By: Steve Dinneen

Life&Style Editor I'm the editor of City A.M. The Magazine, and editor of the daily newspaper's Life&Style section. We cover food, wine, going out, culture, technology and travel. I'm also the head judge of our Toast the City awards that celebrates hospitality in the Square Mile. Find me on X @steve_dinneen

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Film review: Annabelle

October 10, 2014

★★☆☆☆ Annabelle, a creepy, possessed Victorian doll, was one of the stars of last year’s horror hit The Conjuring, despite only appearing in a handful of scenes. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that she takes centre stage in this prequel, which plays like a Buzzfeed list of fright-movie cliches. Creepy children, moving dolls, enclosed spaces, [...]
Lindsay Lohan answers critich in new play Speed the Plow

October 9, 2014

Theatre: Speed the Plow ★★★☆☆ There’s something rather patronising about the coverage of Lindsay Lohan’s stage debut in David Mamet’s Speed the Plow: “Didn’t she do well for turning up?”, “Didn’t she do well for only forgetting one line?”, “Didn’t she do well for not being absolutely freaking terrible?” We should, perhaps, give her a [...]
Review: TED Restaurant

August 26, 2014

I’m a sustainability hypocrite. If I were at a dinner party and the host served bluefin tuna, I’d take great pleasure in making a scene. “How very dare you? Don’t you know bluefin numbers have dropped by 96 per cent thanks to intensive fishing? And while we’re at it, did you know they can swim [...]
Film Review: God’s Pocket

August 8, 2014

★★★★☆ God’s Pocket is what Goodfellas might have been like had it been directed by Alexander Payne. It follows the lives of a group of ageing petty criminals as they attempt to blot out the overwhelming futility of life in a down-and-out American town through the liberal use of alcohol and violence. At the funeral [...]
Theatre Review: My Night with Reg, Donmar Warehouse

August 8, 2014

★★★★☆ Kevin Elyot’s 1994 play charts the romantic entanglements of a group of gay university friends, now well into their 30s, set against the backdrop of the Aids crisis. It explores issues of love, loss, infidelity and insecurity, and how they are all tainted by the shadow of the disease. The Donmar’s new production is [...]
Film Review: Welcome to New York

August 8, 2014

★★★★☆ Welcome to New York is a grotesque character study of the French head of a world bank – not to mention Presidential hopeful – who stands accused of raping a maid in a New York hotel. Director Abel Ferrara’s film is certainly bold. In fact, you wonder how he got away with it: the [...]
Film review: Mood Indigo

July 31, 2014

★★★☆☆ Mood Indigo is a return to form for the tirelessly creative French director Michel Gondry, albeit one with some rather large caveats. The surreal, densely-packed opus combines the DIY aesthetic of his Be Kind Rewind with the darker, more psychological tone of the sublime Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and, thankfully, nothing at [...]
Film review: Guardians of the Galaxy

July 31, 2014

★★★★★ The Guardians of the Galaxy marketing team have been flogging their horse so long and hard it’s a wonder it’s not already dead. With hype so merciless and protracted, the latest Marvel movie seemed destined to disappoint. Factor in that it’s based on a relatively minor branch of the Marvel comics universe and stars [...]
Review: The Importance of Being Earnest

July 24, 2014

Lucy Bailey’s reimagining of The Importance of Being Earnest at The Harold Pinter Theatre sees an am-dram company rehearsing a chaotic version of the titular play. The result is a terrible production about a terrible production of a brilliant play – an unfortunate irony that would probably have raised a wry smile from Wilde himself. [...]
Restaurant Review: Ten Room

July 22, 2014

I wonder if Ten Room at Café Royal saw it coming. A multi-million pound restaurant in an iconic London hotel… If you listened carefully in the days leading up to opening week earlier this year, you could hear the faint, metallic screech of knives being sharpened. And by all accounts, it was more than deserving [...]

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By: Steve Dinneen

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