MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Film round-up: April 10, 2025
The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
Maiwene Barthelemy and Clément Faveau in Holy Cow
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Holy Cow (15)
Directed by Louise Courvoisier
★★★★
SHOT in France’s Jura region with non-professional actors, Louise Courvoisier’s debut feature is touching, elegiac and funny. A coming-of-age drama about friendship, integrity and post-industrial agriculture, it also reveals the agonies of making a wheel of Comté cheese.
A splendidly chaotic opening scene sets the tone. It features a cow sitting in a car, a man in a ragged vest lugging a beer barrel through a rural gala, and a drunken 18-year-old, Totone, performing a naked jig on a tabletop.
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