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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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 [...]
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 [...]
Suicide Squad movie review: Jared Leto’s strong Joker game can’t save a film that’s too fixated on Margot Robbie’s behind

August 2, 2016

There are lots of reasons to dislike Suicide Squad. It shamelessly fetishises guns, for instance, which in the current climate feels pretty distasteful. There are guns emblazoned with “love” and “hate”, guns made out of gold, guns that fly through the air in slow motion. It shamelessly objectifies women, particularly Margot Robbie and more particularly [...]
St Emilion wine has a chequered reputation but I’m discovering it can be worth a little TLC

August 2, 2016

Sometime later this summer, when I have ploughed my way through another 100 pages of paperwork and weaved through a bewildering slalom of French bureaucracy, I will have realised a dream. I am buying a house in Bordeaux, a few miles from St Emilion. It sits in a small hamlet in Entre-Deux-Mers, surrounded by well-tended [...]
The Plough and the Stars at National Theatre’s Lyttelton: an emotional haymaker about the 1916 Easter Rising

July 28, 2016

There’s a tried and tested formula to Sean O’Casey’s 1926 play The Plough and the Stars: he makes us care for his cast of quick-talking, hard-drinking Irish men and women, and then he makes us watch as their lives fall irrevocably apart. The sense of inevitability doesn’t make it any easier. The play caused riots [...]
Jason Bourne review: Matt Damon returns to the Paul Greengrass-directed franchise, but finds himself in surprisingly shallow waters

July 27, 2016

Paul Greengrass returns to direct this fourth instalment of the Bourne franchise, with a plot cobbled thinly together from the previous three. Bourne (Matt Damon) is brought back from the cold when villainous Agency head honcho Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) starts a covert intelligence program – Ironhand – operating beyond the radar of the [...]
Finding Dory review: Finding Nemo sequel starring Ellen DeGeneres is another glorious Pixar adventure that avoids feeling like a cash-in

July 27, 2016

The title "Finding Dory" evokes a bunch of franchise-happy studio execs sitting around, looking at financial statements and wondering how to come up with a sequel given that Nemo is no longer missing. The film's laboured opening scenes do little to dissipate this odour of a cash-in: we meet young Dory (Sloane Murray), being taught [...]
Galvin at The Athenaeum: the brothers are on top form again with their latest Mayfair venture

July 26, 2016

I’d been planning a self-congratulatory column when I reached 100 restaurant reviews for City A.M. but I took my eye off the ball and now we're up to number 105. When the centenary klaxon should have been sounding, I was too busy drooling over the tinned black pudding at Six Portland Road. So I’ll spare you [...]
Volvo V90 review: Swede dreams really are made of this

July 25, 2016

Sweden’s two great carmakers, Saab and Volvo, have met very different fates. The former was declared bankrupt and production ended in 2014. The latter, on the other hand, is experiencing a glorious renaissance, funded by Chinese money and spearheaded by the brilliant XC90 SUV. Swede dreams, indeed. While the XC90 is Volvo’s halo model, its [...]
A long weekend in Lucerne, Switzerland, a place of almost unimaginable beauty

July 22, 2016

Where: Cradle of local hero William Tell, home of Wagner, Lucerne is a cobalt, lakeside idyll, ringed by mythical snow- capped mountains, a gorgeous Swiss City with a medieval Altstadt (Old Town), historic covered bridges, cobbled squares where perfectly conserved Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance houses, decorated with mosaics, jostle together inside towering city walls. First made [...]

Center Parcs: UK pension funds in talks for stake in holiday giant

Battle of the Sexes tennis: Billie Jean King says it’s just entertainment

The Italy holiday taking in amazing skiing and a lesser-visited city

By: Steve Dinneen

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