Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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Mind games from a rapidly waning empire
ANGUS REID takes issue with the pernicious imperial sabre-rattling purveyed by a dying empire in the latest edition of Top Gun
Tom Cruise as Capt. Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell
[IMDb]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
THE sheer scale of Top Gun is breathtaking. By this I don’t mean the military hardware eagerly lent to Tom Cruise, but the way it saturates global cinema. You don’t have much choice but Top Gun if you want to watch a film for the next month.
There are 18 screenings a day at my local cinema, and it is showing in at least 24,000 cinemas simultaneously around the world. It would be absurd to take its success at the box office as a mark of quality when it is guaranteed.
The critical response, including in this paper, is overwhelmingly positive, and the audience is already in the millions. But how much of that audience have awareness of the politics that is driving the show?
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