Stan & Ollie review: A heartfelt and hilarious tribute to comedy’s biggest legends January 10, 2019 Though it’s been more than half a century since they were last on stage, Laurel and Hardy remain history’s archetypal double act, the pair somehow still regarded by most as the funniest men ever to have dropped a piano down the stairs. Stan & Ollie, a cheerful biopic focused on the pair’s last tour around [...]
Bumblebee film review: After the nightmare of Michael Bay, the Transformers franchise has finally come good January 7, 2019 It’s difficult to think of a franchise with a more wretched legacy than Transformers. Despite five films filled with puerile humour, sexism and disinterested performances, the robots in disguise have been a hit with audiences, grossing over $4bn in box office, providing all the motivation needed for continuation. So, we come to Bumblebee, a prequel/soft [...]
Mary Poppins Returns review: Disney hits gold with this unlikely crowd-pleasing sequel January 7, 2019 Disney’s raid on its own back catalogue continues with this sequel to 1964’s Mary Poppins. Emily Blunt steps into the blue overcoat as Mary, who appears from the clouds to come to the aid of the now grown Banks children Michael and Jane (Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer) to care for Michael’s own offspring following [...]
The films, theatre and art shows to see in 2019, from Toy Story 4 and Avengers: Endgame to Van Gogh & Britain and Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal January 3, 2019 Toy Story 4; Dir: Josh Cooley; June Despite Disney’s emphatic assurances that we’d seen the last of Buzz and Woody, here comes Toy Story 4, an inevitable sequel to the classic animated trilogy about a bunch of dolls who occasionally come to life to torment deserving humans. Most of the original cast has been lured back [...]
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse review: The missing link between comics and live action superhero films December 21, 2018 My love affair with comics started not with the works of Stan Lee or Alan Moore or even Tim Burton, but with Saturday morning cartoons; X-Men: The Animated Series; Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends; Silver Surfer. And while the often brilliant spandex movies that have been churned out on an industrial scale over the last [...]
Welcome to Marwen review: A visual triumph but a soggy, mawkish film December 20, 2018 Welcome to Marwen takes some of the most impressive character animation since Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa and welds it to a film so saggy and lacking in introspection that even those glorious visuals soon lose their lustre. It tells the true story – insert your own inverted commas – of Mark Hogancamp, a reclusive artist suffering [...]
Sweat at the Donmar Warehouse review: This Pulitzer winning play is a comprehensive dissection of de-industrialised American heartlands December 20, 2018 Following the US Presidential election in 2016, a slew of reporters were hastily dispatched to the backwaters of de-industrialised America to discover why large sections of the working class population there thought Donald Trump was the answer to their problems. They needn’t have made the trip. This play by Lynn Nottage, first performed in 2015, [...]
The Favourite: Olivia Colman is extraordinary as Queen Anne in this provocative period drama December 20, 2018 Anyone remember Queen Anne from history class? Me neither, but if Olivia Colman’s blistering portrayal of her is anything to go by, I can see why. The last of the Stuarts, she spent her final days in the early 18th century severely depressed following the death of her husband and 17 children, and hobbling about [...]
Super Smash Bros Ultimate review: A stylish Switch brawler, and a comprehensive celebration of the series December 20, 2018 The Super Smash Bros series has been around since the halcyon days of the Nintendo 64, which launched – you might want to sit down for this – 20 years ago. The original starred characters from a bunch of disparate Nintendo games beating seven shades of shandy out of one another, and as the series [...]
Which books regularly top the UK bestseller list at Christmas and is there a way to predict it? December 20, 2018 First came Black Friday, then its online equivalent, Cyber Monday, but few outside the publishing industry are aware of its bookish brother, Super Thursday. Usually in the first week of October, the annual event marks the release of big money hardbacks in the run up to Christmas. This year saw 544 new hardbacks released, up [...]