Spider-Man entertains but fails to amaze April 21, 2014 FILM AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 Cert 12A Three Stars MARC Webb’s second installment of the re-booted Spider-Man franchise feels like a throwback to the super-hero movies of a decade ago – the first Hulk, Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil. It’s all spectacle, explosions and a dash of romance. It’s melodramatic rather than dark, [...]
No punch in Thompson and Brosnan rom-com April 21, 2014 FILM THE LOVE PUNCH Cert 12A Two Stars IT’S UNCLEAR why this film is called The Love Punch. The title is never mentioned, no one drinks any punch and it isn’t really about love. Richard (Pierce Brosnan) owns an investment firm that’s bankrupted by a dodgy, cackling Frenchman. Assets crippled, Richard rushes to ex-wife Kate [...]
Incest is best in this Cheek By Jowl production April 21, 2014 THEATRE ‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE Barbican Four Stars CHEEK By Jowl’s production of John Ford’s 1633 play ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore rips some of the flesh from the original but preserves its darkly beating heart. Condensed into an intense interval-less two hours, it’s a bloody collision of taboos lit up by a sparkling [...]
10-week fitness challenge | The get-fit diary of an out-of-shape office worker April 21, 2014 Steve is undertaking a 10 week “total body transformation” programme with No.1 Fitness, which involves four sessions at the gym a week, a strictly-controlled diet and absolutely no alcohol under any circumstances whatsoever (not even a little bit, just to take the edge off…). Here’s how it’s going: I’VE never been a fit man. I [...]
A thrilling ride if you can stomach the violence April 13, 2014 FILM THE RAID 2: BERANDAL Cert 18 | By Alex Dymoke Three Stars TWO and a half hours? 150 minutes? That’s more like a war of attrition than a “raid”. More western front than embassy siege. Still, Indonesian martial arts extravaganza The Raid 2 flies by quicker than most films half its length, thanks mainly [...]
Pangaea is a transcontinental hotchpotch April 13, 2014 ART PANGAEA Saatchi Gallery | By Joseph Funnell Two Stars SINCE moving to its Chelsea residence in 2008, Charles Saatchi’s eponymous gallery has often grouped artworks by country or region. But with Saatchi having scoured every corner of the earth for big art bounty, London has been left wondering where the gallery has left to [...]
Musical adaptation of film is a certain hit April 13, 2014 THEATRE DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS The Savoy Theatre | By Alex Dymoke Four Stars STARRING Robert Lindsay, Zoe Wanamaker and the guy from the BT adverts, My Family was the sitcom equivalent of Michael McIntyre; good-natured mass-market comedy so inoffensive it ended up offending the chattering classes. Lindsay played flustered middle-class dentist Ben Harper, a far [...]
Days of future caste April 3, 2014 FILM DIVERGENT CERT 12a Three Stars IN DIVERGENT a special young woman battles against a repressive society to achieve her true potential. Based on the first in a series of “Young Adult” novels by Veronica Roth, and with a sequel already confirmed, Divergent is unoriginal but sophisticated, engaging and surprisingly fun. I don’t wish to [...]
Richard Ayaode is a Double visionary April 3, 2014 FILM THE DOUBLE Cert 15 Four Stars RICHARD Ayoade’s first film, 2011’s Submarine, shuffled bashfully through the beaches and bedrooms of suburban seaside adolescence, stopping for cuddles, puppy love and the odd mumbled voice-over. For his second, loose Dostoevsky adaptation The Double, he dives arms flailing into the chaotic nightmare of adult anomie. It is [...]
Disappointing on a biblical scale April 3, 2014 FILM NOAH Cert 12a Two Stars You probably remember Noah’s Ark from school. It’s the one where the nice man with the beard builds the giant boat to save the furry animals from the massive flood. It’s a simple, morally unambiguous story, and as such it’s is one of the best-loved tales in the Bible. [...]