MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
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Film round-up: July 25, 2024
Gay marriage, Anatolian snowscapes, lewd marvels and surreality TV: The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Mysterious Ways, About Dry Grasses, Deadpool & Wolverine, and I Saw The TV Glow
(L) Mysterious Ways; (R) About Dry Grasses
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
Mysterious Ways
Directed by Paul Oremland
★★★
SET in New Zealand, this moving drama centres on a gay vicar who takes on his religious bosses in a bid to marry his Samoan boyfriend in church, sparking a media storm.
While his superiors do not have an issue with Peter (Richard Short, The Tragedy of Macbeth) being queer or having Jason (newcomer Nick Afoa) as his male partner, they do have a problem with the pair getting wed in a place of worship. Particularly when it scandalises the devout local community, inciting anti-gay protests.
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Lego synaesthesia, a tender portrait of poverty, bear-faced capers and premature Santa: The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Piece By Piece, Bird, Paddington in Peru and Red One
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Anora, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Blitz, and Heretic