BFI Flare festival: The best LGBTQ films from the festival to watch at home March 28, 2022 BFI Flare LGBTQ film festival has rolled to a close for another year. Returning to premiere more queer short films and feature-lengths in 2023, here’s a remedy if you’ve got withdrawal already: a selection of some of the best films from across this year’s festival. First up, read our feature on the festival, where we [...]
Clybourne Park review: Satire on race lacks emotional depth March 25, 2022 Bruce Norris’ clever play about the way racism lurks in the suburbs was a knock-out when it premiered twelve years ago. It bagged Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Play, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. So it should have: its script points out the systemic prejudices that are in many ways as pervasive today [...]
Phantom of the Open review: Mark Rylance scores hole-in-one with hilarious underdog tale March 22, 2022 This Mark Rylance comedy-drama is perhaps the most twee film you’ll see this decade, but it’s genuinely heart-warming too, with endless hits of proper comedy. It’s not the year’s first joyous tale of a working class British underdog. The Duke, starring Jim Broadbent as an elderly campaigner against BBC television licensing, was in a similar [...]
Cock review: Bridgerton’s new leading man has a sexy existential crisis March 17, 2022 This stylish new version of 2009’s queer breakthrough play Cock asks why we define ourselves by the people we have sex with. The high-budget production is a million miles away from the play’s humble roots Upstairs at the Royal Court, where it premiered to 80 people, and director Marianne Elliott takes full advantage of the [...]
Doctor Foster and Cock writer Mike Bartlett: ‘Solve problems in the theatre, not online’ March 17, 2022 You might not know his name but Mike Bartlett’s one of the most successful storytellers in Britain. His hit TV show Doctor Foster drew in almost 10 million viewers an episode in 2017, an unprecedented number given last year’s most-watched Christmas Day show attracted 7.4 million. He’s also prolific: since the millennium he’s penned 24 [...]
Can the world’s first climate change escape room really help us change the ways we act? March 11, 2022 I’m standing in what used to be a Paul Smith store in Covent Garden, but instead of browsing for snazzy striped shirts I’m on my hands and knees, poking my head through a hole in a table and blowing air at a model wind turbine. Can I simulate the process of making green energy all [...]
Red Rocket review: Majestic career high for former porn star who partied with Paris Hilton March 11, 2022 Red Rocket isn’t the first cinematic reminder we’ve had this year that penises make for hilarious viewing. Jackass Forever, the year’s most unlikely hit, was basically middle-aged men getting laughs from their appendages. This indie is going in for a slice of the same pie, although the silly jokes sit alongside a serious message about [...]
Small Island review at the NT: A fabulous play about racial injustice March 11, 2022 The small island is Jamaica but then again it is also Britain: this brilliant play explores the injustices faced by the people who arrived on our shores in the 1940s in search of a better life, only to be met with violence and hostility. One of the play’s great strengths is how it makes audiences [...]
A look towards this year’s BFI Flare LGBTQ film festival March 10, 2022 During the height of The Gateway club’s popularity in the 1960s, Mick Jagger turned up and begged for entry. He knew this was a space for women only but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. “He said ‘Go on Gina, I’ll wear a dress,’” recalls Jacquie Lawrence, director of a new documentary on the [...]