Review of Park Avenue (Sight and Sound, December 2025)

 

My review of Gaby Dellal's new film Park Avenue is in the latest issue of Sight and Sound. More details about the issue here. 

Single Review: Last Orders Mersey Square (Barb Jungr)

Barb Jungr is such an inspired singer of the songs of others - bringing fresh energy and new perspectives to material both well and lesser-known - that her own accomplishments as a lyricist are sometimes under-celebrated. In fact, from her earliest Three Courgettes and Jungr and Parker days to her recent successful forays into musical theatre, Jungr has always written - usually in collaboration with other musicians or arrangers. Original compositions have appeared on many of her solo albums, including 2016's Shelter From the Storm, on which self-penned songs sat snugly alongside writing by Dylan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Springsteen and Bowie. 

Reviewing that record at the time I wondered when Jungr might put "Last Orders Mersey Square" on an album. It's a song I first heard her perform during a gig at Crazy Coqs the previous year. Written with Simon Wallace for the 2012 Stockport to Memphis collection but ultimately not included on the album, the song went straight to the heart in live performance, but no official recorded version has ever been available.

Until now, that is  - it's released as a single this week on 31st October. Following  her second album combining Dylan and Cohen material, Hallelujah on Desolation Row, and her striking version of Jimmy Webb's great "MacArthur Park," this is Jungr's third release this year, and it's a beauty. Recorded at Wallace's studio, with him producing and playing all instruments, the track retains all of the emotion of my memory of the live performance. 

Memory is key to the song itself, in fact. Jungr describes the track as "a love letter to the Stockport I love, the Stockport of old mill towers, canals and famous rivers, of red brick terraces and looming moors." With elegant economy, Jungr's lyrics sketch memories of a youthful love affair in a northern town where "[y]ou could smell the hops across the valley when they brewed the beer" and where "in the pubs we smoked and kissed/We drank our youth like the morning mist." 

There's wry humour in the reminiscence - "For the long and lazy summer we were lovers with no plan/ In the end it rained the rain of ages on our caravan" - but mostly a deep affection and romance, the nostalgic imagery accentuated by the embracing warmth of Jungr's vocal and the tenderness of Wallace's piano-playing which sparkles and shimmers into a gorgeous chorus, where Jungr recalls the ringing of the 'closing time' bell mingling with the "strains of 'Layla' from the jukebox in the smoky air." 

The track conveys a poignant sense of time passing - of the sun setting, of Summer giving way to Autumn - and of youthful experience as fleeting but intense and savoured, the memory of a place indelibly interwoven with the memory of a person. What a treat to finally be able to return again and again to this wonderful song, one of Jungr's very best. 

"Last Orders Mersey Square" is available from 31 October. Link to pre-save here. 

Theatre Review: Mary Page Marlowe (Old Vic)

Scenes from an "ordinary" American woman's life are the thread of Tracy Letts' 2016 play Mary Page Marlowe. The novelty - or gimmick - of the piece is that snapshots of the protagonist's experiences are presented in a fragmented, non-chronological form and that the role of Mary is divided between five (in some productions six) actresses playing the character from ages 12 to 69. (A doll's good enough for a babyhood scene.)

The piece-it-together structure throws out and withholds narrative tidbits - a crime, affairs, alcohol dependency, an absent child - but overall the structure seems more interesting than what's done with it; don't expect the radical transitions of a Palindromes (2004) or an I'm Not There (2007). As a writer, Letts doesn't have the insight or the delicacy to pull off a play like this: he's more at home with bigger gestures and protagonists' spitting vitriol.  There are many plays that have made the details of daily life into something compelling, even monumental, but that's not achieved here, between thinly imagined supporting characters and dialogue that veers between inconsequentiality, belated, heavy-handed symbolism, and spelling out the themes. 

Despite putting the Old Vic stalls in the round again, Matthew Warchus, directing in his usual brisk, slick, proficient style, doesn't bring out much that's distinctive in the material. (Robert Howell's set and costume designs are just functional.) 

Even so, the cast come through to create vivid moments. Letts limits most of the supporting characters to one scene; for actors of the calibre of Hugh Quarshie (playing Mary's third and most satisfactory spouse) and Melanie La Barrie (as a sympathetic nurse), this production must be quite a nice rest. 

But the Marys maximise their opportunities. The sharing out of the role means that there are few chances for grandstanding, but Andrea Riseborough has the toughest emotional moments to play and she's compelling throughout, whether twitchily laying out a separation to Mary's children in the opening scene or sinking under the wreck Mary makes of her life at one stage. 

A minor Matilda: The Musical movie reunion is accomplished with the appearance of Riseborough's co-star from Warchus's film, Alisha Weir, as 12-year-old Mary; the scene is one of the play's weakest ones - it essentially only serves to indict Mary's unsupportive mother for the protagonist's later-life problems - but Weir is perfectly charming in her performance of  "Tammy."

Rosy McEwen also hits the right notes as the adulterous younger Mary, delicately trying to extricate herself from Ronan Raftery's persistent lover (also her boss). And playing Mary across three later-years scenes, it's wonderful - and a bit unexpected - to see Susan Sarandon on the British stage. In many ways, the role doesn't play to Sarandon's greatest strengths: one of the best actors at expressing blazing anger on screen has an essentially quiet, reflective role here. But Sarandon brings a beautiful, unstressed radiance to it; she seems totally at ease, connecting with the other actors in ways that fill out some of the writing's sketchiness. 

Mary Page Marlowe doesn't achieve the depths Letts seems to strive for. In the end, it's a modest work: a woman's life story as a shuffled, tentative impression. It isn't a play to go to with big expectations, but the accomplished cast  - plus a perfect song choice to bookend the evening - still send you out of Warchus's production feeling good. 

Mary Page Marlowe is booking at the Old Vic until 1 November. Further information here. 

In Form: A Report on the 14th International Retroperspektywy Theatre Festival (21- 31 August 2025, Łódź)

 

Under the title "Awakenings," last year's Retroperspektywy Festival (RPS) celebrated the 20th anniversary of the festival's founder, Teatr CHOREA, initially by looking backwards. The opening event, What's Demeter?, was a compendium show that revisited scenes and songs from some of the company's previous productions. 

Dzień Dobry, Pinky Mouse! during What's Demeter? (RPS, 2024)

The result was sensational: a 3 hour rollercoaster ride that highlighted the depth and range of CHOREA's work in music, drama, and movement across two decades, and which reunited artists associated with the group's past and present. The show was full of surprises and delights; audience-inclusive from the start, it culminated in a magical moment of interaction that danced audience and performers out of the auditorium together. 

Ragnarok during What's Demeter? (RPS, 2024)

Supplementing its customary mix of performances, concerts, workshops, discussions and exhibitions with some fresh elements, this year's just-concluded edition of RPS took "In Form" as its title - as a theme, as an inquiry, and as a challenge. In the words of the organisers: "What does it mean to be in sha­pe, in form, to­day - in a world of over-sti­mu­la­tion, ten­sion and trans­for­ma­tion? Ar­ti­sts from dif­fe­rent co­un­tries an­swer the qu­estion: what form does the­atre take to­day, in the face of cri­sis, so­cial chan­ges and tech­no­lo­gi­cal re­vo­lu­tion?" The festival programme provided responses - as well as further questions - of all kinds.

Ubu Roi

If a warm, embracing tone defined What's Demeter?, the opening show of this year's festival was - in keeping with the idea of challenge - a more confrontational proposition, though one that generated plenty of audience laughter throughout. Premiered in 1896 when the author was just 23, Alfred Jarry's absurdist precursor Ubu Roi at least partially demonstrated its enduring ability to provoke in Konrad Dworakowski's production (eccentrically designed by the director and Marika Wojciechowska), a collaboration between CHOREA and Grupa Coincidentia. 

Ubu Roi

Dworakowski's staging leant hard into the play's Rabelaisian vision and scatological humour - existence as a cycle of consumption and excretion - as well as its parodic elements of Shakespearean tragedy, and its Polish provenance and afterlife. (Translated in 1936 by Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, the play was adapted as an opera buffa by Krzysztof Penderecki in the early 1990s.) The production also found plenty of topical political resonances without semaphoring them - at least until Ukrainian and Palestinian flags were brandished by the cast at the curtain call. 

Ubu Roi

Jarry's play remains clearly a young man's work, and for those for whom a little caricature and absurdism goes a long way, the evening had its lags, failing to match the kind of magnetic synthesis of elements that Dworakowski previously achieved with his great stagings of Bruno Schulz material, Schulz: Skrawki and Schulz: Pętla. 

Ubu Roi

Still, there's no denying the distinctiveness of the production's puppetry-and-punk aesthetic, or the commitment of the company, from the counter-intuitively cast Paweł Chomczyk as a decidedly un-obese Ubu, to Dagmara Sowa as the grasping, acquisitive spouse, plus CHOREA stalwarts Joanna Chmielecka and Janusz Adam Biedrzycki as Byczysław and Król Wacław/Queen Rosamund respectively, and the Belarusian actor Siarhei Artsiomenka as Captain Bardior. 

 Divny Sad exhibition, Ana­sta­sia Ry­dle­vskaya

Work by Belarusian creatives was in fact an integral component of this year's festival. It was a poignant one, too, since several of the featured artists have settled in Poland after fleeing Lukashenko's Belarus, and reflect on the experience of exile in their work in contrasting but equally creative ways. 

Snake Charmer

Ana­sta­sia Ry­dle­vskaya, now based in Gdańsk, not only contributed the art exhibition “Di­vny Sad” (“Won­der­ful Gar­den”) to RPS, and designed masks for the Tylko dla dziewczyn (Just for Girls) events; she also delivered a terrific outdoor concert performance, mostly drawing on material from her third album, Snake Charmer (listen here).  

Snake Charmer

Quiet and modest in her demeanour during the festival's opening speeches, Ry­dle­vskaya proved a distinctively bold artist both in her vivid, striking paintings, often evoking instances of painful or productive me­ta­mor­pho­sis, and in her performance style, which combined playful energy and shamanic intensity, as it took place outside, under the (very appropriate) Black Moon of the festival's first Saturday night. 

DJ Papa Bo Selectah

Alongside Papa Bo Selectah, who delivered a dynamic DJ set, a third Belarusian artist mobilising music was Igor Shu­ga­le­ev, whose Ich he­iße Frau Trof­fea (My Name is Mrs. Trof­fea), a solo dance performance created with director Ser­gey Sha­bo­hin, proved an explosive highlight of the festival's first Sunday afternoon. 

Ich he­iße Frau Trof­fea 

Premiered at Teatr Nowy in Warsaw in 2022, Sha­bo­hin and Shu­ga­le­ev's piece fuses present-tense immediacy and historical awareness as it links Shu­ga­le­ev's experience of the Berlin rave scene to the mysterious "dance plague" that began in 1518, when one Frau Troffea began to dance frantically in the Strasbourg streets, apparently inspiring hundreds of other citizens to do the same over several days, resulting in many deaths. 

Ich he­iße Frau Trof­fea 

The overall structure of Ich he­iße Frau Trof­fea is that of a club night in microcosm. Shu­ga­le­ev enters wet-haired and nude, and proceeds to dress himself for the night's partying, as phone footage of Belarusian political protests and his own journey out of the country are projected on the screen behind. 

Ich he­iße Frau Trof­fea 

Across the following 30 minutes, Agniesz­ka Kryst's choreography then takes the performer from little more than a leg twitch into a violent crescendo of movements and contortions that are by turns disturbing and cathartic, and accompanied by pounding techno courtesy of Mi­ki­ta Bu­ba­sh­kin & Gray Mandorla Studio, and To­masz Jóź­win's high intensity strobe lighting.

Ich he­iße Frau Trof­fea 

With Troffea herself also visualised on the screen in one section in images that add a spectral silent cinema dimension to the show, the piece draws a throughline between the dance plague and contemporary rave culture, presenting both as manifestations of rebellion by marginalised social groups. 

Ich he­iße Frau Trof­fea 

Historically dubious as this connection might be, it proves powerful in performance, as the show reimagines Troffea's action not in terms of medical pathology but rather as an expression of a resisting, revolutionary spirit that still abides today as a challenge to oppression. 

Tomasz Rodowicz during Hoson Zes / Lśnij  

While Troffea twirled in the intimate confines of Fabryka Sztuki's Sala A_22 auditorium, this year's RPS was also characterised by, in the words of CHOREA's Artistic Director Tomasz Rodowicz, "a search for innovative forms in the performing arts that open up new ways of engaging with audiences." 

Pipe Up

This involved using some different spaces for events - from the neighbouring Fuzja complex where the Norwegian company Panta Rei Danseteater presented their delightful and quietly visionary family show Pipe Up at the former power plant, to the appearance of two trailers in the Fabryka Sztuki courtyard, one which became home to Te­atr Com­pa­gnia Sa­mo­var's Of­fi­ci­na Oce­ano­gra­fi­ca Sen­ti­men­ta­le, the other to Teatr Łątek Supraśl's Nosferatu - a Diary of the Plague. 

Night Piece N° 7

By far the most experimental of the festival's offerings was Night Piece N°7 by Stuttgart's O-Team theatre group. Fresh from a recent presentation in South Africa, the piece takes the form of an all-night self-described "meditation ritual" which aims to keep participants in a liminal state between sleeping and waking across 11 hours, blending ob­ject the­atre, installation, con­cert, per­for­man­ce and sta­ged exhi­bi­tion elements - all with the bonus of a shared breakfast in the morning. 

Happy Hour

Other visiting shows pushed formal boundaries in less extreme but nonetheless striking ways. The Czech director/designer Jan Mo­cek's Happy Hour developed into  a strangely compulsive relay of creation and destruction through the movement and (re-)stacking of 150 squeaky Styrofoam panels. These were transformed by the show's sometimes focused, somnambulant, distracted or disruptive trio (Tin­ka Avra­mo­va, Iri­na An­dre­eva, Ar­se­niy Mi­khay­lov) into various simulacra: a stack of books, a graveyard, a mountain, a monument.

Glory Game

Best of all, perhaps, was Te­atr Ko­mu­na War­sza­wa/Sticky Fingers Club's Glory Game, conceived and choreographed by Do­mi­nik Wię­cek. The show opened with its performers, Da­nie­la Ko­mę­de­ra, Do­mi­ni­ka Wiak, Mo­ni­ka Wit­kow­ska, Na­ta­lia Din­ges, Piotr Sta­nek, and Wię­cek, as dignified physical icons - noble and naked, a collective running back and forth in slow motion - before deconstructing that vision to reveal the often absurd aspects of competition and the contemporary mediatisation of sport. The piece's revelation of a sneaky, humourous side was delightful; the performers' physical control and expressiveness was breathtaking; and the concept felt fully realised, offering completely fresh, funny, exciting and subversive solutions to the staging of sport. 

A Ty jak to wi­dzisz?

The CHOREA Youth Group premiered a "demonstration" performance of A Ty jak to wi­dzisz? (And how do you see it?). Directed and choreographed­ by Ja­nusz Adam Bie­drzyc­ki and Anna Ma­szew­ska, this proved to be a lively, affectionate and often hilarious piece inspired by Do­ro­ta Kas­sja­no­wicz's book 30 zni­ka­ją­cych tram­po­lin (30 Disappearing Trampolines) which presents the titular object in multiple short scenes; these vary wildly in perspective, tone and genre. The show will return in a full production in November, and deserves to be widely seen.

 

Sta­ra ko­bie­ta wy­sia­du­je 

Meanwhile, the veteran stage actress Irena Jun received a loving reception and delivered a tour de force performance in Tadeusz Ró­że­wicz's 1968 play Sta­ra ko­bie­ta wy­sia­du­je (The Old Woman Broods), here distilled and reconceived as a monodrama but with its metaphor of a monstrous garbage dump to describe the crisis of today's civilization still sadly resonant. Ta­de­usz Wie­lec­ki complemented Jun's vocal dexterity and supple command of the text with music played live, while old video footage of the actress and Ró­że­wicz in conversation made for a poignant opening to the intimate and charged performance.

The Dzi­dzias

All of the concerts were of a high standard, and ranged from the sensuous sound of Karakal, fronted by the charismatic Turkey-born lyricist/vocalist Ayşe Abacı, through the punchy, progressive indie rock of The Dzi­dzias, to the off-kilter energy of the Ballady i Romanse concert by Ewa Żurakowska and Horsy. This set Adam Mickiewicz poems to thunderous drums and proggy arrangements, delivered with pleasingly uninhibited vocals, theatrical flair and encouraged singalongs by Żurakowska. 

Grze­gorz Wierus during Hoson Zes / Lśnij

As often - 2023's LIVET: Suite for the Earth will live long in the memories of those who were lucky enough to see it - the festival concluded with a concert as well. Hoson Zes / Lśnij was the debut of CHOREA's new Chór Spół­dziel­czy (Cooperative Choir), made up of a mix of novice and experienced singers. Conducted jointly by Grze­gorz Wierus and Elina Toneva the choir presented a deeply stirring performance of Ancient Greek music - a fitting finale for a festival in which dialogue between past and present cultural expressions stood out as a vital aspect. 

Hoson Zes / Lśnij

The above remarks focus on only a selection of highlights of RPS 2025. Thanks to the efforts of this year's main coordinator, Ola Shaya, and team, this edition of the festival felt particularly packed. It also sustained momentum, with careful attention paid to the themes and sequencing of each individual day, and with room for fun details - such as surprise cameos from Julia Jakubowska's wonderfully frenetic 80s-styled fitness instructor. 

Julia Jakubowska

Like many other attendees, I'm sure, I invariably leave RPS feeling changed "on a cellular level" (as certain Americans currently like to put it...): challenged and expanded intellectually and with a sense of inhabiting one's body more fully, purposefully and presently. At once playing to its strengths as a festival and broadening its horizons, 2025 found Retroperspektywy in exceptionally good form. 

Photos by Agnieszka Czytacka fotografia

Theatre Review: Till the Stars Come Down (Theatre Royal Haymarket)

It's great that one of the best productions of last year - Bijan Sheibani's staging of Beth Steel's Till the Stars Come Down - has made it across the river from the National Theatre to the (faintly) glittering West End. 

By turns rambunctiously comic and very moving, Steel's portrait of a Nottinghamshire family gathering to celebrate the wedding of the youngest daughter, Sylvia, to a Polish migrant, Marek, was a true popular success, and a refreshing one. It's not a sub-journalism real person / impersonation play and it's not a star vehicle. Rather it's a heartfelt, Chekhov-influenced ensemble piece about a family dealing with change, as well as a community portrait, and, subtly, a state-of-the-nation play with a distinctive cosmic undertone as well. 

I said most of what I had to say about the play in my review last year, but since the transfer comes with a few new elements, I wanted to record a few more impressions of it here. 

Firstly, the Haymarket production provides some on-stage seating on three sides - definitely the place to be if you want to duplicate the up-close NT Dorfman experience. The show is as intimate and audience-inclusive as it was at the NT, but the bigger space gives it a grander quality that does justice to its wider themes. Last year, too, the show premiered in wintertime. Now, there's a lovely immersive aspect to seeing, in the summer, a play set on a sweltering summer day. 

Some new additions to the cast bring different textures as well. Lorraine Ashbourne had a major comic triumph in the role of Aunty Carol at the NT - here, Dorothy Atkinson brings less bite to some of the banter but contributes a spoiling-for-a-fight quality to the part that feels just right.  As the middle sister, Maggie, whose experience of an illicit attraction connects her across the generations to the character of Carol, Aisling Loftus brings similar plaintive notes as Lisa McGrillis did to a character whose early confidence has been challenged by life's disappointments. 

A mild casting controversy attended the British actor Marc Wootton's appearance as the Polish groom at the NT. I thought  Wootton was brilliant in the role, and, while his replacement, Julian Kostov (of The White Lotus), does perfectly well here, Wootton's stronger physical presence is missed. (Kostov isn't Polish, either, he's Bulgarian, but apparently that's close enough to count.)

Among the actors returning to their roles, Sinéad Matthews remains a total wonder as the dreamy, anxious bride who belatedly learns to assert herself - everything Matthews does feels fresh, new-minted, surprising, and true. And Lucy Black digs ever deeper into the frustration, grief and fears of the oldest sister, Hazel, resentful of the changes in the community and reluctant to confront a marriage that's on the cusp of imploding. 

Fair-minded and generous in its perspective, Steel's play is really built, so that different details emerge as more poignant each  time - whether its the sisters reminiscing about a special last trip out with their now-deceased Mam, or Philip Whitchurch's Uncle Pete toasting to the former pit towns and making their names an incantation. 

The play's swing from social comedy to harrowing emotional intensity remains a big one, and despite Black's haunting display, the end still feels slightly truncated ("Is it over?" asked the young guy next to me) - though more meaningful when you know it's coming. Still, Till the Stars Come Down remains a triumph - a gloriously entertaining and exhilarating experience, and a rare example of new writing that lights up the West End. 

Till the Stars Come Down is booking until 27 September. More information here. 

Interview with Frederic Raphael (BFI online)

 

I interviewed Frederic Raphael for BFI on the occasion of the re-release of Darling. You can read the interview here. 

Piece on Michael Palin in A Private Function (BFI online)

On the occasion of Michael Palin's 82nd birthday I wrote about his performance in one my favourite comedies, A Private Function. You can read the piece here.

Review of It Used to Be Witches by Ryan Gilbey in Sight and Sound (June 2025)

I reviewed Ryan Gilbey's new book about queer cinema, It Used to Be Witches, in the June issue of Sight and Sound, which is just out now. 

More details on the issue here. 

10 Great British Films of 1975 (BFI online)

 

For BFI online I wrote about 10 British films turning 50 this year. You can read the piece here. 

Sight and Sound (April 2025): Woman in a Hat

For the latest issue of Sight and Sound, I wrote about Stanisław Różewicz's Woman in a Hat for the "Lost and Found" column. 

Sight and Sound (March 2025): Bushman Review

 

For the March 2025 issue of Sight and Sound I reviewed the new Blu-ray release of Bushman by David Schickele. 

Album Review: Hallelujah on Desolation Row, Barb Jungr And Her Trio (Absolute, 2025)

Always innovative, Barb Jungr's explorations of the songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have been among her most acclaimed and recognised work. Having performed Dylan's songs for many years, Jungr first brought the music of the pair together on record a decade ago on Hard Rain (2014), and their songs have seldom left her live repertoire in the meantime  (check out this startling take on Cohen's "You Want It Darker", recorded at Crazy Coqs in 2022, for one). Now, following up the magnificent My Marquee album (2023), Jungr returns to their work again on her latest release, aided by long-time collaborators Simon Wallace on piano/keys, Davide Mantovani on bass, and Gary Hammond on percussion. The result is another richly compelling synthesis of the work of two songwriters of genius and one of the greatest contemporary vocalists that finds brand new colours in familiar (and some less familiar) songs. 

As the title suggests, Jungr starts with a song she's so far consciously avoided due to its over-exposure. From Jeff Buckley's transcendent version to its status as an X Factor audition staple, "Hallelujah" isn't necessarily a track you'd rush to hear revisited again. But Jungr's version makes it totally fresh - in her hands, it's a narrative that really builds, charting a love affair's various contours and finally becoming a deep expression of gratitude for all that was experienced. "There's a blaze of light in every word/It doesn't matter which you heard:/The holy or the broken Hallelujah," Jungr sings, incorporating one of the verses seldom used in other versions but one that's key to the meaning here. Many renditions have employed the song for superficial uplift; Jungr, in contrast, digs deep to its core of redemption, hope and perseverance.

Lesser Cohen songs also gain much from Jungr and the musicians' treatments. I've never thought much of "Slow" as a piece of writing, but the jazzy arrangement and Jungr's sultry, defiant vocal more than redeem the dips into doggerel. "Tonight Will Be Fine" is taken briskly and optimistically and "Tower of Song" - already on its way to becoming a standard - is wonderfully loose and insouciant here, in an arrangement that messes with the metre to great effect. 

When it comes to the Dylan songs, Jungr's choices are as surprising as what she makes of them. "The phraseology of this song is not Dylanesque," gripes Tony Attwood, of the Traveling Wilbury's collaboratively composed "Handle with Care," questioning "how much of Dylan there is in this." But Jungr's delightful rendition more than makes the case for its inclusion, creating something far fresher than previous versions by Jenny Lewis or Stephen Stills and Judy Collins managed. The most indisputably Dylanesque of Dylan epics, "Desolation Row" is piano-led here, also with some subtle and effective instrumental touches. Jungr's vocal is warm and gracious, ushering the listener hospitably into the dense tumble of imagery and characters in a way that's reminiscent of her take on another demanding piece, Jacques Brel's "The Cathedral." It's a totally immersive 9 minutes. 

A funky "Mississippi" and a radiant "New Morning" are also highlights. And "Kansas City" - drawn from The New Basement Tapes, of all places - might be my very favourite track here, as Jungr's delivery alternates taut, quietly seething  verses with gorgeously expressive, cathartic choruses conveying the narrator's increasing resolve. Jungr returns to Cohen for the finale. "You Got Me Singing" is stirring and gospel-tinged in this arrangement, and, with the lyrical reference to "the Hallelujah hymn," it brings the record beautifully full circle. 

Given the range of material covered across the 11 tracks - from early songs to later or newly discovered compositions - Hallelujah on Desolation Row is remarkably cohesive as a listening experience: a testament to the shared vision of Jungr and the musicians. It's also among the most successful of Jungr's albums in conveying some of the in-the-moment spontaneity of her live shows. It's a reminder, too, of how much remains to be mined, rediscovered and explored in these songs. "There's a blaze of light in every word"; Jungr and her collaborators ensure that we experience each and every one. 

Hallelujah on Desolation Row is available to buy or stream here.

Further reading: 

Barb Jungr - Singing into My Seventies [live review]

Barb Jungr - Nina Simone and Hard Rain [live review]

Film Review: Flight Risk (dir. Gibson, 2025)

 

"I'm gonna land this plane!!!" As in Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen (2019), Michelle Dockery does all kinds of things that Downton's Lady Mary never got to do in the new Mel Gibson-directed Flight Risk. The mere sight of Gibson's name on the film seems to have been enough to send the majority of critics off the deep end, with the unreliable Mark Kermode deeming it "one of the worst films I've ever seen" (a bit much for the man who gave Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again [2018] 5 stars). 

Viewed without such prejudice, though, Flight Risk emerges as a knowingly hokey and perfectly enjoyable comedy-thriller that feels a lot like a 1980s/90s throwback. It's an unabashed airborne popcorn movie that lands somewhere between Airport 1975, Narrow Margin (1990) and Passenger 57 (1992). 

Dockery plays a US Marshal tasked with transporting a witness (Topher Grace) to trial and finding out that the pilot (Mark Wahlberg) taking the pair over the Alaskan wilderness is not all he seems to be. The film is basically a three-hander set on the tiny plane, and Gibson keeps the fun and tension quotients high as the trio play cat-and-mouse in the space.

Jared Rosenberg's quip-strewn script is only serviceable but the film is pleasingly distilled, and gains a lot from its slightly berserk casting choices. Topher Grace starts out doing comedy schtick as the chatty prisoner/witness but notably deepens the character later on. Gum-chewing and scenery-chewing, Wahlberg snarls and gurns with aplomb, but though his face is on the poster it's Dockery who's the star here and she's wonderfully committed, bringing surprising variety to the role whether kicking ass, responding to flirtatious overtures, or revealing what's actually at stake for the character in this scenario. What happened to the Gibson who had the sensitivity to make The Man Without a Face back in 1993 is quite another story, but Flight Risk remains a smashingly silly and fun ride.

Flight Risk in in cinemas now. 

Film Review: The Girl With the Needle (Pigen med nålen) (dir. Von Horn, 2024)

 

Despite retaining some of the same creative team, the three films made so far by Magnus von Horn have been strikingly different from each other. The director's Sweden-set debut fiction feature, The Hereafter, which I saw at Gydnia 10 years ago, about a teenager's return to his hometown following incarceration for a crime, was deliberately low-key, its measured mood disrupted by jarring violence; it was accomplished and slightly studied, with Dardennes and Haneke touches. Von Horn followed it up with Sweat (2020), a portrait of a social media influencer, which was brisk and colourful, and aggressively contemporary. 

Von Horn clearly adapts himself to his subjects, and his latest film, co-written with Line Langebek Knudsen, is something different yet again: a black-and-white maternal melodrama that plays out with the horrifying dream logic of a dark fairy-tale for adults. Set in between-the-wars Copenhagen, The Girl With the Needle  (Pigen med nålen) is based on a real-life case. The social period details feel right - the factory work, the shops, the dingy dwellings - but, from the opening montage of contorted, superimposed faces, von Horn goes for something more primal and ambient, and sustains a mood of quiet, creeping dread. The result is a compelling piece of work, and his best film to date.

As the working-class mother who gives up her baby, and as the woman who arranges for its care, Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm give richly detailed performances; playing the latter's daughter, young Avo Knox Martin is a remarkable find. Coming off of EO (2022) and A Real Pain (2024), the amazing DP Michał Dymek returns to black-and-white for the first time since My Friend the Polish Girl (2018), and gives the images a hallucinatory depth and clarity. Frederikke Hoffmeier's score is mostly an asset too, though some twitchy electronics feel misjudged. The sound of crying babies is perhaps the most eloquent noise here; it permeates the film, and, like many of the images, returns to haunt the viewer long after the screening. 

The Girl With the Needle is in cinemas now. 

Film Review: Babygirl (dir. Reijn, 2024)

 

Apart from Jude Law making his daring escape from the law by hopping on a treadmill, my main memory of Ivo van Hove's staging of Obsession (2017) is that of Halina Reijn, as Giovanna, scattering rubbish all over the set. Now, working as a writer-director, Reijn scatters rubbish over global cinema culture and benefits from the A24 hype machine in doing so. Babygirl isn't quite as awful as Reijn's previous film, the exploitative Gen-Z-meets-Agatha-Christie Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), but it's nearly as juvenile and just about as smug. 

Focusing on the affair between the CEO of an NYC robotics firm (Nicole Kidman) and the intern (Harris Dickinson) who instantly diagnoses the well-heeled boss's unfulfilled desire to be dominated, Babygirl evidently considers itself a brave, transgressive entertainment, and some of Reijn's statements about it have been wonderfully pompous: "Babygirl was an opportunity to bring my Dutch, more liberated ideas about sexuality to the US... I thought of Americana as a metaphor for the danger of suppression that still exists within me." 

These are big claims, since the end result is weirdly tame in its imagery and mightily confused in its sexual politics, ticking off contemporary platitudes about modish topics - consent, the orgasm gap - with all the depth of the average Cosmo article. What the modern woman really, really wants, Babygirl ultimately suggests, is to have Antonio Banderas and Harris Dickinson fighting over her. Well... aim high, I guess. 

It's billed as an erotic thriller, and Reijn has confessed to a fondness for the likes of Basic Instinct (1992), while indicating that her take is far more progressive: "We are in conversation with [film] history...but we're going to to do it in a different way." In part she succeeds, since Babygirl has precious little of the drive or dramatic impetus of a thriller; all of its tension and interest are in the (fairly promising) early scenes. On the plus side, Reijn and her collaborators have clearly thought the film out in visual terms - right down to the pink cellphone case brandished by Kidman's Romy - and the opening sequences craftily juxtapose corporate sterility and churning horniness thanks to Matthew Hannam's brisk editing. 

Though some moments (the first motel room tryst and a witless illicit-encounters montage) just make you feel embarassed for her, Kidman, looking fetching in Kurt and Bart's power-dress designs, is an asset in the role, too. Compensating for the script's deficiencies, she uses the close-ups to convey Romy's conflicted, unsettled feelings, and gives the in-control CEO a disarming wobbly walk that also suggests her vulnerabilities. A strainingly meta 'Botox moment' is a little much, but Kidman finds ways to bring some tenderness to Romy's struggle to integrate her competing selves, and to the relationship dynamic, notably in a quiet post-coital scene. 

As Samuel, Dickinson has his moments - especially, his laugh after he instructs Romy to "Get on your knees!", not entirely convinced by the part he's allocated himself in this relation. But his sexual savant role is so thinly conceived that we never get a read on the character's motivations. It's not the actor's fault that his sex appeal here has also been crazily overhyped (not only by 'the Internet' but by professional critics), including a sub-Claire Denis shirtless sway to George Michael's "Father Figure": an on-the-nose song choice, if ever there was one. 

Babygirl falls apart as its underwritten character's start confronting each other, and Samuel's abrupt banishment from the film just feels like a plot convenience. As the cuckolded theatre director husband, who's never once sexually satisfied his wife in 20 years of marriage, poor Antonio Banderas fares far worse, especially in a late confession scene that finds him mewling "What the fuck, Romy...?" in a tone that made me weep with laughter. 

The only sequence I'd save from the second half is a vibrant wordless one: Romy tracking Samuel down in a club. But indulging a campy pop aesthetic is clearly only part of the film's intention; on the contrary, given some painfully heavy-handed references, I think it's actually aiming for Ibsenesque intensity. Unfortunately, while we might buy Banderas's Jacob directing Hedda Gabler, we definitely don't swallow such touches as the couple's younger daughter being called Nora and having a fondness for dancing - you guessed - the Tarantella. 

Babygirl's thinness is especially evident in this last section, including a hasty reconciliation scene and the sudden wheeling on of a subsidiary male character for Romy to give a sound scolding to for the sake of a very cheap feminist huzzah. And maybe Reijn needs to watch Basic Instinct again, and more closely. Not only is Verhoeven's film more fun and more accomplished in its storytelling than Babygirl, it's finally more subversive, too. Suggesting that Sharon Stone's Catherine Tramell was "punished" for "dark desires" is not being "in conversation with film history": it's conveniently rewriting it. 

 Babygirl is in cinemas now.

Piece on late-career Sidney Poitier at BFI online

 

As the Sidney Poitier season continues at BFI Southbank, I wrote about his late career. The piece is up here.