Television
Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret (BBC iPlayer) is the week’s essential watch. Four women speak out about their underage experiences with the actor and musician. Stuart Heritage describes it as “A disturbing look at what is alleged to be a skin-crawling pattern of behaviour.”
Furious (Disney+) is an enormously entertaining crime drama about a female serial killer, powered by the women’s unfaltering rage. Lucy Mangan: “Television for grownups, television to pay attention to and to entertain you enormously.”
Gomorrah: The Origins (Now) is a cheeky, fresh prequel to the hit mob series. Jack Seale: “You half-expect a young Al Pacino to walk into shot.”
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed (Apple TV) follows a woman blackmailed by a camboy. Mangan calls it “A sure-footed and completely bingeable thriller with an edge of unpredictability that holds you doubly fast to your seat.”
Film
Ish (in cinemas) is Imran Perretta’s Luton-set coming-of-age story, in which racial profiling pushes two teen friends apart. Peter Bradshaw: “It’s a poignant and poetic urban pastoral about young masculinity, Muslim and south Asian communities, and the seedy and insidious new petty harassment of racial profiling and facial recognition tech.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (in cinemas) finds Tom Holland back as the webslinger opposite Zendaya. Bradshaw: “Spider-Man: Brand New Day, like all MCU movies, always gravitates towards apocalyptic but weirdly temporary destruction in the digitally confected big city. It’s an entertaining spectacle.”
Wham! 10 Days in China (in cinemas) uses footage shot by Lindsay Anderson, who was ultimately fired from the project, to reveal the pop duo’s groundbreaking 1985 tour of communist China. Bradshaw: “In our modern age, the movie and music businesses routinely consider China as the key element of the all-important Asian market, but in 1985, Michael and Ridgeley were the Kirk and Spock of the charts, going where no pop act had gone before.”
The Sacrifice (in cinemas) is Andrei Tarkovsky’s tragic 1986 final film, about a retired actor, Erland Josephson, who makes a bargain with God. Bradshaw: “It is brilliant and audacious, with one of the most extraordinary final sequences in modern cinema, and all in a manner which Hollywood in the succeeding decade would learn to call “high concept”.”
Solo Sunny (Mubi) is Konrad Wolf’s 1980 drama about a singer escaping the compromises of GDR life. Bradshaw: “There is something very melancholy in the shots of the gaunt tenements, uncool denims and boxy Trabants on the gritty streets of Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg.”
Books
The must-read is Joan Barfoot’s Gaining Ground, a landmark Canadian novel about a woman who leaves her family. Anne Enright: “Gaining Ground is a wonderful slow burn of a book and Barfoot’s originality and control remain exciting, nearly half a century on.”
Upland by Ed Douglas is a beguiling history of Britain’s high places. Kathryn Hughes: “One delight of his capacious, looping narrative is the room it leaves for delightful cameos by remarkable individuals, including several women.”
Mario Vargas Llosa by Gerald Martin charts the Peruvian Nobel laureate’s journey from socialist to Margaret Thatcher fanboy. Pratinav Anil: “His brief flirtation was not with socialism so much as with a socialist: the dazzling, unattainable Lea Barba. Their comradeship unfolded between bookshops and the smoky tables of a bohemian nightclub owned by her communist father.”
Jacaranda by Gaël Faye, translated by Sarah Ardizzone, explores the Rwanda genocide and its aftershocks. Rachel Seiffert: “Faye gives face and voice to the human capacity for endurance.”
What If We Got AI Right? by Eleanor Drage asks whether ethical tech is still possible. Sophie McBain: “The cultural obsession with the AI-induced apocalypse conveniently redirects attention from the practical conversations we could be having about how to make AI safer.”
You may have missed John of John by Douglas Stuart, the Booker-longlisted follow-up to Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo. Yagnishsing Dawoor: “The novel is outstandingly canny and wrenching on self-contempt, on the toilsome art of deceit, and on the contradictions we all contain.”
Albums
The must-listen is Shaboozey’s The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales. Alexis Petridis: “Beneath the Hollywood narrators, Pink Floyd-y interludes and accompanying comic books lies songwriting that proves the Tipsy singer’s breakout success was no fluke.”
Arca: XXXXX is a wild, brilliant album that taps into feral frequencies. Shaad D’Souza: “The resulting album is one of Arca’s densest and best: music for the body and brain that is unrelenting and unerringly brilliant.”
Melodies International presents Ariwa Sounds compiles classics from dub legend Mad Professor, hopping from proto-grime to lovers rock between 1984 and today. Safi Bugel: “At no point does the genre- and timeline-hopping feel jarring. In fact, it’s what makes the compilation special.”
John Tilbury: At Home presents four discs of intimate, revelatory recordings from the experimental music titan. Clive Paget: “Few have made a more significant contribution to the fields of contemporary, improvised and experimental music than John Tilbury.”
On tour, Luke Combs plays Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh and Wembley Stadium in London from 31 July to 2 August. Katie Hawthorne: “By storming closer Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma, Combs is crackling with energy, his arms in the air, humbleness be damned – and deservedly so.”
