Nick Hasted

6 days ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

The 23 years since 28 Days Later and especially those since Danny Boyle’s soulful encapsulation of Britain’s best spirit at the 2012 Olympics have offered rich material for a film series about deserted cities, rampaging viruses, hard quarantines and an insular, afraid country hacked adrift from Europe.

1 week ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

Jarvis Cocker is proudly holding the No 1 trophy handed to him on the day Pulp topped the album chart for the first time in 27 years with More, their first album in almost as long. “It’s nice they’ve got something to do when they’re getting on a bit,” Cocker says, acidly imagining the response.

3 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

John Wick’s simple story of a man and his dog became a bonkers, baroque franchise in record time, converting Keanu Reeves’ limited acting into Zen killer cool. Now Ana de Armas extends her delightful No Time to Die cameo as a high-kicking, cocktail-dressed MI6 agent into her own heroic assassin. From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, to give its full cumbersome franchise title, takes place between John Wick 3 and 4, prior to the latter’s perhaps final denouement.

4 weeks ago | uncut.co.uk | Nick Hasted

“I’m not sure we should have agreed to this,” Stephen Malkmus muses during the extraordinary new documentary Pavements. “Has there ever been a good movie about a rock band?” There certainly hasn’t been a rock doc like this one, which eschews convention at every stage in favour of meta-realities and roleplay, echoing the band’s own approach on albums like Wowee Zowee.

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

Grief takes unexpected turns over the course of a long Icelandic day in Rúnar Rúnarsson’s romantic tragedy, a Prix Un Certain Regard contender at last year’s Cannes. It starts with Una (Elín Hall) high on love with fellow Reykjavik art student Diddi (Baldur Einarsson), wandering the shoreline together at dusk then comfortably falling into bed. Diddi just has to head west the next morning to dump hometown girlfriend Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir), then life together can officially begin.