David’s wife has left him so, as you would expect, he has to be shipped off to the hotel where he has 45 days to find a partner or he will be turned into an animal of his choice. Of ...
Read More »Pan: Bad Form
This might be incredibly bad form for a critic, but I’d be lying if I claimed that unlike everyone else, I could enter a film without some preconception of its quality and content. Of course, the ideal is to go ...
Read More »The Cheltenham Literature Festival: Part 2
Following on from yesterday, here’s a further breakdown of some more of the events at one of the year’s biggest literary celebrations: Julian Barnes The Man-Booker winner was talking about his latest piece of non-fiction, Keeping An Eye Open: Essays ...
Read More »The Cheltenham Literature Festival: Part 1
A yearly event in the idyllic spa town of South West England, the Cheltenham Literature Festival hosted by the Times and Sunday Times brings together big names across the fields of writing (and a great deal of smaller names who ...
Read More »Sicario: You saw things you shouldn’t have seen
The war on drugs comes to the big screen in a very visceral rendition with Sicario. If not wholly successful as a film, it certainly has merit as an aesthetic and thematic exercise. Plot and character work made seem crucial areas to ...
Read More »The Importance of Being Earnest
I have declared my support for transmissions of theatre productions before. No, they don’t have the immediacy, intimacy or ephemerality of a live staging, but it is a good opportunity to allow people to see some form of a production ...
Read More »Macbeth: Sound and fury
Oh, Shakespeare film adaptations: my forte! This is a fierce and muscular spin on Macbeth. Director Justin Kurzel takes full advantage of the rugged Scottish landscape (and fairly rugged cast members with the likes of Michael Fassbender being the foremost) ...
Read More »The Martian
The last few years have provided us with a mixed bag of big sci fi films. The best have had some script issues but been carried through by other elements of the film (Gravity), some failed to realise that mindless ...
Read More »Roger Waters The Wall
It finally came. After being released for the Toronto film festival back in 2014, general audiences last night could go see the concert film of Roger Waters’ latest staging of rock epic The Wall for one night only. It was ...
Read More »Legend: Do You Think We Look Alike?
The Kray Twins have been committed to screen once again. The notorious East End gangsters who courted the world of glitz and glamour in the 60s whilst running their criminal outfit The Firm are often seen as ripe TV and ...
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