Avengers: Age of Ultron is another Marvel marvel – film review April 23, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★★☆ Marvel has achieved a rather incredible thing with Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s a bubbling cauldron of a film, filled with dozens of characters, layer upon layer of convoluted plotting, flash backs, flash forwards and dream sequences. It draws upon details introduced over no less than 10 previous movies – [...]
Something for the weekend April 23, 2015 EAT! CIRCLE PIZZA COMPANY Okay, so Hoxton’s newly opened Circle Pizza Company has hardly reinvented the wheel with its circular pizza concept, but head chef Tony won a silver at the world pizza championships so you know it’ll deliver on flavour. 2-4 Hoxton Square, visit circlepizzaco.com WATCH, LISTEN! BUSTER KEATON WITH LIVE SCORE The Royal [...]
Art review: Prunella Clough April 17, 2015 Osborne Samuel | ★★★★☆ One of Britain’s most important and undervalued 20th century painters gets her first major show in many years. The exhibition, which is taking place at Mayfair’s Osborne Samuel gallery, consists of paintings, collages, drawings and reliefs, many of which focus on Clough’s favourite subject: women at work. At a time [...]
Film review: Child 44 April 17, 2015 Cert 15 | ★☆☆☆☆ According to Child 44, post-war Soviet Russia is a place where the walls have ears and the woods have marauding killers addicted to the blood of children. Little rings true in this collage of Cold War nightmares, but nothing offends reality quite as much as the absurd Reeushyan icksshyents adopted by [...]
Film review: A Little Chaos April 17, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★★☆ Upon waking, King Louis XIV is greeted by his son who has just passed wind in his majesty’s bedchamber. This opening scene accurately sets the tone for A Little Chaos, a period romp with a keen sense of the absurd. Alan Rickman may not be the first person you’d choose to [...]
Film review: The Salvation is a Viking cowboy fable April 17, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★☆☆ The Salvation is the tale of a Viking cowboy, which is reason enough to see it right there. Mads Mikkelsen (pictured above) is a war veteran, who fled Denmark for a peaceful life in the American West. After seven years he is joined by his wife and child, but when [...]
Art review: Hue’s she? Sonia Delaunay April 16, 2015 Tate Modern | ★★★★☆ Sonia Delaunay’s life story is every bit as colourful as her paintings. Born in Odessa to an aristocratic family in 1885, she moved to Paris in 1908 where she married the gay art dealer Wilhelm Uhde, divorced him, married her lifelong collaborator Robert Delaunay, moved to Portugal, moved back, and eventually [...]
Something for the weekend April 16, 2015 EAT! THE BULL AND GATE It took its time, but the Bull and Gate in Kentish town finally returns this weekend after a meticulous renovation. Head upstairs to the Boulange Bar for a salubrious mix of velvet upholstery and the finest in British seasonal cooking. bullandgatenw5.co.uk LAUGH! BAC FUNDRAISER Last month’s fire at Battersea Arts [...]
Film review: Woman in Gold April 10, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ Ryan Reynolds, playing lawyer Randy Schoenberg, sums up the plot succinctly when he tells an Austrian court “this is a simple matter of one woman getting back what’s rightfully hers.” Of course, when it comes to the Woman in Gold by Gustav Klimt, the reality is more complicated than that. Not [...]
Film review: Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River April 10, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★☆☆ Ryan Gosling's directorial debut, Lost River, could charitably be called a paean to his cinematic heroes: David Lynch, Terence Malick, Harmony Korine, Guillermo del Toro and, most of all, his sometime collaborator Nicolas Winding Refn. He borrows themes, tropes, sometimes even complete shots from all of them, weaving a lurid, dark, [...]