Photography review: Elliott Erwitt May 1, 2015 Beetles + Huxley | ★★★★☆ Photographer Elliott Erwitt bore witness to some of the 20th century’s most important events but some of his best loved images are of everyday moments lit up by flashes of passion and absurdity: lovers caught kissing in a rear-view mirror; an umbrella-wielding Parisian leaping over a puddle. Elliott [...]
Monsters: Dark Continent – film review May 1, 2015 Cert 15 | ★☆☆☆☆ War is always an ugly enterprise, but is it any uglier when aliens are involved? That’s the totally pointless question Monsters: Dark Continent asks. After sitting through it for two hours I can confirm that the answer is both “yes” and “who cares”. It’s a huge let-down, especially so [...]
Film review: Far from the Madding Crowd is rushed, but Carey Mulligan sparkles May 1, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★☆☆ In 19th century England, the line between fancying someone and marrying them was terrifyingly thin. Or so you might think from Thomas Vinterberg’s new adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, in which the twinkly Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) hurdles marriage proposals like a Victorian Colin Jackson. All [...]
Theatre review: Everyman is a thrilling, touching success April 30, 2015 Olivier Theatre | ★★★★☆ The first play directed by Rufus Norris since he took over as artistic director of the National Theatre is an ambitious, frenetic production that hints at exciting times ahead for the institution. Everyman is a 15th century morality play warning of the perils of pursuing bodily pleasures over the [...]
Something for the weekend April 30, 2015 SING! BILLY ELLIOT One of the best loved musicals of recent times celebrates its tenth birthday this May – as good a reason as any to book a ticket if you’re yet to see it. Tickets £20.70 – £68.70, call the box office on 0844 248 5000 CHEER! BRENTFORD VS WIGAN Head to west London [...]
Theatre review: Ah, Wilderness! April 24, 2015 Young Vic | ★★★★☆ The life of American playwright and Nobel Laureate Eugene O’Neill was often tragic but in Ah, Wilderness! he mines his youth for comedy, and the results are unexpectedly delightful. The action takes place over the 4 July weekend, 1906, mostly at the Miller family’s Connecticut beach house. They suffer [...]
Theatre review: Carmen Disruption April 24, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★☆☆ Carmen Disruption asks two big questions: 1) what becomes of a performer who plays the same role over and over again for her entire life, and 2) what happens when a culture becomes obsessed with disruptive, distracting technologies? Prolific playwright Simon Stephens obviously thinks one informs of the other – [...]
Film review: A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence April 24, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★★★ “We just want to help people have fun,” intone two ashen-faced salesmen of crummy novelty items. Lord knows the people in this film need the help. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is the third part of Swedish director Roy Andersson’s trilogy “about being a human [...]
Film review: The Falling April 24, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ Jean-Luc Godard once said that a story should have a beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order. The Falling has several middles, even more beginnings, and an end that doesn’t resolve any of them. This is no feat of narrative ingenuity – just a mess. The setting [...]
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 – [...]