The SLMan Culture List – April

THE CRIME DRAMA: The Good Mothers, Disney+

Based on a true story, The Good Mothers retraces the story of Denise – the daughter of Lea Garofalo – Maria Concetta Cacciola and Giuseppina Pesce, three women who dared to defy the ’Ndrangheta mafia. To help them, the prosecutor Anna Colace, having just arrived in Calabria, has an intuition: to be able to defeat the ’Ndrangheta clans, you need to focus on the women. It is a strategy that brings with it great risk because the ’Ndrangheta is famous and feared for its iron fist and insidious power. The Good Mothers follows Denise, Giuseppina and Maria Concetta in their attempt to free themselves from the criminal power and collaborate with the authorities.

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THE COFFEE TABLE BOOK: David Thulstrup: A Sense of Place by Sophie Lovell

David Thulstrup: A Sense of Place is the first monograph on the award-winning Danish architect and designer. The book traces Thulstrup’s life and influences – from his childhood and education in Denmark right up to the present day – and reveals his unique approach to design in a series of case studies. Thulstrup is one of the most talented and prolific Danish designers of his generation. Today, his studio designs everything from residential architecture to restaurants, retail spaces, hotels, furniture and lighting for brands including Georg Hensen, HAY, VIPP and Royal Copenhagen. Thulstrup is particularly celebrated for designing the interior and bespoke furniture for the new home of Noma restaurant in Copenhagen. More recently, his design for Ikoyi in London was voted Best Restaurant at the Wallpaper 2023 Design Awards.

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THE ALL-STAR FILM: Air

From award-winning director Ben Affleck, Air reveals the unbelievable partnership between a then-rookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division, which revolutionised the world of sports and contemporary culture with the Air Jordan brand. This moving story follows the career-defining gamble of an unconventional team with everything on the line, the uncompromising vision of a mother who knows the worth of her son’s immense talent, and the basketball phenom who would become the greatest of all time. The all-star cast includes Matt Damon as maverick Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro, Affleck himself as Nike co-founder Phil Knight and Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan.

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THE ONE FOR HISTORY BUFFS: An Honourable Exit by Éric Vuillard

From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Order of the Day and The War of the Poor comes a searing account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism. October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. The conflict is unpopular back home in France: too expensive, and too far away for the public to care. Withdrawal is not an option – a global power cannot surrender to an army of peasants – but victory is impossible without more soldiers and more money. The soldiers can be sourced from the colonies, but the money is out of the question. A solution needs to be found. In this gripping and shocking novel, Éric Vuillard exposes the tangled web of politicians, bankers and titans of industry who all had a vested interest in France’s prolonged presence in lands far from Paris. As well as bringing scenes from the battlefields to life, Vuillard looks to the cold calculations of a boardroom elite with the power to turn a military win or loss to their financial gain.

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THE DARK COMEDY: Renfield

In this modern monster tale of Dracula’s loyal servant, Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road) stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to history’s most narcissistic boss, Dracula (Nicolas Cage). Renfield is forced to procure his master’s prey and do his bidding, no matter how debased. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is ready to see if there’s a life outside the shadow of the Prince of Darkness. If only he can figure out how to end his co-dependency. The film co-stars Awkwafina (The Farewell), Ben Schwartz (The Afterparty) and Adrian Martinez (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).

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THE THRILLER: Tomás Nevinson by Javier Marías

This is the final novel Javier Marías completed before his death last year. Spain in the 1990s is beset by a simmering campaign of terror from Basque separatists ETA, with periodic atrocities shattering an illusory calm. Against this backdrop, retired British Secret Service member Tomás Nevinson – now living a quiet life in his hometown Madrid – is approached by his sinister former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold, for one last assignment. His mission: to go back undercover, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is an ETA terrorist, on loan from the IRA, now on the run and living there incognito. Everything about the assignment is shadowy – from who exactly Nevinson will be working for to the question of what 'justice' he may need to mete out if he is somehow able to unmask one of the three women. But, still in his 40s and lured by the appeal of being on the inside once more, he accepts the job…

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THE FUN SPY FLICK: Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre, Prime Video

Guy Ritchie’s new action-comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre lands on Prime Video on 7th April. Superspy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) must track down and stop the sale of a deadly modern technology wielded by billionaire arms broker Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). Reluctantly teamed with some of the world’s best operatives (Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes and Bugzy Malone), Orson recruits Hollywood’s biggest movie star, Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), to help them on their globetrotting undercover mission to save the world.

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THE BIG READ: Shy by Max Porter

From the bestselling author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, this is a novel about guilt, rage, imagination and boyhood. It’s the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy. He is wandering into the night, listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him. He is escaping Last Chance, a home for ‘very disturbed young men’, and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past and the heavy question of his future. Like Max Porter’s previous novels, this is a heavy read, but one you won’t forget.

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THE SPORTS DOC: Boom! Boom! The World Vs Boris Becker, Apple TV+

Boom! Boom! The World Vs. Boris Becker is a two-part documentary from Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (Enron, Going Clear) and Oscar-winning producer John Battsek (One Day in September). Landing on Apple TV+ on 7th April, it explores every aspect of the man who became a tennis sensation after winning Wimbledon at 17, including his high-profile – sometimes tumultuous – personal life.

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THE HARD-HITTING NOVEL: Close To Home by Michael Magee

Sean's brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids, their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble but you can't say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different. He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back. Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony's drinking is worse than ever. Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on and no one will give him the time of day. One night he loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos. Close to Home witnesses the aftermath of that night, as Sean attempts to make sense of who he has become, and to reckon with the relationships that have shaped him, for better and worse.

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Anika Molnar

THE TRUE STORY: Transatlantic, Netflix

Set in 1940, Transatlantic is inspired by the true story of Varian Fry, Mary Jayne Gold and the Emergency Rescue Committee. Risking their lives to help more than 2,000 refugees escape occupied France, including many artists on the Nazis’ most-wanted list, an international gang of young heroes and their famous charges occupy a villa at the edge of Marseille, where the threat of mortal danger gives way to unexpected collaborations and intense love affairs.

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THE BOOKER NOMINEE: Jimi Hendrix Live In Lviv by Andrey Kurkov

This is a hugely entertaining romp through the beautiful city of Lviv, by the author of Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees, who is now reporting widely on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his home country. Strange things are afoot in the cosmopolitan city of Lviv. A ragtag group gathers round a mysterious grave in Lychakiv cemetery – among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych are teaming up to discover the source of the “anomalies”. Meanwhile, Taras – who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra – is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money. They young lovers don’t know it, but their fate depends on two lonely old men, relics of another era, who will stop at nothing to save their city. Shot through with black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is an affectionate portrait of one of the world’s most intriguing cities.

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THE MYSTERY: The Portable Door, Now

Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson) and Sophie Pettingel (Sophie Wilde) are the lowly, put-upon interns who begin working at the mysterious London firm JW Wells & Co and become steadily aware that their employers are anything but conventional. Charismatic villains Humphrey Wells (Christoph Waltz), the CEO, and middle manager Dennis Tanner (Sam Neill) are disrupting the world of magic by bringing modern corporate strategy to ancient magical practices, and soon Paul and Sophie discover the true agenda of the vast corporation where they work.

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THE GRIPPING TRUE STORY: The Wager by David Grann

From the international bestselling author of Killers Of The Flower Moon (soon to be a Martin Scorsese-directed film) and The Lost City Of Z, this is a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were 30 emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a treasure-filled Spanish galleon, the Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than 100 days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. Then, six months later, another even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The 30 sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers.

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THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL: Cuddy by Benjamin Myers

Cuddy is the latest book from Benjamin Myers, author of The Gallows Pole, which is currently being adapted as a BBC series by Shane Meadows. Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St Cuthbert, the unofficial patron saint of the north of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts, Cuddy straddles historical eras – from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way readers meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage – their dreams, desires, connections and communities.

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