Latest news with #NightCall
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Night Call review – locksmith opens the wrong door in impressively twisty crime caper
Picturesque, bureaucracy-dominated Brussels is probably not on the top of many lists of cities likely to serve as a setting for an exciting crime film. But this Francophone drama just goes to prove that, given enough moody lamplit street scenes, well-designed stunts and chase sequences and a bit of imagination, any city will work. It's even more impressive a feat in that it is co-writer-director Michiel Blanchart's first feature, and yet it feels confident, inventive and as grippy as duct tape throughout. The protagonist is Mady Bala (Jonathan Feltre, displaying impressive subtlety and physical prowess), a young, independent locksmith who stays up all night on call in case he's summoned to help a customer break into their own home. In order to ensure he's not being used to commit a crime, Mady usually asks to see a callout client's ID, or at least get paid 250 euros in advance. On the night this all takes place, he lets these precautions slide for Claire (Natacha Krief), a pretty girl who shares his taste for an old chanson he hums while working, who says her money and her wallet are inside the flat. Of course, that's a big mistake and soon Mady is ensnared by a gang hunting down a stolen fortune, one led by icily efficient boss Yannick (Romain Duris), assisted by thugs Remy (Thomas Mustin) and Theo (Jonas Bloquet). The latter turns out to have just a smidge more humanity, or at least a weak spot, that gives Mady a chance to survive. Blanchart has mentioned Michael Mann's Collateral as an influence, and that's certainly evident, especially in the way the plot turns on a schlubby ordinary guy discovering the capacity within himself to fight back. He even finds the chutzpah to do a little betraying of his own when required, which adds a certain realism. Blanchart keeps the beat steady with a tight rhythm of tension and release, interspersing talky tense bits with bravura action, like a bike ride down the steps of an underground station. It's all heady enough to keep you distracted from thinking about how this could have all been prevented all this from happening if someone had just paid Mady his 250 euros right at the start. Night Call is on digital platforms from 28 April.
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Olly Alexander review – part night creature, part light entertainer
'I'm all about playful subversion,' declares Olly Alexander with a grin on the final night of his UK tour. Clad in a series of outfits whose shiny buttons nod towards London's pearly kings and queens and the dressing-up box – there's one handily located on the left side of the stage – he is outlining the essence of Polari, the slang once used by the LGBTQ+ community, showfolk and the denizens of London's Soho, as was. Evolving out of the vocabularies of Italian immigrants and Travellers to evade the understanding of law enforcement and mainstream society in the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries, Polari also doubles as the title of Alexander's latest, queer-club pop-themed album. Released two months ago, it was the first under his own name; previously, he had traded as Years & Years, first as a band, then as a solo project. The gravelly tones of Ian McKellen provide a few booming Polari phrases during the show's opening sequence; the great man himself occupies a box up to the right. Aptly, we're in a plush, famous theatre on the fringes of Soho where the khazis may be bijou but in no way manky. Aptly as well: throughout Alexander's set, it sometimes feels a bit like watching a West End theatre show about a national treasure gamely regrouping after some career contretemps, returning to musical theatre as his first love. There really should be a glossy souvenir programme to parse on the tube home. Chart-wise, Polari didn't match Alexander's previous outings, two of which went to No 1 (most recently with 2022's Night Call album). Then there was his rout at last year's Eurovision, his performance garnering the dreaded nul points in the public vote. Postmortems abounded online; many wondered whether the UK should have taken part at all, given the participation of Israel. Gamely, Alexander keeps Dizzy, his Eurovision song, in the set, but performs it at the piano, accompanied by two backing vocalists whose dulcet tones and dance moves flesh out the night's bare bones set-up (a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist are housed behind a strip of feathery pampas grass). The red tights and codpiece from the singer's Eurovision outfit are paraded around with a kind of wistful fondness – 'I wouldn't change a thing,' he says – before he returns them to the dressing-up box, where they stick out 'like the legs of the Wicked Witch of the West'. It's all a far cry from what a Polari tour could have been. On paper, the choice of producer Danny L Harle (also in the house tonight) seemed inspired. An alumnus of the hyperpop incubator PC Music, he has had a hand in critical and commercial successes for artists such as Caroline Polachek and Dua Lipa, as well as his own ear-ringing Harlecore LP of 2021. Harle's fondness for hi-NRG and Eurodance tropes were a good match for Alexander and his desire to pay tribute to the gay club sounds of the past (and fully author his own work – no band members, no external writers, just two people in a room). Had they maxed out these convictions, Alexander the light entertainer might have been reborn as an outre night creature, feted as an auteur alongside Charli xcx. There's a tantalising hint of that alternative outcome in the title track itself, a festival of whacking great Jam and Lewis synth beats last heard on Janet Jackson's 1980s albums, lit by harsh strobes and full of attitude at people who are 'saying nothing'. A song called I Know turns the phrase 'I know what you are' from accusation to come hither on another promising Jackson-meets-2020s cut. The more fluorescent sounds of the Polari album rightly belong in a nightclub, with its livelier production choices turned up to 11, rather than a velvet-seated institution. As it is, this tour seems to be designed not to scare the Lorraine and Michael McIntyre audiences any further, one that merely adds the Polari songs to Alexander's Years & Years back catalogue – King, Desire and Shine, three foundational 2014-15 hits are here, alongside If You're Over Me from 2018's Palo Santo. It's a Sin, the Pet Shop Boys track that lent its title to the Channel 4 drama set amid the 80s Aids crisis, which established Alexander as beloved multi-hyphenate, is also in the mix. It's hard to imagine synth master Chris Lowe voluntarily signing off on the track's electric guitar solo, however, or Harle being OK with the unnecessary axe work on the song Polari. The tour of an album dedicated to the pleasures of the synthetic might be better served as a guitar-free zone. Alexander himself is never less than good company, warm in presence and professionally loose-limbed, but there is something a little self-limiting about even this new batch of songs, tracks that were intended as a candid, authentic reset. Changing into a different capella (hat), he launches into Make Me a Man, a bouncy synth-pop number replete with double entendres. 'When I wake in the morning will you have something for me?' sings Alexander. 'Won't you fill this hole' – he pauses – 'in my heart?' What's Polari for 'missed opportunity'?
The Independent
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Album reviews: Olly Alexander – Polari and Inhaler
★★☆☆☆ It's strange to consider Polari as Olly Alexander's debut solo album, but so goes the latest career step for the former Years & Years frontman. Having first risen to fame with the band behind 2015's synth-pop hits 'King' and 'Shine', he officially ditched the moniker last year and now, here we are. Alexander's career arc has been bumpy, to say the least. Amid the split from his bandmates, he found critical acclaim as lead character Ritchie in Russell T Davies' wonderful Channel 4 drama It's a Sin, having previously dabbled with minor roles in shows such as Skins, the brilliant Keats biopic Bright Star and Jack Black's 2010 flop Gulliver's Travels. His music projects have been more scattershot. Years and Years's third and final album Night Call – made without co-founders Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Türkmen – failed to match the success of its predecessors. Meanwhile, his valiant attempt at Eurovision with single 'Dizzy' landed the UK in 18th place, amid controversy over the presence of Israel in the annual song contest. When it comes to Polari, Alexander has the basis of some great ideas but lacks the conviction to carry it off. Occasionally (and similar to Night Call), it feels like he's grasping for the kind of queer-centric alt-pop or R&B that Perfume Genius, serpentwithfeet and Christine and the Queens excel at – or indeed the in-your-face brashness of Charli XCX. More often than not, though, this record stumbles at the first hurdle. Produced by PC Music's Danny L Harle (Dua Lipa, Liam Gallagher), it's got all the ingredients you'd expect on an Eighties-influenced record, with synths that alternately stab, buzz and sprawl in deference to pioneers such as Pet Shop Boys and Erasure. It's pastiche, a farrago of half-baked ideas, even veering into Noughties club territory on occasion, which suggests Alexander and Harle are going through a checklist rather than carrying out any clear artistic vision. With his songwriting, too, he quails when approaching themes of closeted sex, yearning, sexual tension and loneliness in the gay community. The album is named after the language created from bits of Italian, Romani, Cockney rhyming slang and Yiddish, used by travelling entertainers in the 19th century and later adopted by gay men around the Fifties and Sixties. All subjects that should thrill but in Alexander's hands manage to sound rather dull. There's an endeavour at storytelling on the Vince Clarke-produced 'Make Me a Man', delivered over a buzzy electronic beat and twee acoustic guitar riffs. The overall effect, though, is more akin to Steps' '5, 6, 7, 8' being thrown in a blender with 'Freedom!' by George Michael than Clarke's more experimental productions. Elsewhere, I'm desperate for more insight than we hear on the single 'Cupid's Bow', on which he sings: 'You've done somethin' to me/ And I love the way it feels/ But maybe I just don't know what I want.' 'Shadow of Love' is marginally better: a moody, dungeon-clank and synth-jab of a tune about craving the slightest taste of a romantic connection (I adore the deliberate stumble as he asks, 'Love me once and then fu-forget about me'), yet he's so fixated on that title refrain it sounds like he's stuck on repeat. Polari is brash and bold on the surface, but Alexander flails when searching for something truly profound to say. Inhaler – Open Wide ★★★★☆ The musical nepo baby can only get so far without talent or drive. That Inhaler frontman Elijah Hewson, son of U2's Bono, is still here, releasing his third – and most satisfying – album with the Dublin-formed band is enough proof, then, that he has plenty of both. Open Wide is indeed full of ambition, heaving with slick-sounding anthems that are ripe for a mass singalong. 'Billy (yeah yeah yeah)' cruises along a summery guitar groove and rippling percussion, backed by nice harmonies and Hewson's reverb-soaked croon. 'Even Though' deploys a dark, Cure-inspired bass line while the singer adopts a Robert Smith drawl. 'Your House' buzzes with paranoia as it explores the obsessive nature of young love. In a recent interview with The Independent, Hewson said this record reflects what he dubs his quarter-life crisis, as he starts to contemplate past decisions, both good and bad. 'Again' wrestles with the notion of parenthood, written from the perspective of someone living in rock'n'roll Neverland. Opener 'Eddie in the Darkness' careens around a piano motif before flailing into the chorus, as its title character stumbles through emptying bars. Our review of Inhaler's 2021 debut lamented that it leant too heavily on lyrical cliches and the classic rockers of old. Open Wide melds the confidence of youth with the poise that comes from experience. It's the sound of a band who've truly come into their own.
