Lockdown board games: Forget Monopoly, here are the real games December 30, 2020 For decades board games lived largely unloved lives, their battered boxes pulled off dusty shelves on rainy days and holidays. But as we approach essentially another national lockdown, many of us will be dusting them off once more. Back in their heyday, board games were designed to be simple, with concepts that could appeal equally [...]
Our top picks of art, film and theatre in 2020 December 30, 2020 It’s been a year of existential crisis for the arts, to the extent you could be forgiven for only remembering the closures and cancellations. But squeezed between 2020’s lockdowns were some excellent moments for the arts. Here are my top picks from the exhibitions, films and shows I managed to attend this year.
Shirley film review: Elizabeth Moss chills again in strange horror December 28, 2020 Having chilled us earlier this year with breakout hit The Invisible Man, Elisabeth Moss plays American horror author Shirley Jackson in an interesting non-biopic. Odessa Young and Logan Lerman play Rose and Fred, a young couple expecting a baby who come to live with Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), an academic and [...]
The top films of 2020, from Parasite to Mank December 27, 2020 The absence of cinema releases for much of 2020 gives this year’s ‘best of’ film list a strange new context, as the industry shifts from reliance on the opening week box office and cinema fans focus on what they miss about the big screen. Here’s our pick of this year’s best movies, comprised of titles [...]
10 video games that defined the strange year that was 2020 December 27, 2020 In a year that blockbuster movies were delayed en masse and people were confined to their homes for months at a time, video games played a more important role than ever in our lives. With the new Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 finally making an appearance last month, 2020 was also a last hurrah [...]
The best films to watch on a Tier 4 Christmas day December 25, 2020 As many adverts have told us, Christmas will be a bit different this year. There will be people we won’t be able to see, and celebrations we won’t be able to have. However, one thing that 2020 can’t take from us is our favourite Christmas films. Whether you like them as sentimental, dramatic, funny, or [...]
The Midnight Sky review: George Clooney’s sci-fi flop December 24, 2020 George Clooney’s latest effort The Midnight Sky is a no-lose scenario for the star. Its release on Netflix means it won’t risk the ignominy of box office failure, a fate that befell his most recent film Suburbicon, and 2015 mega-bomb Tomorrowland. As well as lower stakes, the streamer has given him a broader canvas, with [...]
Chadwick Boseman’s captivating farewell in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a career best December 21, 2020 It’s hard to write about Netflix’s new musical drama without reflecting on the passing of its star. The death of Chadwick Boseman was felt around the world, such was his impact in the seven short years since his breakthrough in sporting biopic 42. While the quality of a movie seems trivial when compared to the [...]
The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 8 – S2E8 finale is pure Star Wars brilliance December 18, 2020 *** SPOILERS AHEAD: If you haven’t watched the most recent episodes of The Mandalorian Season 2, look away now*** So here we are at the end of season two, with The Mandalorian having been largely successful in its second season efforts. The show has managed to raise the stakes while not losing the episodic nature [...]
How Cyberpunk, the generation’s most hyped game, turned into its biggest disaster December 18, 2020 The Witcher 3, released in 2015, is rarely far from the upper echelons of “Best Game Ever” lists. Developed by Polish studio CD Projekt Red, it was a sprawling, hugely ambitious RPG that refused to offer players a neat solution to its deftly written quests. In its squalid, low-fantasy world, sparing the life of some [...]