The Moment review – Charli xcx struggles through defanged Brat summer satire

Sundance film festival: There’s a smart idea at play here, with the star playing a hellish version of herself fighting against corporate forces, but there’s not a lot else In April 2025, the pop singer Charli xcx posted a TikTok reflecting on nearly a year of her seminal album Brat : “It’s really hard to let go of Brat and let go of this thing that is so inherently me and become my entire life, you know?” she said. “I started thinking about culture, and the ebbs and flows and lifespan of things … ” She acknowledged that over-saturation is perilous, and that maybe she should stop, but “I’m also interested in the tension of staying too long. I find that quite fascinating.” The frank, informal admission fit with Brat, a pop culture-shifting album that channeled, with stunning immediacy, the imperious ego and bristling insecurity of an artist keenly aware of her own precarious level of fame . Her ambivalence was understandable – Brat rapidly turned Charli, who spent over a decade as a...

Emilia Perez review – Jacques Audiard’s gangster trans musical barrels along in style

A thoroughly implausible yarn about a Mexican cartel leader who hires a lawyer to arrange his transition, but is carried along by its cheesy Broadway energy

Anglo-progressives and US liberals might worry about whether or not certain stories are “theirs to tell”. But that’s not a scruple that worries French auteur Jacques Audiard who, with amazing boldness and sweep, launches into this slightly bizarre yet watchable musical melodrama of crime and gender, set in Mexico. It plays like a thriller by Amat Escalante with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and a touch of Almodovar.

Argentinian trans actor Karla Sofia Gascon plays Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a terrifyingly powerful and ruthless cartel leader in Mexico, married to Jessi (Selena Gomez), with two young children. Manitas is intrigued by a high-profile murder trial in which an obviously guilty defendant gets off due to his smart and industrious lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldana); she is nearing 40 and secretly wretched from devoting her life to protecting unrepentant slimeballs, who go on to get ever richer while she labours for pitiful fees. Manitas kidnaps Rita and makes her an offer she can’t refuse: a one-off job for an unimaginably vast amount of money on which she can retire.

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