The Nest at the Young Vic: this play with a PJ Harvey soundtrack never quite clicks November 4, 2016 The Nest is the story of a couple preparing for the birth of their first child. It has slick dialogue, fine acting, simple but effective sets, and an impressive original score by PJ Harvey, but somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Based on a 1975 German work by Franz Xaver [...]
Titanfall 2 review: Giant robots fighting one another has never been this fun November 4, 2016 Titanfall is a futuristic, multiplayer shooter about hyper-gymnastic soldiers who can perform cool parkour stunts, running along walls and leaping between buildings like well-armed squirrels. They’ve also got giant mechs: armoured walking tanks that they frequently use to pummel one another to death. While this sequel’s colourful and vibrant sci-fi setting feels fresh against the [...]
Here’s everything that happened in last night’s Apprentice episode November 4, 2016 In last night's episode candidates attempted a brand new task: crowdfunding some cycling products. Essentially, all they had to do was set up a crowdfunding page, pull off a snazzy PR stunt at a train station and pitch the products, which were already good, to some bike shops. Easy, right? Wrong, because even simple tasks are rendered impossible in the [...]
The Accountant review: Ben Affleck stars in silly but fun throwback to 90s straight to video thrillers November 4, 2016 David Fincher’s Gone Girl has done for straight-to-video thrillers what Wes Craven’s Scream did for the slasher movie. All of a sudden there’s a lucrative niche for acceptably trashy, middle-class mind-candy, paving the way for the likes of The Girl on the Train and now Ben Affleck vehicle The Accountant. It follows the apparently mild-mannered Christian Wolff, a [...]
Nocturnal Animals: Tom Ford’s second film is a heartbreaking tale of loss and vengeance November 4, 2016 Tom Ford has been doing interviews recently decrying materialism, which is a bit like Michael Fish admitting that the weather is a lie. Ford’s second film – after the heartbreaking A Single Man – continues the theme: possessions won’t make you happy, life is short, don’t waste it chasing the consumerist dragon. Where A Single [...]
James Ensor at the Royal Academy: a mercurial painter of the grotesque October 27, 2016 In the paintings of James Ensor, life is dour and murky while death is a riot of colour and expressive brush-strokes. In one of the first pieces in the Royal Academy’s exhibition two women sit taking afternoon tea (Afternoon in Ostend, 1881) in an oppressively brown room, as if the bourgeois scene is so interminably [...]
Doctor Strange review: The tightest, funniest, most refreshing super-hero movie in years October 27, 2016 While all around super-hero franchises are collapsing under their own grotesque weight – Batman v Superman, X-Men Apocalypse, Suicide Squad – Marvel stands alone in its uncanny ability to churn out hit after hit. With Doctor Strange, it’s just showing off. Its lead character is a beloved but relatively fringe inhabitant of the Marvel Universe, [...]
A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer review: Cancer cells dance around inflatable tumours in this musical about disease October 27, 2016 A musical in which colourful cancer cells fart about on stage like rejected Saturday morning cartoon characters, A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer is an unexpectedly jazzy and frenetic show. It dissects and digests the bleak world of terminal illness with a song and a dance, as tumours slowly emerge from the stage [...]
The Big Bang 30 years on: How the City went from bowler hats and liquid lunches to smartphones and tossed salads October 26, 2016 There’s now a whole generation of City workers – and City A.M. readers – who weren’t even born when the markets were deregulated back in 1986. Standing in Leadenhall Market on a week-day afternoon, they could be forgiven for thinking the City hadn’t changed all that much over the last 30 years. Hundreds of besuited [...]
Start with a blank canvas: How to invest in the art market October 26, 2016 For years the idea of purchasing art as an investment was frowned upon by purists in the art world – the two should be separate, like church and state. Art as investment is certainly not for everyone: the market is quite illiquid, prices can be volatile, and storage costs can outweigh profits. But as investors [...]