American Animals review: An audacious and twisting heist movie September 7, 2018 Director Bart Layton is the man behind 2012’s audacious docu-thriller The Imposter, about a French con artist who bamboozles a Texan family into believing he is their long lost son. The film braided fact and fiction into a chunky dramatic rope, drawing on talking head testimony from the real world players, interspersed with very credible [...]
Marvel’s Spider-Man review: Insomniac’s web-slinging open world brawler is Spidey at his absolute best September 5, 2018 There’s a very simple recipe for making a decent Spider-Man game, or at least there seems like there is to people who think that making games is simple. First, it needs to be open world. Not even open world, just open Manhattan, a city that has been accurately recreated in games so many times now [...]
Donut County review: A charming and bizarre physics puzzler about a mysterious hole August 29, 2018 Ben Esposito is an indie games developer whose previous works include mysterious-house-in-the-woods simulator What Remains of Edith Finch. A rising star in the industry, he seems drawn towards the abstract. In 2012 he worked on The Unfinished Swan, a PlayStation exclusive in which you exist in a blank white world that only reveals itself as [...]
Dinosaur World Live is a chilling prophecy of climate disaster, or it might just be a fun kids’ show about some cool dino-puppets August 23, 2018 Ostensibly a 50-minute long children’s show in which a series of realistically animated and life-size dinosaur puppets stomp around on stage, Dinosaur World Live at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is, beneath the veneer of Jurassic spectacle, an unflinching treatise on the irreversible effects of climate change, and the energy industry’s plundering of the remaining [...]
The Spy Who Dumped Me review: Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon star in this surprisingly violent spy-spoof comedy August 23, 2018 A spy-spoof action-comedy starring Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon, The Spy Who Dumped Me is way more violent and funny than the lazy, mid-90s punning title would suggest. But the pair work remarkably well together on screen, making for an unexpectedly sparky and entertaining duo in a movie that swings madly from some actually-very-good gunfights [...]
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy review: The return of the series’ winning formula disguises a lack of new ambition August 23, 2018 You would think that by this point, about half a dozen games into the Uncharted series, we’d have explored every tomb that ever was. That we’d have plundered every haunted crypt filled with swinging blades and little piles of dusty skulls, pillaged the very last mausoleum’s worth of goblets and swiped the world’s only [...]
Idris Elba sparks Bond speculation with string of cryptic tweets August 12, 2018 British film star Idris Elba has set the internet alight with rumour, following a string of cryptic tweets that hinted he was set to become the first non-white actor cast as James Bond. Elba, star of Luther and Beasts of No Nation, tweeted the message ‘my name’s Elba, Idris Elba’ early on Sunday morning, a [...]
Lies at the Almeida review: A thrilling exploration of the psychology behind the 2008 financial crash August 3, 2018 Sitting through a play called Lies (or £¥€$, if the Anglicised version isn’t on-the-nose enough for you) about the excesses of the banking system sounds like the last way a City A.M. reader would want to spend an evening. But this production by Belgian company Ontroerend Goed, part psychological experiment, part multi-faceted board-game, is [...]
King Lear review: Ian McKellen is a master at work in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy at the Duke of York’s theatre July 27, 2018 Sir Ian McKellen, titan of the thesps, returns to where it all started, the tiny but elegant Duke of York’s theatre where he made his West End debut in 1964. And that isn’t the only detail that makes this performance of King Lear feel like a victory lap of sorts. For many, McKellen is the [...]
Mission Impossible: Fallout review: The stupidly fun sequel takes the franchise to brilliant new heights July 26, 2018 Whatever Scientology-grade embalming fluid they’re submerging Tom Cruise in every evening, it’s doing the trick. In the sixth and best entry in the Mission Impossible franchise, Hollywood’s most successful stuntman once again defies his advancing years, charging headlong into some of the series’ most beautifully constructed and brilliant set pieces yet. Cruise hurls himself [...]