Dragged Across Concrete film review: S Craig Zahler directs Mel Gibson in a well-constructed cop drama that leaves a bitter taste April 12, 2019 Director S Craig Zahler doesn’t make things easy for his audience. A strong stomach and buttocks of steel were pre-requisites for getting through his masterful western-horror mashup Bone Tomahawk, and his gut-wrenchingly violent second feature Brawl in Cell Block 99, starring a beefed-up Vince Vaughn as a jailbird blackmailed into carrying out a hit. Running [...]
The Sisters Brothers film review: A beautiful, surreal road trip across the wild west April 5, 2019 The Sisters Brothers is so entrenched in the look and feel and smell of 1851 America that it’s like leafing through a series of dusty wild west lithographs. There’s a plot – a pair of hired guns hunt their next mark – but director Jacques Audiard is more interested in the ride than the destination. [...]
Shazam! film review: The DC Comics character has its heart in the right place and its tongue firmly in its cheek April 4, 2019 They say there’s a hero in all of us. Shazam! runs with that concept, punches it in the gut then kicks it off a skyscraper. It follows fourteen year old foster kid Billy Batson, who finds he can instantly transform into a fully-grown, practically invincible superhero when he says the magic word “Shazam!” Comic aficionados [...]
Romeo & Juliet: Kenneth MacMillan’s notoriously tricky take on Shakespeare’s classic is brutally beautiful March 29, 2019 Romeo and Juliet Royal Opera House Shakespeare famously trailed his tragic romance with ‘there never was a story of more woe / than this of Juliet and her Romeo”. Big words, Bill. But they hold up in this brutal, speechless version by The Royal Ballet. The Bolshoi Ballet first brought Romeo & Juliet to the [...]
Dumbo review: Tim Burton turns a family favourite into an animal rights advocacy project March 29, 2019 In case you’ve forgotten – it did come out in 1941 – the animated Disney film Dumbo is deeply odd and wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice for a live action remake. There are barely any humans in it, for a start, then there’s Dumbo himself, a doe-eyed, speechless pachyderm who gets bullied for 70 per [...]
At Eternity’s Gate review: A dreamlike and impressionistic portrait of Van Gogh March 28, 2019 In this dreamlike journey through the artist’s later years, American painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel frames the artist as the director wants to see him, keeping his drunkenness, violence and bouts of psychosis somewhere just off-screen. The film presents a fragmented and impressionistic series of vignettes filmed in a drunken POV aspect, as though the [...]
Van Gogh and Britain review: Just how much did London inspire the artist? March 28, 2019 You really don’t need much of an excuse to dust off a collection of Van Goghs, but Tate Britain has reached for one all the same with its latest exhibition of twenty of the man’s works. Van Gogh and Britain contextualises the artist’s output around his few interactions with this country, which amounts to a [...]
Drawing a crowd: Tate Modern pips British Museum to the post as UK’s most popular visitor attraction March 27, 2019 Tate Modern has knocked the British Museum off the top spot of the UK’s most popular visitor attractions, which it has occupied for a decade. The British Museum welcomed 5.82m visitors through its doors last year, while Tate Modern overtook it with 5.87m people – an increase of 3.7 per cent on 2017. Read more: [...]
Why I’m proud that the art industry has taken a stand against the Sackler family March 27, 2019 When I heard that the Tate Group was following the National Gallery’s example by refusing to take further donations from the Sackler Trust, funded by the Sackler family, I felt a sense of both relief and pride in the arts industry. The Trust has for many years made generous donations to leading artistic and philanthropic [...]
DEBATE: Are galleries and museums like the Tate right to shun donations from the controversial Sackler family? March 25, 2019 Are galleries and museums like the Tate right to shun donations from the controversial Sackler family? Sian Flynn, a curator and museums and galleries consultant, says YES. All publicly funded museums and galleries in Britain need to generate their own income to survive and thrive: this is a fact. They are also guardians of the nation’s [...]