Alexander Larman

After I saw the Canadian band Arcade Fire on tour in London in late 2010, I began my review of the gig by quoting Psalm 98: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.” My abiding memory of the evening was that it was fun. Despite the apparent solemnity of many of the act’s songs — several of which had been taken from their debut album, Funeral, and revolved around death and despair — the concert had a celebratory and upbeat aspect. It concluded (as virtually all of their shows had done) with a euphoric singalong of what has become their signature song, the cathartic “Wake Up.” A decade later, matters have changed. The world is in a considerably more anxious state than it was.

If anyone told you that Ron Howard was their favorite film director, you might be forgiven for laughing out loud. Yet on paper, Howard has had as successful a career as any other filmmaker working today. Of the twenty-seven pictures he's directed, there are Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Film, massive box office hits and several critically acclaimed pictures that show a degree of both eclecticism and an apparent ability to turn his hand to anything imaginable. There are few directors who have made everything from epic fantasy to gritty '70s-set dramas about the David Frost and Richard Nixon interviews.

Full marks to whoever tweeted, after watching the trailer for the dire new version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, that, "I’m sorry but Dakota Johnson has the face of someone who knows what an iPhone is." In that pithy phrase, the failings of Carrie Cracknell’s film are laid bare immediately. Johnson, despite the utter dreadfulness of the Fifty Shades films that launched her to fame, is a talented and likable actress, but she is also contemporary in a way that many of her peers are. You can dress her in all the crinolines and bonnets and Regency finery in the world, but she still looks like a California resident from 2022 cosplaying, rather than an inhabitant of early nineteenth-century Britain. But Johnson is not the only problem with Persuasion.

The career of the New Zealand director, writer and actor Taika Waititi is beginning to resemble an especially demented fairground attraction. An Oscar winner for his screenplay for Jojo Rabbit, a Nazi-themed black comedy that will make people fight in bars over perceptions of its quality (or lack thereof), he has since gone and taken the Marvel dollar. Unlike so many of his fellow Marvel directors, however, Waititi has fought to keep his work personal and distinctive. In the case of 2017’s riotous Thor: Ragnarok, this worked superbly well. Despite his working as a director-for-hire with no screenwriting credit, it was a hilarious and hugely entertaining space adventure that remembered to be fun, unlike so many other Marvel pictures.

At the beginning of the forgettable comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember, there is a selection of starry cameos, including Tom Cruise as an idealized version of Powers and Kevin Spacey hamming it up to high heaven as an alternate Dr. Evil. The film was made two decades ago, when Cruise was probably the biggest star in Hollywood, and when Spacey, a double Oscar winner for his roles in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, was the leading character actor of his generation, both onscreen and onstage. Today, Cruise is as successful as he has ever been, with his latest film, Top Gun: Maverick, attracting rave reviews and stellar box office earnings. It has been a far different story for Spacey.

Baz Luhrmann’s latest exercise in excess, a new biopic of Elvis Presley, called simply Elvis, opens across American theaters this weekend. As ever with Luhrmann, it’s a mixture of sensory-popping provocation, cartoonish performances (Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker is written and played as if he’s walked out of a Snidely Whiplash short), an eclectic soundtrack and, once the sturm und drang settles, a surprisingly conventional account of a decidedly unconventional man. Played with chutzpah and charisma by Austin Butler in what must be a star-making performance, Luhrmann’s Elvis is less the bloated, drug-addicted behemoth of latter days than a youthful, hip-swivellin’, groin-thrustin’ icon.

The third — and apparently final, if rumors are to be believed — Jurassic Park film arrived in American theaters last weekend. Entitled Jurassic World: Dominion, one of those meaningless names that looks good on a poster, it was released to critical scorn: “the last time dinosaurs were subjected to a disaster this bad, an asteroid was involved” was a typical comment. Although Dominion opened to a mighty $145 million at the box office, terrible word of mouth is likely to see the gross plummet before very long. This is very much not a Top Gun: Maverick situation, where the most unlikely people have found themselves raving about a brilliant film. This is a bad, generic summer blockbuster, and it will be forgotten in due course, like all bad, generic summer blockbusters.

Recently, Kate Bush went to the top of the iTunes charts — yes, such a thing does still exist — with her 1985 single "Running Up That Hill." It’s an excellent song, one of her finest works, but the reason for its somewhat unexpected resurgence in popularity is because it was prominently featured in the fourth and penultimate season of Stranger Things. It's testament to the show’s continued popularity that its consistent, even ruthless channeling of Eighties nostalgia can lead to unexpected knock-on effects.