Film review: Suite Francaise March 13, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★☆☆ Suite Francaise is a handsome adaptation of the Irène Némirovsky novel Dolce, written during the Second World War before she was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. The unfinished work was eventually published by Némirovsky’s daughter in 2004, and became a critical and commercial phenomenon. While the film doesn’t live up to [...]
Savage Beauty: A triumphant celebration of Alexander McQueen’s life work March 13, 2015 Victoria and Albert Museum | ★★★★☆ First things first: right the wrong. New York may have held the first major posthumous Alexander McQueen exhibition, but London was the city whose rhythms and edges gave life to the designer’s clothing. Savage Beauty opens with a room entitled “London”, which reaffirms the UK capital as the “epicentre” [...]
Theatre review: Clarence Darrow is Kevin Spacey’s triumphant farewell March 12, 2015 Old Vic | ★★★★★ Kevin Spacey’s eyes glisten as he delivers his valedictory line: “Mercy is the highest attribute of man.” Mine glistened, too. For a moment, the audience knew how a jury in a case presided over by Clarence Darrow must have felt: captivated, moved and above all, persuaded. From this curmudgeonly war horse [...]
Something for the weekend March 12, 2015 LEARN! FUTURE FEST This weekend will see a series of speeches and performances addressing the future and our place in it. The schedule will include talks from Edward Snowdon (via web-link, of course), Vivienne Westwood and Jon Ronson. Weekend tickets cost £80. futurefest.org WATCH! BACKYARD CINEMA Backyard cinema is literally going up in the world, [...]
Exhibition review: Beard is not to be missed if you like facial foliage March 6, 2015 Somerset House | ★★★★☆ Beards are big. Literally. You can’t walk down Kingsland Road without being tickled by the bristles of a hirsute gentleman. And now you can’t walk through the grand exhibition space of Somerset House without a beard to the retina. Style photographer Mr Elbank has a new exhibition showcasing the magnificence [...]
Theatre review: Game is nasty and brutish – but effective March 6, 2015 Almeida Theatre | ★★★★☆ Game at the Almeida is a disturbing collage of contemporaneousness that aims a poison-tipped dart at a number of hot-button issues ranging from the shortage of affordable homes to our reality TV obsession. Writer Mike Bartlett and designer-directors Sacha Wares and Miriam Buether have gone to extreme lengths to realise their [...]
Film review: Unfinished Business is a bit like watching paint dry March 6, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ Unfinished Business might sound like a badass film in which Charles Bronson guns down the fat-cats whose corporate greed killed his daughter, but sadly it’s about Vince Vaughn (pictured), Tom Wilkinson and James Franco’s little brother trying to score a contract to sell metal shavings to a multinational conglomerate. It’s not [...]
Film review: Still Alice March 6, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★☆☆ For all the horror genre’s attempts to scare us with demonic possession and serial killers, real terror rarely lies in external threat but in the machinations of the mind. By that logic, Still Alice is one of the most haunting films released in years, as it charts one intelligent, vivacious woman’s [...]
Art review: Inventing Impressionism is a joyous exhibition March 5, 2015 National Gallery | ★★★★☆ So familiar are the impressionists that it can be difficult to gain a sense of how revolutionary they were from our vantage point in the 21st century. The National Gallery, in its small but perfectly balanced new exhibition Inventing Impressionism, has come up with an ingenious way of evoking their iconoclasm [...]
Something for the weekend March 5, 2015 Our guide to the best things to eat, drink, watch and do, from yoga in an Alpine lodge to a skeletal horse in Trafalgar Square. Make sure you don’t miss out. EAT! SLOW FOOD & LIVING MARKET Head over to the Rosewood hotel in Holborn this weekend for a food market with an ethical twist. [...]