Wicked forever: the enduring appeal of The Wizard Of Oz

Musical sequel Wicked: For Good, enchanting audiences across the world, arrives as the 1939 fantasy continues to dominate pop culture Most of the biggest streaming services are notoriously neglectful of any movie released before the 1990s (and in some cases, before the turn of the millennium). Even the big theatrical nostalgia screenings are starting to creep into the 21st century, as movies that, to the older among us, don’t seem ready for a multi-decade anniversary. (Did Batman Begins really just turn 20 ?! Is Mean Girls seriously old enough to drink ?) So it’s all the more impressive that one of the hottest properties of the past few years has been ... The Wizard of Oz , a movie far closer to its 100th anniversary than its 25th. Of course, The Wizard of Oz as (shudder) intellectual property dates well before the 1939 release of the beloved MGM musical. L Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at the turn of the previous century, in 1900. It spawned 13 increasingly eccentr...

Unclenching the Fists review – claustrophobic drama full of trauma and tenderness

A quietly phenomenal performance by Milana Aguzarova as a young woman trying to break free from the unsettling relationships within her stifling family

Like her partner Kantemir Balagov’s 2019 film Beanpole, there’s an uncanny claustrophobic charge to Kira Kovalenko’s family drama, though it finally exhales an equally powerful sigh of self-redemption. Milana Aguzarova stars as Ada, a young woman in a North Ossetian mining town trapped by her ailing and possessive father Zaur (Alik Karaev). He guards the only front door key, letting her and her siblings out when he chooses, and refuses to let her have an operation to correct injuries sustained during a school hostage-taking that mean she has to wear an incontinence nappy.

Ada’s brother Akim (Soslan Khugaev) comes home from the city of Rostov and seems to have the self-possession and moral compass Zaur does not. He promises to get her the treatment she needs – and a shot at romance with local chancer Tamik (Arsen Khetagurov), who has been hovering. But there’s an unsettling ambivalence to his help, expressed in their fraught confrontations and intense embraces; an incestuous undertone that younger brother Dakko (Khetag Bibilov), who tries to climb into Ada’s bed like a small child, is also subject to.

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