Boulevard, Robin Williams’ last movie, is a muted tribute April 7, 2016 Dir. Dito Montiel | ★★★☆☆ While not the last film he shot, Boulevard has the sad distinction of being the late Robin Williams' final on-screen role, arriving just over 18 months after the actor’s death. He plays Nolan, a married bank employee whose existence has become a simple, sad matter of plodding through the days, [...]
Timothy Spall excels in The Old Vic’s The Caretaker April 7, 2016 The Old Vic | ★★★★☆ Harold’s Pinter’s first big hit, The Caretaker, is a frenetic comedy about three social outcasts, all woefully incapable of communicating with each other. This claustrophobic play takes place inside a leaky loft conversion strewn with lofty piles of newspapers and a host of unfinished DIY projects. It’s exhausting just looking [...]
X at the Royal Court review: a terrifying, claustrophobic space horror that comes unravelled April 7, 2016 Royal Court | ★★★☆☆ The best science fiction is virtually always a vehicle for social commentary, a metaphor for talking about the here and now. Alien can be read as an advocation of abortion; Dune reflects the geopolitics of the Cold War-era oil industry; Dawn of the Dead is a critique of consumerism. But, crucially, you [...]
Whistler at the Fine Art Society shows an artist who was rightly considered thoroughly radical April 7, 2016 James McNeill Whistler is best known for his painterly concern for harmony of tones and mood, rather than overtly symbolic or moral content. This is famously evident in his Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 of 1871, commonly known as Whistler’s Mother. What is less known is that he was also an extraordinary pioneer both [...]
New photography exhibition seeks out the implausible in the everyday April 7, 2016 Photographer Stephen Shore’s most striking work comes from his epic tour across 1970s America in search of what could be called the “extraordinary ordinary”. Many of his pictures depict the everyday life of Americans that, frozen in time, divorced from the mundanity of life, seem unbelievable. Badlands National (pictured) shows a tiny, unremarkable house, a [...]
Exhibitionism review: The Saatchi Gallery recreated Mick Jagger’s grotty old flat April 4, 2016 Saatchi Gallery | ★★★★★ A year before they set about irreversibly altering the course of music history globally and forever, The Rolling Stones ate baked beans straight out of the tin in a squalid Chelsea flat like mucky little dirtbags. Their festering hovel at 102 Edith Grove has been meticulously recreated as part of Exhibitionism, [...]
Artist focus: John Kørner’s land of milk and honey April 1, 2016 John Kørner is one of Denmark’s most recognisable contemporary artists, his semi-abstract works probing the ills of 21st century society, from poverty to sex work. Although he’s an accomplished sculptor, he’s best known for his vivid, ethereal, often wryly funny paintings: a man rifling through a skip in After Christmas; an old woman barfing against [...]
The Painkiller at Garrick Theatre starring Kenneth Branagh is a predictable but fun slapstick comedy April 1, 2016 The Painkiller | Garrick Theatre Kenneth Branagh and Rob Brydon bring star power to this funny but painfully anachronistic comedy. It tells the tale of a contract killer whose life is thrown into disarray when he is allocated a hotel room adjoining that of a lovelorn, suicidal photographer. It’s adapted from Le Contrat, a French [...]
Eddie the Eagle is a soaring success April 1, 2016 With hindsight, it’s a surprise Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards’ rise to fame wasn’t made into a film sooner. Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service) dons thick-rimmed glasses and a permanent gurn as the plucky Eddie, a young man obsessed with being an Olympian. He exploits a loophole in the rules to enter the 1988 Winter [...]
The absurdist brilliance of Franciszka & Stefan Themerson April 1, 2016 Polish husband and wife Franciszka and Stefan Themerson’s output is so varied, spanning so many types of media and so many artistic styles, that making sense of it all in one room is rather overwhelming. Along the first wall is a row of cabinets filled with illustrations, mostly for children’s books – one features a [...]