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. 

Feature on Andrzej Wajda at culture.pl

For culture.pl, I wrote a piece about Andrzej Wajda and his international connections (especially to Japan). You can read it here.