Nerve film review: Emma Roberts and Dave Franco star in YA thriller about what happens when Pokemon Go turns evil August 9, 2016 Nerve is a savvy internet morality tale tacked on to a giddy teen blockbuster, a parable about the corrosive power of online anonymity and the dangerous side-effects of a generation addicted to the dopamine rush of “likes”. It’s the first original feature from Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman since 2010’s massaged-reality documentary Catfish (they also [...]
Our resident chef Mark Hix on how the Glorious Twelfth heralds a hunting season full of delicious grouse August 9, 2016 This Friday marks the Glorious Twelfth, the day on which the grouse-hunting season officially begins. I’m hoping to squeeze in a little shoot in Dumfriesshire, and perhaps do some salmon fishing on the River Nith while I’m at it. The game season is one of the most important events in the British culinary calendar – [...]
Scarfe’s Bar review: A sophisticated and upmarket social bar matching political doodles with a sharp Indian menu August 9, 2016 A classy social bar festooned with the political artwork of feted doodling satirist Gerald Scarfe, this stately lunchtime boozer offers an Indian menu as tantalising as it is incongruous. Signature cocktails are rarely seen in such close proximity to curries and naan, but with careful drinks pairings they make deliciously spicy bedmates. WHERE? 252 High [...]
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates review: a backwards buddy movie that wastes Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick August 9, 2016 Mike and Dave are brothers, but more than that, they’re lads. When these liquor salesmen aren’t drowning in their own supply, they’re driving a banterbus made of LOLZ. Understandably, younger sister Jeanie hates them, but she’s getting married and feels some familial urge to invite them, despite them being total dicks. Mike and Dave have [...]
Audi RS7 Performance review: Is the new super-powered coupé gilding the lily? August 8, 2016 There are very few new cars more desirable than the latest Audi R8. With a 0-62mph time of 3.5 seconds and a top speed nudging 200mph, the £120,000 supercar will out-accelerate almost anything on London’s streets. Even better, it’s packed with enough technology to make even the worst traffic jams that little more bearable. But [...]
Yerma at the Young Vic review: Billie Piper shows her acting chops but the production lacks poetry August 8, 2016 Inspired by Federico García Lorca’s play of the same name, the Young Vic’s new production of Yerma (Barren) is well acted and inventively staged, but undermined by a misguided impulse to modernise. The original was set in rural Spain, following a young woman penned in by society and her beliefs, whose increasingly desperate desire for [...]
Long Weekend: Newly opened hotel Innside New York NoMad offers to give guests the goss on Manhattan’s coolest hang outs August 5, 2016 The weekend: The epicentre of the world according to every Armageddon-themed movie ever made, New York’s also a welcoming, walkable city which begs to be visited when the days are long, the spirits high, and the air-con’s omnipresent. Its familiarity belies a forever changing chameleon of a personality, as the heaving bulk of an 8m-plus [...]
Explore the coastline of Cascais and channel your inner Dan Brown at a masonic Portuguese retreat August 5, 2016 Portugal’s national football team might have plodded to Euro victory in the most boring fashion imaginable, but the country’s Atlantic resorts of Estoril and Cascais more than compensate, providing the kind of spark and excitement their players were sadly lacking (not that we can talk). From the historic setting of Penha Longa Resort – Ritz-Carlton’s [...]
Young Chekhov at National Theatre review: this triple bill of Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull gives fresh perspective on one of the great dramatists August 5, 2016 Chekhov has a reputation as a miserabilist, due in large part to his recurring themes of suicide and existential dread. But this does a disservice to the comedy that runs through his work – and thank goodness it does, because if his plays were as gloomy as people tend to think, eight hours of them [...]
Rotterdam at Trafalgar Studios review: A touching and laugh-out-loud comedy about being transgender August 4, 2016 “Rotterdam is anywhere/anywhere alone” sang The Beautiful South back in the days of Britpop. Anywhere is right: the Dutch port city acts not only as a setting for this West End transfer, but also as a metaphor for transition, a halfway house where no one feels they truly belong. The story follows three British expats [...]