What It Feels Like for a Girl to Turnstile : the week in rave reviews

The Guardian

21 hours ago

BBC iPlayer; full series available
Summed up in a sentence The wild, witty tale of a 00s Nottinghamshire adolescence that leaps from sex work to drug-fuelled nights of hedonism, adapted from trans writer Paris Lees' autobiography.
What our reviewer said 'A resolutely unsentimental tale of a chaotic, morally ambiguous period of transition. It's certainly a wild ride.' Rachel Aroesti
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Further reading 'All of us felt like we had touched gold': What It Feels Like for a Girl, the BBC's electric coming-of-age tale
Netflix; all episodes available
Summed up in a sentence A tense, twisty adaptation of an Australian crime novel, set against the tale of the only survivor of a disaster moving back to his rage- and sorrow-filled small town home after 15 years of self-imposed exile.
What our reviewer said 'A study in how raw grief and festering resentment warp everything – and how surviving a tragedy rarely means getting away unscathed.' Lucy Mangan
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Apple TV+; episodes weekly
Summed up in a sentence Owen Wilson charms as a washed-up golfer turned coach in a redemptive sporting tale that hopes to be the Ted Lasso of hitting balls with metal sticks.
What our reviewer said 'It's a pleasant, feelgood half-hour every time. It never outstays its welcome, everyone puts in a solid performance and Wilson brings every ounce of energy he has to every scene he's in.' Lucy Mangan
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Further reading Owen Wilson's charmingly funny golf drama is as feelgood as Ted Lasso
BBC iPlayer; full series available
Summed up in a sentence A profile of the terrorist who was once the most wanted man in the world, featuring an exclusive phone interview with him from prison – in which he inadvertently shatters his mystique.
What our reviewer said 'This guy has been romanticised as international terrorism's answer to James Bond – a man of mystery as suave as he is elusive. Close up, he gives off loner vibes, and the photos we see of his various guises don't burnish his cool-villain credentials, either: he almost always looks like a beady uncle whom female guests have to avoid at a wedding disco.' Jack Seale
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BBC iPlayer; full series available
Summed up in a sentence A thoughtful, sober documentary about a staggering football stadium fire, to mark 40 years since the tragedy unfolded.
What our reviewer said 'Perhaps the film's most memorable sequence arrives when we watch television coverage of the game, which soon becomes a report on the fire. The shortness of the time that elapses between minor incident and major disaster is wholly terrifying.' Jack Seale
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Further reading: 'The whole city was touched': Bradford marks 40 years since the Valley Parade fire
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence In a spinoff from the John Wick franchise, Ana de Armas is a feisty assassin trained in ballet and martial arts, combining delicacy and violence in her quest for vengeance.
What our reviewer said 'De Armas carries off the essential silliness of Ballerina and, after her performance as Paloma in No Time to Die opposite Daniel Craig's 007, she proves again she can do action, in both couture and daytime wear.' Peter Bradshaw
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In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Joachim Lang's bleak film shows a preening Goebbels and a careworn Hitler as they battle to convince the German public, and themselves, they will win the war.
What our reviewer said 'In its subversive, austerely satirical way, the film feels almost like a B-side to Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall from 2004, and Lang has perhaps even inhaled, just a little, the numberless internet parody memes that Downfall inspired, with English subtitles reinterpreting Hitler's impotent rage.' Peter Bradshaw
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In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Documentary on Columbia pro-Palestine student protests of April 2024, is fascinating but much has been superseded by the arrest of student organiser Mahmoud Khalil after the re-election of Trump.
What our reviewer said 'Khalil is smilingly interviewed at the end, stating his belief that this cause is approaching success. But that interview was presumably filmed before the new brutality of the Trump administration and the outrageous arrest of Khalil, who is now held in a Louisiana jail, and was only recently allowed to see his infant son.' Peter Bradshaw
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In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Isabelle Huppert gives the performance of her career in Michael Haneke's 2001 tale of a sado-masochistic music professor, rereleased as part of a Haneke retrospective.
What our reviewer said 'There can be no doubt of Haneke's extraordinary ability to generate scenes of nerve-jangling disquiet and intimately unpleasant trauma. He can simply put you in a place you don't want to be, and keep you there.' Peter Bradshaw
Further reading No pain no gain: director Michael Haneke talks sadomasochism with Stuart Jeffries
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Prime Video; available now
Summed up in a sentence Cillian Murphy plays a man who witnesses Ireland's church's abusive workhouses for unwed mothers in a piercingly painful Magdalene Laundries drama.
What our reviewer said 'Murphy shows us once again his sightless stare of fear and pain, as the witness to something terrible not just in the real world but within himself.' Peter Bradshaw
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Review by Olivia Laing
Summed up in a sentence The enigmatic novelist reconsidered.
What our reviewer said 'Brilliant, beautiful and disinclined to conceal her talent or ambition, Spark was much desired and much despised in London.'
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Review by Gaby Hinsliff
Summed up in a sentence The former New Zealand PM takes us behind the scenes of her years in office.
What our reviewer said 'Ardern is a disarmingly likable, warm and funny narrator, as gloriously informal on the page as she seems in person.'
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Further reading 'Empathy is a kind of strength': Jacinda Ardern on kind leadership, public rage and life in Trump's America
Review by Josie Glausiusz
Summed up in a sentence How wildlife survives in the most extreme environments What our reviewer said 'In 2022 scientists were able to film a snailfish at 8,336 metres below sea level off the coast of Japan – a depth roughly equivalent to the height of Everest'
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Review by Sarah Moss
Summed up in a sentence A book about art, faith and relationship breakdown that is half fiction, half something else
What our reviewer said 'Lacey is fascinated by literary form and by the metaphors for literary form, finding fiction at once a constraint and a space for play.'
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Review by Nina Allen
Summed up in a sentence Portrait of a film-maker's moral struggles under the Nazis, from the author of Measuring the World.
What our reviewer said 'The Director has all the darkness, shapeshifting ambiguity and glittering unease of a modern Grimms' fairytale: it is Kehlmann's best work yet.'
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Review by Sara Collins
Summed up in a sentence An astute and moving exploration of female experience.
What our reviewer said 'Such is the nature of Adichie's masterly sentences, clear as polished windowpanes, that one has no choice but to look more closely, and to see that what these women pine for is always out of reach.'
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Out now
Summed up in a sentence Already pushing the boundaries of hardcore punk into pop and beyond, the Baltimore band press on even further with their latest LP.
What our reviewer said 'There's so much else happening, a profusion of ideas so deftly handled, but it never feels sprawling or indulgent.' Alexis Petridis
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Out 13 June
Summed up in a sentence They helped to pioneer Zambia's 'Zamrock' sound in the early 1970s – and their first new album in 30 years shows that the vocal power of 74-year-old frontman Emmanuel 'Jagari' Chanda is undiminished.
What our reviewer said 'Highlight Nadi could be peak Led Zeppelin if not for Chanda's playfully AutoTuned Bemba lyrics skipping over the band's chugging psych riffs. These joyously strange combinations show the Zamrock originators to be just as imaginative now as they ever were.' Ammar Kalia
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Further reading Witch: the glory and tragedy of Zambia's psych-rock trailblazers
Out now
Summed up in a sentence The youthful Chicago DIY darlings deliver their debut album of tightly wound post-punk – and it's a total blast.
What our reviewer said 'Urgent, off-kilter and even slightly disorienting … it's refreshing to hear a young band make such a bold racket.' Dave Simpson
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Out now
Summed up in a sentence Revisiting the work György Ligeti made amid a sharp stylistic shift in the 1980s, this set features Isabelle Faust on violin and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger on piano.
What our reviewer said 'Both are remarkable works, which seem utterly fresh and original, yet identifiably remain part of the concerto tradition.' Andrew Clements
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Ovo Hydro, Glasgow; touring to 15 June
Summed up in a sentence The 75-year-old pop legend heads back out to arenas, and delivers a masterclass in charm.
What our reviewer said 'He has joyful chemistry with his band, and together they put plenty of polish on Richie's trophy cabinet of hits … this is Richie on cruise control, but radiant nonetheless.' Katie Hawthorne
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