RICHARD MURGATROYD is intrigued by a study that asks why the ability to diagnose outstrips the ability to cure
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Don't try this at home
Mom and Dad is a perversely enjoyable satire about domestic violence at its most extreme, says MARIA DUARTE
SYLVIA HIKINS recommends a sweeping survey of the world's biggest desert and the people who live there
MICHAL BONCZA highly recommends a revelatory exhibition of work by the doyen of indigenous Australians’ art, Emily Kam Kngwarray
The Bard commutes to work for the first time in 45 years
DAVID RENTON is puzzled by an ambitious attempt to look back on world culture from the future without engaging with or understanding it
GORDON PARSONS is riveted by a translation of Shakespeare’s tragedy into joyous comedy set in a southern black homestead
GEORGE FOGARTY relishes the music of black British artists that channels Carribbean, Latin and club sounds, along with contemporary west African radicalism
Mom and Dad (15)
Directed by Brian Taylor
★★★★
NICOLAS CAGE is at his crazy best in this deliciously macabre horror-comedy satire about the pressures of parenthood, middle-aged anxiety and broken dreams in middle America as, with a mysterious epidemic sweeping the country, parents turn violently on their kids.
Mom and Dad begins with a woman driving a car onto a railway line and, leaving a toddler on the back seat, walks away. A train crashes into the vehicle, killing the child, and this sets the dark and twisted tone of this bonkers horror film written and directed by Brian Taylor, who seems to be channelling George A Romero.
Cage plays Brent Taylor, a disillusioned middle-aged father of two, who's having a midlife crisis. He hates his humdrum job and daydreams of his younger self driving wildly fast with a half-naked woman riding him as he nestles his head between her breasts.
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