ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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Film round-up: January 19, 2023
MARIA DUARTE reviews Holy Spider, Alice, Darling, The Substitute, More Than Ever
CHARISMATIC: Juan Minujin in The Substitute
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
Holy Spider (18)
Directed by Ali Abbasi
★★★
FROM the writer-director of the award-winning supernatural fantasy Border comes a gripping crime thriller about Iran’s most notorious serial killer, known as the Spider Killer, who hunted down street prostitutes.
Written and directed by Ali Abbasi, it is inspired by the real life tale of Saeed Hanaei, a father of three, who murdered 16 sex workers in the holy city of Mashhad in the early 2000s.
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