Art review: Peter Kennard May 15, 2015 Imperial War Museum | ★★★★☆ In the cathedral of militaria that is the Imperial War Museum, a dash of pacifism can help keep things in perspective. Photomontage artist Peter Kennard spent the last 50 years making provocative collages denouncing conflict, greed and corporate misdemeanours. Kennard’s work is caustic and confrontational, the stuff of [...]
Theatre review: Death of a Salesman May 15, 2015 Noel Coward Theatre | ★★★★☆ Incredibly, this year is the centenary of Arthur Miller’s birth, and he’s still America’s most famous playwright. It’s incredible because Death of a Salesman – his Pulitzer Prize-winning opus on the American Dream – still reverberates around the claustrophobic walls of our 9-to-5 culture. Through Willy Loman, an everyman [...]
Film review: Pitch Perfect 2 still hits the right notes May 15, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★☆☆ If you haven’t heard of Pitch Perfect, it’s probably because you’re not a girl under the age of 25. But this comedy about rival acapella choirs became a cult hit in 2012, largely due to breakout performances from the sickeningly talented Anna Kendrick and offbeat Australian comedian Rebel Wilson. Simply [...]
David Price: Dreamland May 8, 2015 Art First, Soho | ★★★★☆ Dreamland is the name of the abandoned amusement park in Margate where painter David Price moved his studio three years ago. It’s also the name of his latest exhibition, in which he reimagines Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etchings of ancient Rome as a corrupted theme park. For Price, the [...]
Harry Cory Wright: Anglia – art review May 8, 2015 Eleven Gallery | ★★★★☆ East Anglia isn’t known for its magisterial landscape – endless flat, wild land is hardly the stuff of picture post-cards. What it does have is space: space for light to meld and dance. Space to explore. And as the work of Harry Cory Wright shows, there are rich pickings for [...]
Film review: Girlhood May 8, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★★☆ Girlhood’s title has been changed for the English release – perhaps to cash in on the popularity of Boyhood – but the original French name, which translates as “gang of girls”, is more appropriate. For this is a film about the adolescent need to belong, and it’s one of the [...]
Theatre review: The Audience May 8, 2015 Cert 12a | ★★★☆☆ The Queen must be a hard act to follow. Not the monarch: the 2006 film about the Royal Family’s identity crisis following the death of Princess Diana. That film’s success was down to two people: writer Peter Morgan and Helen Mirren, who picked up a Best Actress Oscar for [...]
Unfriended is the first truly terrifying horror movie about the evils of the internet May 1, 2015 Unfriended opens with a truly harrowing sequence: grainy smartphone footage shows a girl clutching something at arm’s length. There are shrieks of panic from an unseen crowd and you realise she’s holding a gun. There’s a bang and she collapses backward; you’re watching a snuff video, and one that looks horribly authentic. As Unfriended’s protagonist, [...]
Photography review: Elliott Erwitt May 1, 2015 Beetles + Huxley | ★★★★☆ Photographer Elliott Erwitt bore witness to some of the 20th century’s most important events but some of his best loved images are of everyday moments lit up by flashes of passion and absurdity: lovers caught kissing in a rear-view mirror; an umbrella-wielding Parisian leaping over a puddle. Elliott [...]
Monsters: Dark Continent – film review May 1, 2015 Cert 15 | ★☆☆☆☆ War is always an ugly enterprise, but is it any uglier when aliens are involved? That’s the totally pointless question Monsters: Dark Continent asks. After sitting through it for two hours I can confirm that the answer is both “yes” and “who cares”. It’s a huge let-down, especially so [...]
