turn adds depth to fashion-world drama

Jolie has star power as an American film-maker who gets diagnosed with breast cancer while filming in a blandly drawn Paris fashion show As this film’s producer-star, Angelina Jolie shows honesty and courage in tackling a story that so closely mirrors her own experience of having a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer. But sadly, the film itself feels specious and shallow, insisting with bland and weirdly humourless confidence on the glamorous importance of the fashion world in which it i…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Lucy Liyou: Mr Cobra review – an arresting trip through the volatile emotions of a predatory relationship

(Orange Milk) The Korean American musician explores the unease and alarm of power imbalance using skittish melodies, nursery rhymes – and an unexpected Taylor Swift sample Mr Cobra opens with Korean American experimental musician Lucy Liyou’s central character, Babygirl, eerily beckoning her lover while piano shrapnel assaults a barren canvas. Over the course of the record, Liyou’s textures swell and dissipate, swerving into disco cuts and a Taylor Swift skit, then collapsing into farmyard soun…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Various artists: Asili ya Mama review – Tanzanian field recordings tell women’s stories with an energetic trill

(Hukwe Zawose Foundation) These stories of family bonds capture traditional music that’s equal parts rhythmic, melodic and harmonic, and rarely heard outside Indigenous communities Folk song collecting by women has an illustrious history, but also an exciting present, as this set of 10 energetic Tanzanian field recordings demonstrates. Put together by documentarian Ruth Ndeto and musician Msafiri Zawose (brother of Pendo from the brilliant Zawose Queens, and son of the late folk pioneer Hukwe),…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

A Gorilla Story: Told By David Attenborough review – like one of our last meetings with an adored relative

The naturalist revisits the family of apes he had a goosebump-inducingly famous encounter with 50 years ago. You’ll find yourself overcome with awe The most famous sequence in all of wildlife film-making happened 48 years ago. During the filming of Life on Earth – the groundbreaking BBC show that set the blueprint of nature programming as we know it today – David Attenborough crept through the forests of Rwanda, and unexpectedly found himself being playfully set upon by a family of gorillas. As…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

I’ll make up a whopper you can’t refuse! Why do we love to believe cinema’s best lines were improvised?

From The Godfather to Saltburn, the internet is awash with claims that actors are ditching the script and making it up as they go along. What’s behind our desire to invest in these behind-the-scenes ‘secrets’? Fun fact: in the history of cinema, there has never been a single script. It is a pervasive myth that film-making requires “screenplays” – in fact, most scenes are made up on the spot. Performers simply do whatever comes to mind and hope the camera is perfectly positioned to capture it; t…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Christine Baranski to make West End debut alongside Richard E Grant in Hay Fever

Tony award-winning actor will play lead role of Judith Bliss in Noël Coward’s comedy at Wyndham’s theatre in London Christine Baranski is to make her West End debut alongside Richard E Grant in a revival of Noël Coward’s comedy Hay Fever. The US star, known for her TV roles in The Good Fight and The Gilded Age, says she is looking forward to “tearing a passion to tatters” in the 1925 play about a family toying with their guests at a country house party. She will star as the newly retired actor…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The Dog’s Gaze by Thomas Laqueur review – the art of the canine, from Velázquez to Picasso

A clever and beautiful survey of dogs in painting, with a brilliant interpretation of their role at its heart Thirty-five thousand years ago, in the Ardèche region of France, Paleolithic artists drew a spectacular bestiary on the walls of the Chauvet cave. Their focus was apex predators, so there were lots of lions, as well as mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. Dogs were nowhere to be seen, and yet in the soft sediment on the limestone floor of the cave, there are traces of canid pawprints next…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The Plague review – water polo camp turns into tween hellscape with impressive stylistic bite

With Fincher-like intent, director Charlie Polinger scopes out concealed psychological depths in a debut that sees the laws of the jungle play out Set at a boy’s water polo training camp in the summer of 2003, Charlie Polinger’s debut feature plunges beneath the waterline to scope out concealed psychological depths. It may not be news that these kids operate in a brutal, animal-like hierarchy driven by braggadocio, bullying, hazing and gaslighting – but from the stunning initial submerged shot…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Sony world photography awards 2026 – in pictures

The Sony world photography awards announce the four overall winners of the 2026 competitions: professional, open, student and youth. Citlali Fabián receives the prestigious photographer of the year title, and 10 category winners for the professional competition are announced, whilst Joel Meyerowitz is honoured as 2026 outstanding contribution to photography recipient Exhibition at Somerset House, London from 17 April - 4 May 2026 Continue reading...

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

TV tonight: the final series of Hacks and death-defying Deborah

Debs is back from the dead and out for glory. Plus: Lenny Henry faces a tough grilling from the Assembly crew. Here’s what to watch this evening 9pm, Sky Atlantic To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Deborah’s death have been greatly exaggerated (“TMZ got a bad tip”), as the fifth and final season begins. Determined to “shift the narrative”, she works on bagging a Grammy and an Oscar in this opening double bill. Will her “Mexican music album” strategy succeed? And could her autograph signing se…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Avenue Q review – provocative puppets return for a feast of filth and fun

Shaftesbury theatre, London Twenty years since its West End debut, the sweetly subversive musical returns with a few tweaks and a lot of heart The trigger warning “puppet nudity” does not begin to cover it. You will also see puppets having sex, singing about being “a little bit racist” and gleefully owning up to their predilections for porn. Avenue Q’s cute subversiveness is back, 20 years after these fuzzy-felt Sesame Street wannabes took the West End by storm. Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s Ton…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Big Mood season two review – Nicola Coughlan’s hugely ambitious comedy has become a farce

The first series’s insightful look at bipolar disorder is gone. For its second outing, it’s a knockabout tale of a relationship gone wrong – which isn’t always easy to buy into The second part of the title of Camilla Whitehill’s Channel 4 comedy drama is a reference to mood disorders. Bipolar, to be exact – the condition her protagonist Maggie has been diagnosed with. The first part is a reference to pretty much everything else. Big Mood tackles big topics and chases big laughs. There are big a…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Like a concrete aircraft carrier: was LA’s giant new $724m gallery really worth all the carbon emissions?

Built on tar swamps and two tortuous decades in the making, Lacma’s latest addition used twice as much metal as the Eiffel Tower. How did America supersize revered architect Peter Zumthor? Driving down the palm-lined strip of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, a striking new crossing heaves into view. A ribbon of glass leaps over the road, sandwiched between two gigantic planes of concrete. As you get closer, the bridge swells out in sinuous arcs, swooping back on itself to inscribe an amoebic,…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Pooh in pencil: sketches for original Winnie-the-Pooh book shared for first time

E H Shepard drawings go on display for book’s centenary, showing how he brought AA Milne’s character to life Previously unseen drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh that show the honey-loving bear before he was introduced to generations of readers in the 1926 book have come to light. Two preliminary pencil sketches by E H Shepard have been shared for the first time by his family to mark the centenary of one of the most loved books in children’s literature. Continue reading...

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Phil Ellis: Bath Mat review – Taskmaster goof celebrates his midlife failures

The Stand Comedy Club, Glasgow The northerner finds the funny in banalities with this raucous compendium of all-in-it-together bants Phil Ellis has been watching Netflix specials, and has noticed that all the alpha standups now have a hype-man to big them up pre-show. Here, then, is his own version, a shuffling fellow northerner (comic Tom Short) deadpanning a list of Ellis’s non-achievements in a threadbare American accent, punctuated by gunshot SFX and an airhorn. The modest success of a Task…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

DJ Shadow: ‘Kraftwerk are a touchstone for every phase of my career’

The hip-hop producer, remixer and crate-digger on staying fresh creatively, the influence of David Lynch and giving away his most valuable record Can you share any regrets or missed opportunities from your career? nnagewad In 1999, I was approached by Deftones to work on White Pony, but I had just come off of Unkle’s Psyence Fiction album. I was nursing a hip-hop image and reputation, so I was wary of working with anything that felt like it was too alternative or rock-oriented. So I missed out…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The Possibility of Tenderness by Jason Allen-Paisant audiobook review – meditations on nature and belonging

The poet reconnects with the landscape of the May Day Mountains in Jamaica where he grew up in a personal story of migration, race and rural life An award-winning poet living in Roundhay Park, Leeds, Jason Allen-Paisant spent his early childhood living with his grandmother in Coffee Grove, a hilly rural district of Jamaica which was cut off from basic amenities such as electricity and water. Seen through the eyes of a child, Coffee Grove was, he notes, “both a tiny place and a huge planet”. The…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Samuel Hasselhorn: Schubert Hoffnung review – timbral and emotional flexibility is in ample supply

Hasselhorn/Bushakevitz (Harmonia Mundi) The German baritone’s all-Schubert disc with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz is full of communicative diction and poetic phrasing Now in his mid-30s, German baritone Samuel Hasselhorn is a major player in a veritable rat-pack of high-flying young lieder singers. His growing discography includes an ongoing series with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, part of Harmonia Mundi’s Schubert 200 project to record all the composer’s songs, from 1823 onwards, ahead of the 202…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The power of the Dunst: Kirsten’s best film performances – ranked!

As she approaches her 44th birthday, we celebrate an actor who can move from dreamy psychodrama for Sofia Coppola to gritty angst for Jane Campion An elegant, sun-soaked Patricia Highsmith adaptation with fine work from Viggo Mortensen as a con man and Dunst as his wife, holidaying in early 1960s Athens when they meet an American tour guide (Oscar Isaac). It seems tantalisingly unclear at first whether his designs are on the chirpy young bride or her shady older husband. Continue reading...

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

The Mummy review – classic monster gets dug up for unravelling resurrection

Irish director Lee Cronin follows his Evil Dead reboot with what feels like another Evil Dead film but without a real sense of humour Warner Bros would prefer that you referred to their new hard R take on The Mummy as Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, a bafflingly grandiose insistence that has earned some deserved ridicule online over the past few weeks. It’s partly to separate it from Universal’s upcoming return to the 90s-00s franchise (Blumhouse, the horror hit-makers behind the film, on X posted: “BR…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Paula Rego review – tantalising drawings with the shoeprints left on them

Victoria Miro, London Mischievous, moving and troubled tales of female oppression unspool across the largest ever exhibition of the artist’s drawings, which show an intuitive touch her paintings lack When Paula Rego was nine, she drew her grandmother sitting comfortably in a chair. The old woman’s hair is pinned back, and she wears dangly earrings and thick-rimmed glasses on a chain. She might be reading or sewing – it’s hard to tell. Whatever it is, she’s absorbed in the task at hand. Just lik…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest review – Aaron Pierre makes a mesmerising McMurphy

Old Vic theatre, London Director Clint Dyer brings a fresh political focus to Ken Kesey’s story of disempowerment but the relentless misogyny of the text feels retrograde When Randle P McMurphy is thrust into an American psychiatric hospital in the early 1960s, the torpid air begins to crackle. As the anarchic McMurphy, Aaron Pierre gives a storming performance but although Clint Dyer’s stirring take on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel boldly reframes the story, the text can’t support his ideas. McMurphy…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

‘A feeling of ecstasy’: how Anne Hathaway and FKA twigs created the thunderous Mother Mary soundtrack

The stars of David Lowery’s psychodrama on the secrets behind creating music for a fictional pop diva As David Lowery, the director, was writing the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of the same name, he spent a lot of time studying the last 25 years in music. He listened to Taylor Swift (whose Reputation concert film inspired the performances in the film), Lorde and FKA twigs, who appears on screen as a medium named Imogene. But as the film’s haunted love story between Mary (play…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Miroirs No 3 review – Christian Petzold’s elegantly unnerving mystery of grief and family dysfunction

There’s a hint of PD James about this cuckoo in the nest story starring Paula Beer as a depressed pianist German director Christian Petzold, the Chabrol of modern European cinema, delivers an elegant and disquieting psychological mystery of the sort that doesn’t interest today’s British film-makers, though this one appears to have more than a taste of PD James or Ruth Rendell. There’s also a hint of Joseph Losey’s Accident. It is about family dysfunction and grief and unnervingly lays out the a…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Beef season two review – the best show on TV becomes an unlovable White Lotus rip-off

Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac are a miserable couple who run a country club and get blackmailed in a rich v poor potboiler that has been done so much better before – not least in the stunning first series. What a shame We may have to start calling it White Lotus Derangement Syndrome. This is a condition spreading through the television commissioning system since Mike White debuted his brilliant anthology series five years ago, whereby drama is produced by setting poorer Americans alongside ric…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

90s rock icon Bob Mould: ‘When Cobain died, I pulled the plug – there was nothing worth saving’

Mould’s fearsomely loud power trio Sugar rode the wave of grunge, but called it quits when the scene lost its innocence. Now the band are reuniting – before it’s too late The beating heart of Sugar was always the sound of Bob Mould’s guitar: a colossal, metallic, thunderous thing, like a sonic boom you could whistle. “It was incredible, being engulfed by that wall of sound,” remembers bassist David Barbe from his office at the University of Georgia, weeks before the group are due to play their…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke review – the downfall of an all‑American tradwife

The premise – Instagram influencer is confronted by pioneer reality – is genius. But does this high-concept debut live up to the hype? Could Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear be the first great tradwife novel? This was my hope: finally, a literary response to the unhinged social trend of women cosplaying “traditional Christian values” – pronatalism and obeying one’s husband – to large social media followings. I am not immune to hype, and Yesteryear has been hyped to high heaven, prompting massive…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future review – some of these insights into AI are just mindblowing

From people marrying digital companions to CEOs excited about how people whose jobs are replaced can ‘adapt’, this is terrifying watching. But Perry is the perfect host There is a fun game you can play while watching Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future, the two-part documentary presented by the artist on the subject of artificial intelligence, its uses and its possible ramifications. Gather a group of friends, press play, and see which of you loses your mind first. Will it be during the opening i…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

From the devil’s violinist to devil’s horns - why classical and heavy metal are a natural pairing

With ear-splitting excess, flamboyant virtuosity and a talent for transgression, where classical music has led, metal has followed. Let’s hope the Philharmonia’s Metal Orchestrated concert turns it up to 11 The question is not why, but why has it taken so long? Putting heavy metal and classical together that is, as the Philharmonia are doing next week in their Forged in Sound: Heavy Metal Orchestrated gig, part of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. There’s more that connects metal and…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Gush review – Jessica Hardwick is superb as a mother-to-be surfing a maelstrom of emotions

Traverse theatre, Edinburgh Jess Brodie’s monologue about life on the brink of parenthood is both witty and gripping There are few transitions in life more profound than becoming a parent. Out go late nights and long lie-ins. In comes responsibility. It is an experience that demands redefinition, turning you from cared-for to carer, solo player to team captain. Even as it approaches, you know it will change you. This is the still point of the turning world that playwright Jess Brodie identifies…

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Diamanti review – luscious-looking 1970s costume melodrama is a sumptuously soapy dramedy

Director Ferzan Özpetek captures the loves and lives of a group of seamstresses working on a fictional 18th-century period drama If we are being honest this comedy-drama set in a costume atelier in 1970s Rome is a little light on the comedy, while the drama is decidedly on the melo end of the scale, even a bit absurd at times. But there’s something about it that is irresistible, especially if you are in any way sympathetic to queer-accented celebrations of women played by powerhouse ensembles i…

EntertainmentThe Guardian — Culture

Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace

A man who meant to be a priest is faced with a moral crossroads in this ambitious and affecting first novel Jon Doyle’s debut novel tells the story of Mack O’Brien, a young man who went to a seminary to study for the priesthood but was asked to leave because he had no real calling, and has therefore returned to his family home in Wales to work out what to do with his life. Cheek by jowl with his ailing, deeply religious mother, and a father struggling to process the grief of his own parents’ re…

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Margo’s Got Money Troubles review – Michelle Pfeiffer’s career renaissance starts here

The star powerfully plays the mum to Elle Fanning’s cash-strapped single mother and OnlyFans creator in this charming schmaltzfest – which could have been so much more Margo’s Got Money Troubles first gives us the why. Margo’s got money troubles because Margo got pregnant. Margo got pregnant because she is so young, and she thought her English professor writing her a poem was A Good Thing (poems written by English professors are never A Good Thing). She started having sex with her English profe…