Five of the best… films
Diego Maradona (12A)
(Asif Kapadia, 2019, UK) 130 mins
With Senna and Amy, Brit director Asif Kapadia has emerged as a master of the archive-footage documentary. Here he takes on a bigger subject than either: the mercurial Argentinian footballer who dominated the game in the 80s. Kapadia’s film focuses on Maradona’s time at Napoli, where he singlehandedly yanked the team to the top, making a neat companion piece to Emir Kusturica’s 2008 study.
Late Night (15)
(Nisha Ganatra, 2019, US) 102 mins
Mindy Kaling is the star and writer of this homage to US TV comedy, as enshrined in late-night talkshows. She moves the subject on, however, by taking on the thorny issue of diversity: as with her own early career, her character here is a “diversity hire” that puts others’ noses out of joint. Emma Thompson, her Letterman-like mentor, also shines.
Men in Black: International (12A)
(F Gary Gray, 2019, UK/US) 115 mins
Hard to believe, but this is the fourth film in the series about undercover alien hunters, started more than two decades ago with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. This time they relocate to London and replace the headline cast, with one of the Men becoming a Woman: Tessa Thompson. Chris Hemsworth, as her suited and booted partner, does a passable British accent as the MiB’s top local agent.
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (15)
(Martin Scorsese, 2019, US) 142 mins
Scorsese’s patchwork account of Dylan’s celebrated 1975 tour of the US and Canada is getting a short release in “selected” cinemas alongside its appearance on Netflix. Scorsese doesn’t so much serve up a music documentary as co-create an act of Dylan worship, with archive material of the concerts, interview footage (including with Dylan himself) and nicely judged film clips from the likes of Méliès and Carné to set the mood.
The Italian Job (PG)
(Peter Collinson, 1969, UK) 99 mins
A car-chase classic that features patriotic Minis confusing Johnny Foreigner by driving on roofs and pavements; its hard grafters defeating the system through pure resourcefulness. Interesting to see how this will all go down in the era of Brexit.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Kylie Minogue
Ahead of her Sunday afternoon Glastonbury slot, enduring pop icon Kylie plays a couple of palaces, including two nights at Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s old gaff and one at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. There is a new, career-spanning greatest hits collection, Step Back in Time, to flog so expect all the hits plus some fan favourites.
Hampton Court Palace, East Molesey Thursday 20 & Friday 21 June; touring to 3 August
Die Antwoord
In early 2017, gonzo South African hip-hop duo Die Antwoord, whose last album featured songs including Wings on My Penis and U Like Boobies?, announced they were to disband after the release of their next album. Two years later and there’s no album, they’re still going and they’re still – with all due respect – completely bonkers.
Download festival, nr Derby, Saturday 15; O2 Academy Brixton, SW9, Monday 17 June
Delilah Montagu
Hampshire’s Delilah Montagu started her musical career like most pop-adjacent newcomers do: by featuring on a song by David Guetta (2018’s Drive). Since then, she’s lowered the tempo slightly, with her breakthrough solo single Temptation and its follow-up Gold hinting at her love of sadsack forebears James Blake and Bon Iver.
Windmill Brixton, SW2, Monday 17; Kansas Smitty’s, E8, Tuesday 18 June
Bon Jovi
Jon Bon and his band of merry men – now without founding member guitarist Richie Sambora – arrive in the UK as part of a seemingly never-ending world tour in support of their 2016 album This House Is Not for Sale. Obviously, new music is irrelevant when it comes to the Jovi; it’s all about their air-punching pomp and 80s karaoke classic Livin’ on a Prayer.
RDS, Dublin, Saturday 15 & Sunday 16; Anfield, Liverpool, Wednesday 19; Wembley Stadium, Friday 21; touring to 23 June
MC
Norma Winstone & Nikki Iles
Since great jazz singers rarely handle even famous songs the same way twice, accompanying them – as the partnership of subtle UK vocalist Norma Winstone (pictured) and pianist Nikki Iles has long confirmed – is an empathic art. They join the London Vocal Project at Kings Place (Sun), and Iles’s fine folk-jazzy Printmakers sextet in Birmingham (Thu).
Kings Place: Hall One, N1, Sunday 16; Birmingham Conservatoire, Thursday 20 June
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
Barbara Hannigan
The third featured artist at Aldeburgh this year dominates the festival’s final week. Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan begins on Monday singing songs by Satie, in a recital with pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, before taking up the baton to conduct a concert performance of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (Thu). Then, in the first of two concerts with the Ludwig Orchestra (Fri & 22 Jun), Hannigan conducts Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, as well as being the soloist in Gérard Grisey’s song cycle Quatre Chants Pour Franchir Le Seuil.
Various venues, Saxmundham & Snape, Monday 17, Thursday 20, Friday 21 & 22 June
Belshazzar
After productions of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Verdi’s Falstaff this month, the Grange festival turns its attention to Handel, with a rare staging of the sacred oratorio Belshazzar, in conjunction with the Sixteen chorus and orchestra. Robert Murray takes the title role, with Claire Booth as Nitocris and Christopher Ainslie as Cyrus; Daniel Slater directs.
The Grange at Northington, Alresford, Thursday 20 June to 6 July
Fauré and Schumann
The final concert in the Wigmore Hall’s series of chamber music by Fauré and Schumann concentrates on arrangements of their works. With performers including violinist Anthony Marwood, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianists Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon, the programme is framed by Fauré’s final opus number, the String Quartet in E Minor – heard in both the original and in Alfred Cortot’s arrangement for piano duet – while the reworkings of Schumann include Isserlis’s own version of the third violin sonata.
Wigmore Hall, W1, Sunday 16 June
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Bridget Riley
One of Britain’s greatest modern artists gets a retrospective that promises to be scintillating. Riley’s 1960s black-and-white paintings are eye-fooling, mind-expanding legal narcotics that can transport you to abstract realms of delirium. Since then, Riley has explored subtler reactions in paintings that radiate her deep knowledge of art and science.
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, Saturday 15 June to 22 September
Paper Museum: The Curious Eye of Cassiano dal Pozzo
The scientific revolution transformed art in baroque Italy. Galileo drew the wonders seen through his telescope. Caravaggio painted fruit with clinical accuracy. Cassiano dal Pozzo amassed a collection of stupendous drawings of natural specimens that share that new way of seeing.
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, to 1 September
Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking
The 1930s saw the printed image reach new heights as an artistic medium. In Britain, the Grosvenor School of Modern Art nurtured a generation of artists who worked in linocut to create bold images of modern life. Sybil Andrews (The Windmill, pictured), Lill Tschudi, Cyril Power and Leonard Beaumont are among the avant-garde print-makers rediscovered here.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, SE21, Wednesday 19 June to 8 September
Vuillard
Jean-Édouard Vuillard painted the parks and pleasures of bourgeois Paris in the 1890s and 1900s with a sensual and poetic feel for colour that reveals the marvellous in the ordinary. His scenes of real life have an unreal beauty. This is partly because he looked hard at Japanese art and embraced its very unwestern mix of observation and abstraction. Vuillard’s paintings have the serenity of Japanese painted screens or fans.
The Holburne Museum, Bath, to 15 September
Michael Rakowitz
If you’ve been moved by Rakowitz’s Fourth Plinth sculpture in London’s Trafalgar Square, here is a chance to explore his art further. It includes stone books carved from fragments of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, which the Taliban blew up in 2001. A demolished housing project, the breakup of the Beatles and the Armenian genocide also spark his melancholic whimsy.
Whitechapel Art Gallery, E1, to 25 August
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
The Hunt
David Farr adapts this horribly compelling thriller about a teacher who is accused of paedophilia. It is based on Thomas Vinterberg’s critically acclaimed film and is set in small-town Denmark, a world where men hunt in packs, the weather is brutal and communities stick together (or risk being ripped apart completely). Rupert Goold directs the always enigmatic Tobias Menzies.
Almeida Theatre, N1, Monday 17 June to 3 August
The Damned (Les Damnés)
Ivo van Hove can be a divisive director, too outlandish for some. But The Damned got cracking reviews in New York and is meant to be epic, explosive and full of surprises. It draws on Luchino Visconti’s film about the dying throes of a German dynasty in the early days of the Nazis – and stars a 30-strong ensemble from the Comédie-Française.
Barbican Theatre, EC2, Wednesday 19 to 25 June
Blithe Spirit
Here’s a bonkers role that might have been made for Jennifer Saunders. Noël Coward’s classic comedy centres on Madame Arcati, a preposterous clairvoyant who seems to summon celestial spirits through sheer force of personality. But Arcati’s grandstanding goes awry when novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are quite literally haunted by their past. The production co-stars Lisa Dillon and is directed by Richard Eyre.
Theatre Royal, Bath, to 6 July
While the Sun Shines
Artistic director Paul Miller has a strong instinct for exciting new writing but he is also a dab hand at directing previously neglected classics. Now he is tackling this Terence Rattigan Blitz-era comedy, which has a whiff of Ealing Studios about it. It is a bed-hopping farce set in a London under siege, brimming with soldiers and suitors keen to make the most of what little time they might have left.
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, to 27 July
The Future
If you want to fall in love with theatre again – or just fancy a bit of vibrant escapism – then check out Little Bulb’s latest show. These fringe favourites have developed a strong following, thanks to their understated yet utterly charming productions. The Future is a music-infused muse about the world of artificial intelligence that draws on big ideas from big thinkers, but is bound to have masses of heart behind all that head-scratching.
Battersea Arts Centre, SW11, to 29 June
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
The Mother
Russian ballerina Natalia Osipova and award-winning contemporary dancer Jonathan Goddard star in Arthur Pita’s dark adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen story, about the lengths a woman will go to to save her dying child. Expect an intense performance from Osipova, a dancer never afraid to plumb the depths of emotion.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Thursday 20 to 22 June
Double Bill: Lanre Malaolu & Mohamed Toukabri
Two male solos: first up, Lanre Malaolu’s Elephant in the Room (pictured), which explores men’s mental health via hip-hop and spoken word. Then The Upside Down Man by Mohamed Toukabri, tracing his journey from Tunisia to Belgian contemporary dance.
DanceEast, Ipswich, Friday 21 June
Birmingham Royal Ballet: Hobson’s Choice
BRB’s director David Bintley steps down this year (making way for Carlos Acosta), and the company pays tribute with one of his greatest hits, a comic ballet based on Harold Brighouse’s play.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Wednesday 19 to 22; Sadler’s Wells, EC2, 28 & 29 June
LW
Main image composite: Michael Rakowitz/Whitechapel Gallery; Allstar/Amazon Studios; Steve Schofield; Altitude Film; Camilla Greenwell
