Film review: Accidental Love June 18, 2015 Cert 15 | ★☆☆☆☆ Accidental Love was supposed to be David O Russell’s follow-up to 2004’s I Heart Huckabees, but he bailed on the project in 2010, perhaps after finally getting around to reading his own script. The story is daft: when Alice (an insignificant Jessica Biel) gets shot in the head by an errant [...]
Film review: Mr Holmes is an elementary character study of elderly Sherlock June 18, 2015 Cert PG | ★★★★☆ A century and a quarter after his literary debut, Sherlock Holmes has never been more popular. Given the renewed interest caused by two hit TV series and a Guy Ritchie movie franchise, it was only a matter of time before we got a film adaptation of A Slight Trick of [...]
Father’s Day gift ideas: From Armani sunglasses to special edition Lagavulin whisky June 18, 2015 Whether your old man likes to relax with a scotch or impress the office with his stylish new fashion accessories, these items are sure to make him happy this Sunday Ted Baker shoe polishing kit £40, tedbaker.com It's an axiomatic truth of the universe: dads love a pair of well-polished shoes. Now [...]
Where are London’s best terraces for al-fresco dining? It’s time to get outside for lunch June 16, 2015 Don’t stay cooped up inside for lunch. Get out and explore the city’s terraces. COMPAGNIE DES VINS SURNATURELS Capture the spirit of the cobbled backstreets of Paris tucked away in Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden. This eaterie serves French fine dining on tables spread across the colourful courtyard. Highlights from the spring menu [...]
Mix it up: The best places in the city to sip on a cocktail in the sun June 16, 2015 @philip_salter In the summertime when the weather is fine, you can stretch right up and touch the sky. When the weather’s fine. You got cocktails, you got cocktails on your mind. That’s how the song goes in my head at least, so here’s a smattering of London’s many outdoor watering holes in which to soak [...]
Car review: The two-door Bentley Continental GT is back, but does it have anything new to show us? June 15, 2015 Two things you’ll instantly associate with Norway are the fjords and the North Sea oil industry. But few think of it as the land of the electric car. Norwegians buy more electrically-powered cars, per capita, than any other nation on earth. On five occasions in the space of 12 months, the best-selling car in Norway [...]
Summer in Chamonix: Celebrating 150 years of climbing in the Alps June 15, 2015 Birthplace of the Winter Olympics and home to some of the Alps’ most challenging pistes, the Chamonix valley in France is a magnet for snow-sporting types throughout the winter months. But as warmer weather arrives and the snow disappears, so do most of the tourists, and the thousands of skiers are replaced by a [...]
Film review: The Look of Silence June 12, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★★ In Joshua Oppenheimer’s acclaimed 2012 documentary The Act of Killing, genocidal amateur dramatics played out against paradisal Indonesian landscape in a spectacle so bizarre and disturbing it felt instantly classic. In that film, ageing, unrepentant perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide re-enacted their murders in the style of their favourite [...]
Theatre review: Oresteia June 12, 2015 Almeida Theatre | ★★★★★ It may be undergoing a revival in London, but Greek tragedy is not an easy fit with the contemporary stage. Traditionalist directors risk creating something either staidly academic or bathetically hysteric, while would-be revolutionaries can dilute the sources’ inherent power. Robert Icke’s new Oresteia at the Almeida, which he has [...]
Secret Cinema Presents Star Wars will have you grinning in awe June 12, 2015 Secret location in London | ★★★★☆ Secret Cinema returns with its most ambitious project yet, and it’s out of this world. Reviewing Secret Cinema without giving away its… well, secrets, is tricky. Suffice to say you will explore a number of instantly recognisable locales from the Star Wars universe, each rendered in painstaking detail, [...]