ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher
Film round-up: April 18, 2024
Vegan sermons, undercut snobs, fake messiahs and mash-up horror. The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews I Could Never Go Vegan, Jeanne Du Barry, The Book of Clarence, and Abigail
VERY NAUGHTY BOY: Johnny Depp in Jeanne Du Barry; LaKeith Stanfield in The Book of Clarence
[IMDb] 
ALEX HALL is frustrated by a book that ducks a clear definition of terrorism and fails to perceive the role of the state in sponsoring it
JOE GILL wholeheartedly recommends an eloquent manifesto: how to change the world one local project at a time
Inspired by a photograph, a unique memorial in Michigan immortalises US true labour heroes. MICHAL BONCZA recalls a great story rarely told
MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
MARIA DUARTE is entertained by a wry portrait of befuddled resistance to US authoritarianism
I Could Never Go Vegan (12A)
Directed by Thomas Pickering
★★★
FILM-MAKER Thomas Pickering, who has never eaten meat in his life, embarks on a fact-finding mission to investigate people’s reasons and concerns as to why they could never go vegan.
These include lack of protein, being malnourished, and their love of bacon and cheese. The same old arguments that his mother was confronted with when she decided to stop eating meat back in the 1980s, as she informs him.
Pickering interviews health experts as well as vegan athletes and ordinary people doing extraordinary things such as 86-year-old Paul Youd, an ultramarathon runner who didn’t begin running until he was 82.
More from this author
MARIA DUARTE is entertained by a wry portrait of befuddled resistance to US authoritarianism
MARIA DUARTE recommends the powerful study of an underfunded reform school and the staff who struggle to do good
MARIA DUARTE cherishes the flashes of absurd humour and theme of community healing in a documentary set in a Soviet-era Black Sea sanatorium
MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable documentary, culled from 20 years of smartphone footage, that documents the trials of being a single parent
