ANGUS REID, MARIA DUARTE and JOHN GREEN review Protein, Tornado, How to Train Your Dragon, and Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

MARIA DUARTE recommends the deeply moving story, based on real experience, of a homeless single mother

By Mark Fiddes

CHRIS SEARLE speaks to saxophonist Vaughan Hawthorne-Nelson

MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys a father’s memoir of life with his autistic son, and the music they explore together

JENNY FARRELL relishes a modern parable that challenges readers to confront the legacies of empire, and the possibilities of resistance

A corrupted chemist, a Hampstead homosexual and finely observed class-conflict at The Bohemia

CAL MCBRIDE recommends that you follow a coming-of-age trans story through harrowing lows to a point of optimistic triumph

KEVIN DONELLY recommends the re-release of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine, improved by a new soundtrack by Asian Dub Foundation

WILL STONE applauds a fine production that endures because its ever-relevant portrait of persecution

Re-releases from Sharks and Return To Forever, and a new release from Nikki O’Neill

JAN WOOLF applauds the necessarily subversive character of the Palestinian poster in Britain

RITA DI SANTO draws attention to an audacious and entertaining film that transplants Tarantino to the Gaza Strip

SYLVIA HIKINS is bowled over by a wonderful show that both entertains and educates

SETH SANDRONSKY welcomes the faith-based argument for a moral revolt against zionism but finds it insufficient

JOHN HAWKINS welcomes the straight-talking condemnation of genocide by a queer Jewish environmental journalist

MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes a comprehensive history of the national debt, while regretting that it is neither up to date, nor has a class-based analysis

TOMASZ PIERSCIONEK relishes a detailed history of the battles, manoeuvres and tactics that defeated fascism

JOHN GREEN, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Goebbels and the Fuhrer, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, Dangerous Animals, and Falling Into Place

MARIA DUARTE recommends an exposure of the state violence used against pro-Palestine protests in the US

CHRIS SEARLE urges you to hear the US saxophonist Joe McPhee on livestream tonight

ALAN MORRISON reflects on the subtle achievement of a rare exercise in a loose sonnet form

GARRITT C VAN DYK explains how snails and oysters became luxury foods

Novels by Cuban Carlos Manuel Alvarez and Argentinean Andres Tacsir, a political novella in verse by Uruguayan Mario Benedetti, and a trilogy of poetry books by Mexican cult poet Bruno Dario

SIMON DUFF recommends an outstanding album of choral works that range from the 12th century to the present day

New releases from Kassi Valazza, Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, and Friendship

PETER MASON is wowed (and a little baffled) by the undeniably ballet-like grace of flamenco

MEIC BIRTWHISTLE relishes a fine production by an amateur company of a rousing exploration of Wales' radical history

RITA DI SANTO reports on the films from Iran, Spain, Belgium and Brazil that won the top awards

BOB NEWLAND relishes a fascinating read as well as an invaluable piece of local research

JOHN GREEN wades through a pessimistic prophesy that does not consider the need for radical change in political and social structures

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a disturbing book that seeks to recover traces of the past that have been erased by Israeli colonialism

RON JACOBS salutes a magnificent narrative that demonstrates how the war replaced European colonialism with US imperialism and Soviet power

The bard heralds the festive summer 

The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Along Came Love, The Ballad of Wallis Island, The Ritual, and Karate Kid: Legends

MARIA DUARTE recommends the powerful dramatisation of the true story of a husband and wife made homeless

ANGUS REID recommends a visit to an outstanding gathering of national and international folk musicians in the northern archipelago

by Helen McSherry

Heart Lamp by the Indian writer Banu Mushtaq and winner of the 2025 International Booker prize is a powerful collection of stories inspired by the real suffering of women, writes HELEN VASSALLO

Still Wakes The Deep deserves its three Baftas for superlative survival horror game thrills, argues THOMAS HAINEY

SIMON PARSONS is taken by a thought provoking and intelligent play performed with great sensitivity

MARY CONWAY recommends a play that some will find more discursive than eventful but one in which the characters glow

FIONA O'CONNOR recommends a biography that is a beautiful achievement and could stand as a manifesto for the power of subtlety in art

ANDY HEDGECOCK admires a critique of the penetration of our lives by digital media, but is disappointed that the underlying cause is avoided

STEVEN ANDREW is ultimately disappointed by a memoir that is far from memorable

PETER MASON is surprised by the bleak outlook foreseen for cricket’s future by the cricketers’ bible

MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play that presents Shelley as polite and conventional man who lives a chocolate box, cottagey life

Reading Picasso’s Guernica like a comic strip offers a new way to understand the story it is telling, posits HARRIET EARLE  

STEVE JOHNSON interviews with Martin Green about his love affair with brass bands

GEORGE FOGARTY falls under a spell of an unpretentious gathering that is as edifying as it is entertaining

MARIA DUARTE and MICHAL BONCZA review Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Bob Trevino Likes It, Lilo & Stitch, Fountain of Youth

MARIA DUARTE is in two minds about a peculiar latest offering from Wes Anderson

New releases from Nazar, Peter Gregson and Mesias Maiguashca

ANGUS REID calls for artists and curators to play their part with political and historical responsibility

Generous helpings of Hawaiian pidgin, rather good jokes, and dodging the impostors

MARY CONWAY is stirred by a play that explores masculinity every bit as much as it penetrates addiction

by Tracey Rhys

Chris Searle speaks to saxophonist XHOSA COLE and US tap-dancer LIBERTY STYLES

LEO BOIX introduces a bold novel by Mapuche writer Daniela Catrileo, a raw memoir from Cuban-Russian author Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and powerful poetry by Mexican Juana Adcock

RITA DI SANTO speaks to the exiled Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa about Two Prosecutors, his chilling study of the Stalinist purges

FIONA O’CONNOR is fascinated by a novel written from the perspective of a neurodivergent psychology student who falls in love

MATTHEW HAWKINS gives us a sense of what to expect from Glasgow’s International Dance festival

New releases from Robert Forster, Self Esteem, and Arve Henriksen

SIMON PARSONS is gripped by a psychological thriller that questions the the power of the state over vulnerable individuals

SUSAN DARLINGTON is bowled over by an outstanding play about the past, present and future of race and identity in the US

RON JACOBS welcomes an investigation of the murders of US leftist activists that tells the story of a solidarity movement in Chile

RITA DI SANTO surveys the smorgasbord of films on offer at this year’s festival

The bard gives us advance notice of his upcoming medieval K-pop releases

KEN COCKBURN assesses the art of Ian Hamilton Finlay for the experience of warfare it incited and represents

GORDON PARSONS steps warily through the pessimistic world view of an influential US conservative

HENRY BELL takes issue with the assertion that basic income is a remedy for poverty when it doesn’t address the inbuilt inequality of capitalism

Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA

MARIA DUARTE is gripped by a tense drama set almost entirely in a car as distressed parents try to rescue their wayward daughter

In this production of David Mamet’s play, MARY CONWAY misses the essence of cruelty that is at the heart of the American deal

Poems by Mohammed Moussa, Mark Kirkbride, Omar Sabbagh, Ruth Aylett, Mark Paffard and Patrick Jones

SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star

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

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

A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens 

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

GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world

ELIZABETH SHORT recommends a bracing study of energy intensive AI and the race of such technology towards war profits

RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery

HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come

MATTHEW HAWKINS surveys the upcoming programme of contemporary dance in Glasgow, and picks some highlights

JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media

‘Chance encounters are what keep us going,’ says novelist Haruki Murakami. In Amy, a chance encounter gives fresh perspective to memories of angst, hedonism and a charismatic teenage rebel.

The Star's critics MARIA DUARTE and MICHAL BONCZA review Backlash: The Murder of George Floyd, The Uninvited, The Surfer, and Motel Destino

No excuses can hide the criminal actions of a Nazi fellow-traveller in this admirably objective documentary, suggests MARTIN HALL

DAVID NICHOLSON applauds the return of Azuka Oforka’s stunning drama about slave plantation politics

PAUL DONOVAN relishes a fascinating exploration of the leading lights of the Labour right in the 1970s

BEN LUNN alerts us to the creeping return of philanthropy and private patronage, and suggests alternative paths to explore

A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis

MAYER WAKEFIELD laments the lack of audience interaction and social diversity in a musical drama set on London’s Underground

WILL STONE foresees the refashioning of Beckett’s study of bitter nostalgia given the plethora of self-recording we make in the digital age

New releases reviewed by IAN SINCLAIR

MIK SABIERS savours the first headline solo show of the stalwart of Brighton’s indie-punk outfit Blood Red Shoes

The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess

CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington

STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves

JONATHAN TAYLOR is intrigued by an account of the struggle of Soviet-era musicians to adapt to the strictures of social realism

GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin

CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity

GEORGE FOGARTY is stunned by the epic and life-affirming sound of an outstanding Palestinian musical collective

GORDON PARSONS meditates on the appetite of contemporary audiences for the obscene cruelty of Shakespeare’s Roman nightmare

MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity

Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE

JOHN GREEN recommends a German comedy that celebrates the old GDR values of solidarity, community and a society not dominated by consumerism

CHRIS SEARLE wallows in an evening of high class improvised jazz, and recommends upcoming highlights in May

by Abeer Ameer

MARY CONWAY applauds the revival of a tense, and extremely funny, study of men, money and playing cards

MEHDI ACHOUCHE explores the constant fascination of cinema with Marxist alienation from Fritz Lang and Chaplin to Bong Joon Ho

FIONA O’CONNOR steps warily through a novel that skewers many of the exposed flanks of the over-privileged

MARY CONWAY applauds the study of a dysfunctional family set in an Ireland that could be anywhere

New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott

MARY CONWAY relishes two matchless performers and a masterclass in tightly focused wordplay

MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion

LOUISE BOURDUA introduces the emotional and narrative religious art of 14th-century Siena that broke with Byzantine formalism and laid the foundations for the Renaissance

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

JON BALDWIN recommends a provocative assertion of how working-class culture can rethink knowledge

These are vivid accounts of people’s experiences of far-right violence along with documentation of popular resistance, says MARJORIE MAYO

The Star's critics MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review An Army of Women, Julie Keeps Quiet, The Friend and The Ugly Stepsister

MARIA DUARTE recommends a tough love story that unfolds among mental health issues, drug addiction and inadequate housing

GORDON PARSONS squirms at a production that attempts to update Shakespeare’s comedy to a tale of Premier League football

by Pen Kease

Above a Gothic bar just down from Brighton station, something spooky is happening, suggests JAMES WALSH

How underground bands formed a vital part of the struggle against white supremacy

PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river

DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid

MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir

MIK SABIERS admires a band that delivers short, sharp shocks to the system

New releases from Brown Horse, Craig Finn, and Julien Baker & TORRES

A beautifully-crafted documentary from Sinéad O’Shea

STEVE JOHNSON, CHRIS SEARLE and TONY BURKE review new releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ

Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds