Although it’s a cliched romantic comedy, Book of Love is not entirely without humour or charm. Henry Copper (Sam Claflin) is an academic turned writer whose debut novel The Sensible Heart is not exactly a page turner, nor has it been flying off the shelves. In fact, when he holds a meet-the-author session, the book…
White privilege receives a pummelling in the satire Admissions. It is 2015 and Sherri Rosen-Mason (Kat Stewart) is head of admissions at an exclusive US high school – Hillcrest in New Hampshire, New England. Over 15 years, Sherri has worked tirelessly to raise the percentage of coloured students at the school. She has succeeded in seeing that proportion…
While it’s only natural to look for echoes of The Smiths in Johnny Marr’s solo work, he was only with that band for 6, albeit, very productive years, and in the decade that followed he cut a wide musical swatch playing in bands as diverse as Modest Mouse, The The, and Electronic, while played guitar…
Pierre Anthon is a massive thorn in the backside of his classmates in year 9. Just one utterance changed their perspective of the world and now they are out to prove him wrong … and they will stop at nothing to do so. Anthon, who we never meet, says “nothing matters” and even as a youngster he…
Liam McIlvanney’s first Duncan McCormack book The Quaker won the 2018 Scottish Crime Book of the Year. In The Heretic McIlvanney brings McCormack back to the mean streets of 1970s Glasgow, six years after the events of The Quaker. So that while this is a sequel and some of the action ties back to The…
Early on in Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Miss Marx, the writer-director makes it clear she considers her subject to be a kind of punk rock icon. Pity then that her film largely shuns that angle and instead meanders into becoming another tepid costume drama. The film ostensibly features a fiery feminist icon, but it plays out as…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 4 March 2022. GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana joins Blue Note Records with the release of 12 Stars, her debut album as a leader for the legendary jazz label. At 33, the Brooklyn-based tenor player from Santiago, Chile…
One of the most creative and mind challenging works I have seen, Phantasmagoria revisits the past in order for the central character to move forward. Briony (played by Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman, Meg Dunn and Elnaz Shessgelani) is an artist – a woman whose difficult personal relationships as an adult have been informed by her upbringing. That has everything…
Frank Turner has always been a punk rocker at heart, even his “folk” albums are roiling with punk attitude and energy, or as he describes “punk adjacent.” Of course, Turner only started working as a solo act after the break-up of the hardcore punk band Million Dead, naming his first EP, Campfire Punkrock, an apt…
Political correctness and sibling rivalry get a decent working over in Stay Woke, the brainchild of Aran Thangaratnam. Sai (Kaivu Suvarna) is a 25-year-old of Sri Lankan origin who is involved in medical research. He and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Kate (Rose Adams), a pharmacist, are invited by his older brother Niv (Dushan Philips) to join him and…
