SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
Film round-up: August 15, 2024
Inside Afghanistan, Chinese crime thriller, entertaining pants and Alien deja vu: the Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Hollywoodgate, Only The River Flows, Jackpot! and Alien Romulus
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
MATTHEW HAWKINS pays tribute to the performance artist and costumier, Leigh Bowery
SIMON DUFF reviews a new composition by German composer and pianist Florian Weber that blurs the line between where improvisation ends and composition begins
New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
Hollywoodgate (12A)
Directed by Ibrahim Nash’at
★★★★
“WHY is he filming? asks a member of the Taliban. “He is making a documentary… Documenting our everyday lives both civilian and military for a year. If his intentions are bad he will die soon.” Chilling words from a Taliban commander about Egyptian film-maker Ibrahim Nash’at.
The Taliban agreed to let him film Mawlawi Mansour, the new head of Afghanistan’s air force whose father was killed by US forces, and MJ Mukhtar, a former Taliban fighter now with dreams of an illustrious military career, from the moment US troops left Kabul and Taliban forces took the city on August 31 2021.
He captures Mansour and his team entering Hollywood Gate, a secret CIA base, and checking what the US left behind.
More from this author
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
Similar stories
Hallucinogenic homosexuality, a quantum thriller, airport shenanigans and feminist Tolkein: MARIA DUARTE reviews Queer, The Universal Theory, Carry On and Lord of the Rings: The War of The Rohirrim
Colonial plunder goes home, chilly euthanasia, transsexual drug baron and venom’s end: The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Dahomey, The Room Next Door, Emilia Perez and Venom: The Last Dance
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Rose, Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One, Kinds of Kindness and A Quiet Place: Day One
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger; Our Mothers; Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes; and The Almond and the Seahorse