Legend movie review: Tom Hardy triumphs as he plays both Kray twins September 10, 2015 Cert 18 | ★★★★☆ The Kray twins would have loved that there’s a film about them called Legend. Being wanted for a litany of crimes – extortion, robbery, intimidation – didn’t stop them courting the limelight at the height of London’s swinging sixties. Being well-connected may have made them untouchable, but it was [...]
Film review: Me, Earl and the Dying Girl September 4, 2015 Cert 12A | ★★★★☆ Cancer weepies have a long lineage, from Love Story to last year’s The Fault in Our Stars. But rarely does a film try to marry leukaemia and laughs like Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, whose very title teases with its brazen tactlessness. That it succeeds is down to a cast [...]
Review: People, Places and Things September 4, 2015 Dorfman Theatre | ★★★★☆ A dazzling central performance ensures Duncan Macmillan’s new play about addiction isn’t drowned by the weight of its own ambition. People, Places and Things is a maelstrom of competing ideas, juggling a central story about a young actress going through the 12 Steps with tangents about identity and acting. Denise Gough plays [...]
Film review: American Ultra September 3, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ Soon to appear in Batman v Superman, a film in which he’ll have no hair at all, here’s Jesse Eisenberg starring in a film in which he has lots of hair. And let me tell you, it’s lovely hair. Long and shiny. The kind you want to run your fingers through. [...]
Film review: Straight Outta Compton August 27, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Ice Cube spitting F**k Tha Police in front of a jumping Detroit crowd, and the subsequent stage invasion by armed cops, is one of the most exhilarating moments in film this year. That it never actually happened – the band were calmly arrested at their hotel later that night – is largely [...]
Hamlet review: Benedict Cumberbatch shines in this flawed production at the Barbican August 27, 2015 The Barbican | ★★★☆☆ “We are all Hamlet” booms the programme of The Barbican’s – nay, the world’s – fastest-selling play of all time. It means that Hamlet’s such a broad part, he can be played as a lunatic, a depressive, a Machiavellian and even, heaven forbid, a woman. But while we can all be [...]
I spy a tired espionage caper with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. August 14, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★☆☆☆ Guy Richie’s big screen adaptation of the 60s spy show has been in development for over 20 years, with everyone from George Clooney to Quentin Tarantino linked with the project. It hasn’t been worth the wait. The story takes place at the height of the Cold War, focusing on a secret [...]
Film review: Trainwreck August 13, 2015 Cert 15 Four Stars It would be easy to dismiss Trainwreck as another adult comedy about a party animal who needs to grow up, but writer-star Amy Schumer is no Vince Vaughn. Her character’s foul mouthed partying belies an underlying fragility, and her fraught negotiation of life-altering events – most notably, falling for a sensible [...]
Film review: Mistress America August 13, 2015 Cert 15 Three Stars “Don’t let me hear you say life’s taking you nowhere,” croons David Bowie in Golden Years, the song that bookends Noah Baumbach’s last film While We’re Young. We could well take this as a maxim aimed at Baumbach’s characters – at least in his cautiously optimistic later films, which all follow [...]
Opera review: Carmen August 13, 2015 Soho Theatre Four Stars This pioneering OperaUpClose production of Carmen is raw and unpolished, and that’s why it works. The DIY set, inventive costume design and earthy, enthusiastic performances conspire to revivify this staple of the operatic repertoire. Carmen is the tale of a sexually liberated woman killed by a culture of machismo. OperaUpClose has [...]