Reviews

Arts workers resist the grim future Tories have planned

The Tories’ response to the impact of the pandemic on the arts has been predictably brutal—but artists are fighting back, writes Mark Brown

Rocks—a brilliant, realistic film about young lives in London film

Rocks is a teenager struggling to take care of herself and her younger brother Emmanuel after her mum leaves them suddenly.

Kiss the Ground—documentary delivers climate change hope

“The Truth is, I had given up.”

La Revolution is a confusing “re-imagining” of the French Revolution

From the beginning La Revolution seems to touch on the upheaval that led to one of the most famous uprisings in history.

The Gambler—biography that’s a weak effort to show Boris Johnson’s ‘greatness’

Journalist Tom Bower’s last biography was a hatchet job on Jeremy Corbyn. His latest book fawns over Boris Johnson

Oil firms taken to task in Devil Has a Name

The star-studded drama can’t quite decide what kind of film it wants to be. But Simon Basketter says it’s enjoyable watching it try to work it out

A Moving Image shows gentrified London and a city constantly in motion

This award winning film investigates gentrification in Brixton, south London,

Public Enemy release a nostalgic album for new struggles

Fans have been waiting for Public Enemy to drop their new album What you Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down? since they returned to the Def Jam label

The Rhino Conspiracy—a novel that’s more than a thriller

The Rhino Conspiracy by Peter Hain follows a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle taking on corruption in the governing elite

Des—the grim reality of a killer shown in all its banal horror

David Tennant is brilliant as Nilsen, creating an unsettling, disturbing character

David King—the graphic designer who printed his mark on the left

Yuri Prasad rates a new compilation of David King’s work which shows how he influenced the revolutionary left—and the commercial world beyond it

Sue Perkins documentary shows the lives behind the border wall

Elena Ferrante's latest examines suffocating world of teenagers

If you want a break from the big stresses of coronavirus and economic crisis, read Elena Ferrante’s new novel. There you can fall into a world of the very real, but smaller-scale, stresses of a teenage girl.

Raging class anger on Idles’ bitter new album Ultra Mono

The latest offering from this guitar-driven five piece has no shortage of fights to pick, with assaults on war, sexism, racism and poverty, writes Alan Kenny