Theatre review: Bend it like Beckham July 2, 2015 Phoenix Theatre | ★★★☆☆ New British musicals have had a tough time of late. Made in Dagenham sank without a trace earlier this year, despite decent reviews and an A-List lead, and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sir Tim Rice both had new shows suffer similar fates the year before. Compared to the above, Bend [...]
Theatre review: The Trial is a cultural vegetable July 2, 2015 Young Vic | ★★★☆☆ New York Times writer Dan Kois popularised the phrase “eating your cultural vegetables” – the idea that you need to wade through challenging material you don’t necessarily enjoy to offset the times you feel like binging on candyfloss. For all its prophetic brilliance, Kafka’s The Trial would qualify on most people's list [...]
Film review: Magic Mike XXL is a fun but inferior summer sequel July 2, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ When a modestly budgeted film goes on to make $100million, a sequel is near-enough guaranteed. The follow up to Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike finds the eponymous Mike living a life away from dancing. He’s successful but somewhat unfulfilled until he receives a call from his old colleagues, “The Kings of Tampa”, who [...]
Film review: Amy is a moving, sober tribute to a tragic genius July 2, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ “Amy had the most emotional connection with music of anyone I’ve ever known,” says Winehouse’s pianist Sam Beste in Asif Kapadia’s documentary, Amy. “It was like a person in her life who she loved. She would die for it.” He doesn’t need to say it, it’s clear from the very first [...]
The artful dodger: Prolific forger Mark Landis gave all his counterfeit paintings away for free July 2, 2015 Mark Landis was 30-years-old and living alone in San Francisco when, on a whim, he decided to become a museum benefactor. “I had been seeing things on TV about wealthy philanthropists giving pictures away to museums in memory of people. I wanted to show my mother that I was doing well, I wanted to show [...]
Art review: Serpentine pavilion June 25, 2015 Hyde Park Three Stars From above it looks like a half masticated piece of bubblegum spat out by a thirsty giant in between slurps from the Serpentine Lake. A chaos of colourful plastic given structure by higgledy metal frames, the temporary pavilion was designed by Selgas Cano, a husband and wife team relatively unknown beyond [...]
Art review: Barbara Hepworth June 25, 2015 Tate Britain Three Stars She may not have had a major London show for 50 years, but we’ve hardly been deprived of Barbara Hepworth. Her sculptures are everywhere in Britain: in parks and gardens, in busy city thoroughfares, on beaches and in museum collections up and down the country. That her work is so ubiquitous [...]
Film review: Minions June 25, 2015 Cert U | ★★★☆☆ A large part of the Despicable Me franchise’s $1.5bn success, loveable sidekicks the Minions were bound to get their own spin off. This prequel follows the yellow babbling hoards as three of their number look to find an evil leader to serve, inadvertently causing chaos along the way in 1960s London. [...]
Film review: Slow West June 25, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ In an era when capes and dinosaurs rule the box office, is there room for the Western in mainstream cinema? In recent years the genre has been adapted by more left-field filmmakers such as The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino, both of whom brought their own auteurish instincts to bear [...]
Theatre review: The Motherf***er With the Hat is a wickedly comic, foul-mouthed romp that packs a sentimental punch June 25, 2015 Lyttelton Theatre | ★★★★★ The Motherf***er With the Hat is where you might end up if you commissioned Quentin Tarantino to write an episode of Eastenders. The plot makes the play sound like a far grimmer affair than it really is. Recovering alcoholic Jackie has just been released from prison for drug dealing. [...]