Five of the best ... films
Coco (U)
(Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina, 2017, US) 105 mins
Pixar gets everything right with this wondrous Mexican family story: richly filled with magic, music and sensitivity – cultural and otherwise. It’s also a movie about death: our boy hero’s defiance of the family taboo against music strands him in the Land of the Dead, with only his skeleton ancestors to help him get home.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (15)
(Martin McDonagh, 2017, UK/US) 115 mins
Frances McDormand’s crusade for justice riles up her close-knit small town, including cops Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, in a morality drama that’s humane, heartfelt and often hilarious. McDonagh constantly upends expectations. Apart from a questionable handling of race issues, it’s almost perfect.
The Post (12A)
(Steven Spielberg, 2017, US) 115 mins
Spielberg dashes off a classy 1970s newsroom procedural that’s a timely defence of press freedom and practically a prequel to All the President’s Men. Meryl Streep plays Kay Graham, new publisher of the Washington Post, and Tom Hanks its veteran editor, Ben Bradlee, both of whom are put in a dilemma by the Nixon administration’s attempt to quash reporting of the Pentagon Papers, revealing deception over the Vietnam war.
Darkest Hour (PG)
(Joe Wright, 2017, UK) 125 mins
The world hardly needs another Churchill story, but Gary Oldman gives a robust, rich portrayal of the prime minister at his most politically embattled in this drama. Faced with enemies at home as well as abroad, he ranges between defiance, drunkenness and despondency. His wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) and secretary (Lily James) provide support
The Final Year (12A)
(Greg Barker, 2017, US) 89 mins
In contrast to Michael Wolff’s Trump tell-all Fire and Fury, this fly-on-the-wall doc exposes the Obama White House as a harmonious team of committed grownups trying to do the right thing. There are fascinating details and characters to enjoy (Obama himself rarely appears). Warning: side effects may include nostalgia, despair and uncontrollable weeping.
RS
Five of the best ... pop and rock gigs
Steve Aoki
Famed for his acrobatic crowdsurfing exploits, as well as his catch-all attitude to collaboration (everyone from Migos to Fall Out Boy), EDM overlord Aoki brings his live show to the UK this week. His recent single with 1D’s Louis Tomlinson has helped shuffle him closer to mainstream recognition, but expect the focus to still be on lasers and organ-displacing drops.
O2 Academy Brixton, SW9 Friday 26 January; touring to 30 January
Cults
Brooklyn bedroom-pop duo Cults, AKA Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion, first came to attention with 2010’s undeniably lovely internet hit Go Outside. Lily Allen was a fan; she signed them to her now-defunct label and released their 2011 debut. Since then their sound has grown brighter and more robust, showcased on new album, Offering.
Manchester, Wednesday 24 January; London, Thursday 25 January
Louise
The rash of 90s pop comebacks continues with the return of ex-Eternal chanteuse Louise who, like Madonna and Beyoncé, has no need for a surname (Redknapp, née Nurding, obvs). Having scored nine UK Top 10 singles between 1995 and 2003 (Naked being the highlight), Louise returned for a one-off London show last year and follows that up with a proper tour entitled – get the candles ready – Intimate.
Manchester, Saturday 20 January; Glasgow, Sunday 21 January; Birmingham, Monday 22 January; London, Wednesday 24 January
Donae’o
Not content with nurturing a solo career that started in 2002, UK rapper-singer Donae’o has also built up a pretty impressive production discography with recent additions including the likes of Ms Banks, Dizzee Rascal and Giggs. Last December’s surprise mixtape Sixteen suggests he’s keen to switch the focus back to his own output and quite right, too.
Islington Assembly Hall, N1, Thursday 25 January
MC
Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
The internationally acclaimed SNJO, led by delicately eloquent saxophonist Tommy Smith, play three diverse sets, devoted respectively to the music of Gershwin, Bernstein and Ellington (Thu); Henry Mancini and Johnny Mandel (Fri); and gospel-fuelled genius Charles Mingus (Fri late).
Ronnie Scott’s, W1, Thursday 25 January & Friday 26 January
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Time Phase
Percussionist Colin Currie and his group devote an evening to their particular specialism: Steve Reich. The programme ranges across Reich’s career, from early minimalist classics such as Music for Pieces of Wood, Mallet Quartet and Drumming right up to the 2013 Quartet, which was written for Currie.
Kings Place, N1, Saturday 20 January
London Sinfonietta at 50
On the precise anniversary of its very first concert, the Sinfonietta celebrates its half century with three conductors: David Atherton, George Benjamin and Vladimir Jurowski. The programme looks forward and back, with classics by Stravinsky and Ligeti, new works from Deborah Pritchard and Samantha Fernando, and a celebratory set of variations from 14 composers.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Wednesday 24 January
Welsh National Opera Orchestra & BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Cardiff’s two resident orchestras and their conductors share a programme as part of the Association of British Orchestras conference. Tomáš Hanus conducts a suite from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier with the WNO, before handing over to Thomas Søndergård and the BBC NOW for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, Wednesday 24 January
Turangalîla Symphony
Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic tackle one of the 20th century’s most opulent and ambitious orchestral masterpieces, Messiaen’s celebration of human and divine love, conceived on an epic scale. Here, the soloists are pianist Steven Osborne and ondes martenot player Nathalie Forget.
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, Thursday 25 January
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Glenn Brown
Painting is a perverse art that creates a sensual world outside time and remote from reality. Anyway, that’s how British artist Glenn Brown makes it look. From his early pastiches of Frank Auerbach and Salvador Dalí, which got him shortlisted for the Turner prize in 2000, this technically brilliant painter has evolved into a suggestive and poetic explorer of art’s unknown pleasures.
Gagosian Gallery, Grosvenor Hill, W1 Wednesday 24 January to 17 March
Andreas Gursky
This great German photographer’s epic studies of modern life bemuse and delight in their sheer sublime detail. From libraries to supermarkets to trading floors, Gursky stands far back to survey the scope of human activity and even reveal the underlying economic structures that shape it. His art is nothing less than a visual analysis of capitalism.
Hayward Gallery, SE1, Thursday 25 January to 22 April
The Enchanted Room
Italy at the dawn of the 20th century had barely begun its industrial revolution. Modern art offered a dream of the new. FT Marinetti led the futurist movement on a madcap dash in praise of speed. The clash between old and new struck other artists as melancholy. Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà (work pictured) and others explore Italy’s modern dream in this exhibition loaned from Milan’s celebrated Brera Gallery.
Estorick Collection, N1, Wednesday 24 January to 8 April
The Business of Prints
From the moment printing took off in 15th-century Europe, this new technology allowed images to be reproduced and circulated as never before. This exhibition looks at printmaking as a media business instead of a fine art. How were images made, sold and used? From Reformation propaganda to Georgian printshops, this fascinating cultural history also happens to include masterpieces by the likes of Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya.
British Museum, WC1, to 28 Jan
Turner in January
Every winter, like a blast of snow speeding over the Highlands, the National Gallery gets out its Turner watercolours. Turner’s art is the embodiment of weather: he translates the dynamic forces of nature – from searing sunlight to crashing waves – directly into surging colour. The earth moves in his art. His watercolours are not gentle views but concentrated shots of power.
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, to 31 January
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
The Believers Are But Brothers
Javaad Alipoor’s clever Edinburgh hit takes us into a shadowy internet world where sites used by the “alt-right”, such as 4Chan, or Isis recruitment videos are only a click away. A fascinatingly constructed and unsettlingly disturbing play about different kinds of extremism, it deploys WhatsApp technology to worm its way into your mind, using theatre as a forum to examine how we live now.
Bush Theatre, W12 Wed to 10 Feb
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk
The life and times of Marc and Bella Chagall are explored in a show about creativity, which is directed by Emma Rice with such a light touch that you really do believe these lovers can fly. It is uplifting stuff as it considers how somebody has to look after the baby, and it’s usually the woman.
Wilton’s Music Hall, E1, to 10 February; touring to 5 May
Beginning
One of 2017’s sleeper hits, David Eldridge’s quiet two-hander follows Danny, played by Sam Troughton, and Laura (Justine Mitchell) in the early, tentative moments of a relationship as they start to forge a connection amid the detritus of a drunken party in a Crouch End flat. Directed with care by Polly Findlay, this painful, tender and funny play is an unassuming and truthful pleasure. Long may it continue in the West End.
Ambassadors Theatre, WC2, booking to 24 March
Greater Belfast
Absence makes the heart grow fonder in Matt Regan’s piece, first seen at the Traverse in Edinburgh in 2016, which smashes the boundaries between theatre and gig as it explores notions of home. An unvarnished, unsentimental love letter to Belfast, it considers how sometimes you have to leave somewhere to find yourself and the way they draw you back. Part of the Celtic Connections festival, this is complex music-theatre memorably evoking place and space.
Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wednesday 24 January to 27 January
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
It is your last chance to find Narnia at the back of the wardrobe for now and it’s well worth pushing your way through the coats to meet the terrifying White Witch. If you fail, undoubtedly Sally Cookson’s much admired and hugely inventive staging of CS Lewis’s story will be picked up by another theatre before you can say Cair Paravel.
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, to 27 Jan
LG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Richard Alston Dance Company
Alston’s superb company of dancers perform his latest work, set to Schumann’s expressively coloured piano score Carnaval. This musically inspired mixed bill is completed by two older Alston pieces: Chacony, featuring scores by Purcell and Britten; and the intoxicatingly rhythmic Gypsy Mixture, inspired by Romanian and Macedonian Gypsy bands.
Theatre Royal, Bath Friday 26 & Saturday 27 January
Tilted Productions: Constructions of Thin Air
Tilted’s artistic director Maresa von Stockert makes a long-awaited return to the stage with this new work, in which she uses an intergenerational cast, ranging from their 20s to their 60s, to explore the private and the public logic of feeling at home.
DanceEast, Ipswich, Friday 26 January; touring to 10 Mar
Company Wayne McGregor: Autobiography
A welcome return for McGregor’s cleverly layered investigation into the nature of identity, first seen at Sadler’s Wells last October. It’s a mix of science, beautiful visuals and sometimes intimately personal dance.
Laban Theatre, SE8, Friday 26 & Saturday 27 January
