The Wolf of Wall Street is a joyous tale of decadence January 16, 2014 FILMTHE WOLF OF WALL STREETCert 18 | By Steve DinneenFour Stars THE WOLF of Wall Street is a film about awful people doing awful things in a company where being awful paid unbelievable dividends, for a while at least. Thankfully, in the hands of septuagenarian director Martin Scorsese, this doesn’t translate into an awful film; [...]
Brutal slavery epic is destined for awards January 9, 2014 FILM 12 YEARS A SLAVE Cert 15 | By Simon Thomson Five Stars STEVE McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is a brilliant film, but its brutality makes for difficult viewing. That might be the point. Based on a memoir of the same name, the book’s subtitle offers a succinct, albeit bloodless, summary of the film: [...]
Arts and lifestyle highlights for the next twelve months January 5, 2014 From Glastonbury to Shakespeare to Matisse, you won’t be short of things to do in 2014 MUSICArcade Fire confirmed as headliners for Glastonbury 2014The Glastonbury 2014 lineup is being kept under-wraps until summer, but that hasn’t stopped rumours surfacing thanks to loose-tongued artists and hints dropped by organiser Emily Eavis. Arcade Fire instigated a flurry [...]
Two Doctors play very distinct villains December 19, 2013 THEATREAMERICAN PSYCHOAlmeida Theatre | By Steve DinneenFive Stars MATT Smith looks nothing like how I imagine Patrick Bateman, the axe-wielding investment banker at the heart of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho. In fact, he doesn’t really look like any other human being apart, perhaps, from the guy who posed for the Easter Island statues. [...]
A classy end to a successful season of Michael Grandage December 12, 2013 THEATRE HENRY V Noël Coward theatre | By Xenobe Purvis Four Stars OVER the course of Michael Grandage’s five-play season at the Noel Coward Theatre, the venue has seen star-studded casts perform parts as diverse as spliff-smoking fairies and cross-dressing soldiers. And now it is home to Henry V, which – although offering us nothing [...]
The Bottle Opener: Champagne’s leading man December 12, 2013 The last eponymous head of a champagne house talks about his passion for fizz Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, the last eponymous head of a great champagne house, personifies the wine he has spent his life making and selling; full of elegance, charm and effervescence. “I am a singular man. I am an iconoclast. My favourite food is [...]
Rewarding – if you battle through all the way to end December 12, 2013 FILM THE HOBBIT Cert PG | By Melissa York Three Stars THE DESOLATION of Smaug opens in a tavern a year before An Unexpected Journey (the first instalment). It’s here that Gandalf the Grey bumps into Thorin Oakenshield, the would-be king of dwarves, and convinces him to steal the precious Arkenstone from underneath a fire-breathing [...]
Fresh magic gets cast by Daniel Radcliffe December 8, 2013 FILM KILL YOUR DARLINGS Cert 12A | By Alex Dymoke Four Stars KILL Your Darlings revels in the cliché-saturated aesthetic of the Beats – think fusty professors, impromptu poetry recitations and furious typewriting in smoke-fugged Columbia dorm rooms – but admirably avoids hero-worship. Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac and co are presented not as [...]
A respectable remake still beaten by the original December 8, 2013 FILM OLDBOY Cert 18 | By Simon Thomson Three Stars IT’S COMMONLY assumed American audiences can’t handle foreign films. As a result, whenever you get a successful foreign film, somewhere in Southern California a producer will be asking whether it could translate into a Hollywood movie; this is the only reason Spike Lee’s 2013 remake [...]
Spectacle but no Disney sparkle December 8, 2013 FILM FROZEN Cert PG | By Melissa York Two Stars IT’S ABOUT time Disney set a film in Scandinavia – and what better time to do it than Christmas? Frozen is very loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen; thankfully, there are no children running around with shards of troll mirror glass in [...]