Aimed at Gen Z, Zola has attitude but, arguably, few smarts. The premise is straightforward enough, namely how two twenty-something women fall out. Zola (Taylour Paige) works at a fast-food restaurant. She’s befriended by Stefani (Riley Keough) who she serves at the diner. Both are pole dancers and they have a night out in a…
If there are actually five stages of grief, Nashville singer/songwriter Madi Diaz may have stumbled on a few more levels of pain on her ANTI- Records debut, History of a Feeling, where she explores her sense of loss at the ending of a significant relationship. Diaz left the Berklee College of Music to self-release her…
Justin Chon treads a difficult path in his new film Blue Bayou. The writer-director (and star) seeks to highlight a little-known social issue in America; but he uses a problematic protagonist to do it. The result is a heartfelt and moving film, but one that’s perhaps less powerful than Chon intended. The issue is the…
Legendary novelist John Le Carré died in 2020 leaving behind a legacy of twenty-seven novels that both set the template and often redefined the spy novel. Silverview, his final book, unpublished at the time of his death, has now been released and shows his ability and skills undiminished. Silverview is a small gem of a…
Whoever coined the phrase “the more things change, the more things stay the same” may well have been referring to the plot of Home Chat. Almost 100 years since Noel Coward wrote and presented this play in London, its underlying themes of feminism and empowerment continue to resonate in society. The main character Janet Ebony…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 12 November 2021. Makthaverskan defies traditional genre definition. Their latest album, För Allting, flitters between blissful pop and angst-ridden punk, but it’s never content to land on any one set identity for long. As Pitchfork writes of the band,…
Humans 2.0 begins with a flash of light as 11 bodies appear, moving in harmony around a round stage space framed by exposed lightbulbs, before their physical limits are pushed to extremes. Created by director Yaron Lifschitz, Humans 2.0 is circus at its best, an amalgamation of acrobatics, sound and light that builds and expands upon…
Scott Cooper, who directed Jeff Bridges to an Oscar with Crazy Heart, returns with Antlers. This eerie and deeply unsettling horror film set in a small and forgotten mining town in Oregon that has been devastated by the opioid epidemic. The film has been produced under the auspices of horror/fantasy veteran Guillermo del Toro, whose…
All of the songs Ada Lea wrote for her follow-up to her 2019 release, What We Say In Private, describe events that have a deep connection to points in the neighborhood where she grew up in her native Montreal. While the folk/pop singer/songwriter has a knack for describing the moments during a party that matter,…
No Time to Die is, in many ways, the perfect send-off for Daniel Craig in his last appearance as James Bond. That’s not to say it’s a perfect film, but it pays deep reverence to the work Craig has done in re-defining the character for the 21st Century. The producers tapped Cary Joji Fukunaga –…
