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

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 fixture of pop’s so-call...

Deadland review – melancholy horror smuggles deep themes across the US-Mexico border

Lance Larson’s feature debut uses horror tropes to tackle themes of racism, immigration and post-traumatic stress disorder

Screened at SXSW last year but still relevant given the ongoing debate about immigration in the US, an especially live issue in election year, this offers a border-set ghost story that’s haunting in more ways than one. For a start, it’s not especially gory or scary; the tone is more melancholy and guilt-freighted, offering a study of masculine and, in particular, paternal anxiety that’s aggravated by divided loyalties. The main protagonist is Angel Waters (Roberto Urbina), a Mexican-American border guard who is the head of his small patrol unit not far from El Paso.

The son of a Mexican father he never knew and a white American woman who has recently died, Angel is now devoted to his pregnant wife Hannah (Kendal Rae, achieving a lot with a thinly written part); he only wants to do the best he can for the people who cross the border every day, even if he’s seldom thanked for sometimes saving their lives. For example, one day he shouts warnings in Spanish that the river isn’t safe to a lone stranger (Julio Cesar Cedillo) he spots trying to cross, and minutes later the man is swept away.

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