• Panda Bear – A Day With the Homies

    January 16, 2018 - By 

    Often reserved for moments of awkward silence, Noah Panda Bear Lennox has decided to open his latest solo work with the sound of crickets chirping. At the 25-second mark, they are joined by the rhythmic tapping of cymbals before being silenced altogether by Lennox’s bouncing vocal harmonies. And so begins ‘Flight,’ a song which comes across as something of a mix between the gospel singing of a dub-infused Louisiana tent revival and the electronic emissions of a SEGA Genesis. This image of a unified congregation is only further strengthened by the joyful, harmonious proclamation that “We’ve got the good crew”. While…

  • Typhoon – Offerings

    January 12, 2018 - By 

    Memory loss is terrifying on the deepest existential level. It’s a condition that slowly gnaws away at every part of an existence. It leaves only a shell with no ghost. Unfortunately, it is also a disease with an impact that is increasing annually. As we remove natural predators and previously untreatable conditions from the gene-pool-culling Olympics, more of us may eventually succumb to this trembling inducing fate. It’s a tough idea to face and an even harder one to explore artistically as it’s too frightening to bear thinking about for extended periods of time. But there is this inherent layer…

  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

    January 12, 2018 - By 

    The phrase ‘dark comedy’ recurs in descriptions of the filmography of Martin McDonagh, the London-born but Irish-descended playwright turned film-maker who this week received a Golden Globe for his third feature, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It’s the kind of loose, generous generic signifier that covers a multitude of structural and tonal sins. Sin is something McDonagh seems very interested in, populating his films with ugly people hopscotching across ugly situations. Redemption is a tricky prospect, both for the characters and for McDonagh himself, who lumbers Three Billboards with much the same problems that made In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths such…

  • Darkest Hour

    January 10, 2018 - By 

    Even while he’s having a cinematic moment, Churchill keeps his distance. Christopher Nolan weaponized celluloid machinery for the hyper-technical tension of Dunkirk, in which the politics of the coastal evacuation took place off screen, Kenneth Branagh’s naval captain standing in for the stiff upper lip of absent British authorities. Jonathan Teplitzky’s Churchill found Brian Cox’s wartime Prime Minister at the end of his tether on the eve of the Normandy invasion, tired and morose, struggling to maintain the brittle national morale. And now Joe Wright’s punchy Darkest Hour, the closest of the three to a traditional biopic, packing Gary Oldman in…

  • Brad’s Status

    January 10, 2018 - By 

    ‘Everyone is just thinking about themselves; they’re wrapped up in their own stuff’, high schooler Troy Sloan tells his father, who is hunched over the edge of his hotel bed, haunted by deep, formless feelings of failure. The comment is meant to reassure Brad, who has spent their college-tour trip suffering through bouts of jealousy and insecurity, and it’s the sort of line routinely served up to sooth the self-conscious. Everyone’s caught up in their own stuff, no-one even really sees you, so stop worrying so much. But Brad’s problem is that he’s already too self-involved, Ben Stiller’s wounded, jittery eyes…

  • Sanctuary

    January 4, 2018 - By 

    Cinema has a soft spot for the disabled, or at least those with worthy and theatrically resonant types of disabilities, ones that can be overcome in three acts, and leave able-bodied audiences feeling good about abstractions like “the human spirit”. Actors are lauded as “brave” for embracing physical and verbal contortions: Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man; Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar for The Theory of Everything; and, last year, Andrew Garfield’s polio quadriplegic in Andy Serkis’ Breathe. Meanwhile, television is opening itself up to richer representations of those on the Asperger’s spectrum. But a feature film with an ensemble cast, all of…

  • Brockhampton – Saturation III

    December 19, 2017 - By 

    Every great party has a moment where you wish it would go on forever. That point where you look around the room and hope against all hope that it could just go on and that the obligations that tomorrow always brings might never arrive. But part of you knows they will. Brockhampton’s latest record feels like the sonic equivalent of that moment. Saturation III is the end of one era for this 14 man boyband, troupe that seems simultaneously assured of itself and its future, but also not quite ready to let go of that perfect moment before reality sets in.  There are few stories from…

  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi

    December 14, 2017 - By 

    There’s a scene near the end of The Last Jedi, the second in Disney’s rejuvenated world-eating trilogy, when Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), the floppy-haired bastard prince whose crackling Oedipal resentment makes him the most fascinating of the new batch, has pretty much had enough of the whole Star Wars thing. Rey (Daisy Ridley), the heir apparent to the ways of the Light Side, is talking about The Resistance, but he cuts her off, launching into a speech of delicious, weary iconoclasm. The Jedi, the Sith, the rebels, Luke, Leia… he wants to torch the whole thing, this over-loaded mythology on…

  • Nava – Tapestry

    December 14, 2017 - By 

    On paper, it might not sound like the most symbiotic of sonic juxtapositions (depending on taste, obviously) – “a groundbreaking group of young musicians exploring the relationship between the ancient musical cultures of Ireland and Persia.” But in Nava’s self-released debut LP Tapestry, what could easily have fallen into cacophonous territory instead finds its feet in blissful euphony; as much in thanks to the unconventional folk outfit’s mixed bag of musical lineages as the sheer musicianship of its members. Half exploration of traditional expressions of Irish folk (courtesy of Paddy Kiernan and Niall Hughes) and half observance of traditional Persian folk mediums…

  • Stronger

    December 14, 2017 - By 

    For most of its running, Stronger is a watchable if unremarkable disaster biopic, admirably uncomfortable with terrorist attack cliche. It traces the story of Jeff Bauman, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, had both legs amputated above the knee after being caught in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, where he was cheering for his on again, off again girlfriend Erin. This is the second film based on the Boston attack released this year, but whereas Peter Berg’s typically muscular Patriot’s Day tracked the manhunt for the bombers, Stronger keeps its focus on personal consequences, John Pollono’s script working off Bauman’s memoir…