crime
Kieron Tyler
Reactions to Only God Forgives are going to be defined by expectations. Its star, Ryan Gosling, is an all-purpose arts polymath equally at home with music and film, who has directed and written as well as acted. Its director, the Danish-born Nicolas Winding Refn, has no problems with pushing genres beyond their limits despite working within America’s film industry. Gosling was in Refn’s 2011 film Drive, and their follow-up might have been expected to develop that film’s approach by once again hyper-stylising the familiar.To some extent, Only God Forgives does. But it also goes further – and Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Whether you’re partial to Highsmith or Hitchcock, or both, there’s something deliciously exciting about the prospect of Strangers on a Train. Much of that anticipation lies in the intriguing question of which side of the material this adaptation will fall – with book or film, two very different animals – and curiosity as to the staging. "Hitch" has rather spoiled us for visuals. Or has he?The opening premise of Patricia Highsmith’s debut novel, in 1950, is a cracker. Two strangers meet on a train and fall into conversation. One of them, alcoholic playboy Charles Bruno, talks of the perfect Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Dom Hemingway (Jude Law) is addicted to his own voice, whether he’s soliloquising about his cock, his safe-cracking, his hangover, or telling the psychotic Russian gangster whose houseguest he is how much he wants to fuck his girlfriend. His ornately foul-mouthed verbosity exhausts even himself as he explodes through life, punching, bragging, drinking, drugging and self-destructing, skin puffy, teeth stained, face scarred, gut flabby and eyes staring with fierce confusion, constantly startled by the latest disaster he’s inexplicably ploughed into. “I’m a cunt!” Dom keeps realising.And he is. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Inevitably, an aura of fin-de-siècle gloom hung heavily over this final Poirot. So daunting was the prospect of terminating his 25-year career-defining stint as Belgium's finest (albeit imaginary) export that David Suchet insisted on shooting the last one before the others in the concluding series.In many respects it was business as usual. An A-list of reliable British thesps (Anne Reid, Phil Glenister, John Standing and a deservedly-promoted Aidan McArdle) found themselves incarcerated amid the spartan, crumbling surroundings of a lonely country house. The rain beat down, and the tall trees Read more ...
David Nice
Last Thursday I was giving a talk before a concert in Birmingham, decently but not inspiringly conducted by the much-liked Vasily Sinaisky. Had I been in London I could have taken my pick between two greater interpreters, Valery Gergiev launching his Berlioz series with the London Symphony Orchestra and veteran Yury Temirkanov returning to one of his standard programmes with the Philharmonia.Both appeared on the list of 549 "trustees" supporting Vladimir Putin’s 2012 re-election campaign. Temirkanov recently established chauvinist credentials which made the foolish remarks of young Vasily Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Even by the grand Guignol standards of Russian ballet 2013, this week has been eventful. The trial of the Bolshoi dancer for attacking his boss with acid finally began on Tuesday, and with incredible, tension-ratcheting synchrony, the controversial, mouthy Bolshoi star who was fired in the summer for machinating against his leaders has been appointed to head Russia's world-famous ballet school.To add still more salt to the seasoning, the same mouthy Bolshoi star will be appearing - it was revealed on Tuesday - as a witness on behalf of the accused dancer in the trial. The Brooks-Coulson Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Most of us like a good legal drama, which is why there have been so many of them. By the same logic, finding a fresh spin or a new way of writing and shooting them inevitably grows ever-tougher.The Escape Artist, a new three-parter written by Spooks veteran David Wolstencroft, has given itself a head start by casting David "Mr Box Office" Tennant in the lead role of the irritatingly clever and successful barrister Will Burton. He has all the usual perquisites that accompany this familiar TV archetype - sparky and adoring wife, photogenic offspring, penthouse apartment with spectacular views Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Proof that the BBC’s love of gritty realism is not solely the province of Luther and similar modern-day urban crime dramas comes just minutes into the second series of Ripper Street, before the credits even roll. In the East End of London a police officer is thrown from a window, only missing a little boy playing recorder for the amusement of the street below when his leg is gruesomely impaled on a railing.The writers allowed their leading man a bit of social commentarySo far so Ripper Street of course, given the criticism that the first series of the Victorian crime thriller collected for Read more ...
Simon Munk
Games provide the illusion of choice, they pretend you interact with them. Really, most videogames simply wait for you to press the right button before advancing one step to the next point where you have to press the next right button. Both The Stanley Parable and Device 6 explore the idea of choice brilliantly.The Stanley Parable was released as a "mod" for Half-Life in 2011 but now gets a full and redesigned release in its own right. This truly bizarre game sees you guiding Stanley, an office drone who one day discovers his fellow workers have simply disappeared, through a maze of choice. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the creators of Scandinavia's drama boom could be forgiven if they started behaving like a collection of hysterical Justin Biebers. Not only are their home-grown series hits around the world, they're also being slavishly copied by other broadcasters. The American version of The Killing has been followed by a US take on Danish/Swedish joint effort The Bridge, starring Diane Kruger and set on the Tex/Mex border. Now here's an Anglo-French spin on it, replacing the titular bridge with our beloved Channel Tunnel.In some ways it's not a bad idea, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
No brilliant new ideas? Well then, let's just boil up a compilation of a few old ones. Result? The Blacklist, a slick and surprisingly brutal spies-and-black-ops drama from NBC that speeds along blithely without an original thought in its head.A chubby-looking James Spader plays Raymond "Red" Reddington, the so-called "Concierge of Crime" who has been in heavy rotation on the FBI's Most Wanted charts for years. He turned to the Dark Side after once being a darling of the US defence establishment, where at one stage he was even being groomed to become an admiral.These days he brokers megabucks Read more ...
Nick Hasted
What would you do if your six-year-old daughter vanished in broad daylight, and the man you’re sure took her is walking free? The answer for Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman, pictured bottom left) is as plain as the paranoid survivalist’s stockpiles that fill his basement. But his direct action against Alex Jones (Paul Dano), the apparently child-like man he’s sure is a monster, ripples against multiple traumas and secrets in this crime film of novelistic breadth.The most interesting character in Prisoners’ superbly cast assembly of victims and victim-predators isn’t Jackman’s shattered vigilante, Read more ...