drugs
Markie Robson-Scott
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic Back to Black, written by Matt Greenhalgh and starring Marisa Abela (Industry) as Amy Winehouse, has been criticised for its soft-focused approach.And its sympathetic portrayals of Blake Fielder-Civil (a punchy Jack O’Connell) and Amy’s dad Mitch (Eddie Marsan) are very different from those in Asif Kapadia’s damning 2015 documentary Amy. The possibility of the famously protective Mitch having any editorial control is denied by Taylor-Johnson, but one wonders.In interviews in the sparse, disappointingly bland and overly reverential “special features” on this DVD/Blu Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Memory is a confounding thing. By way of proof, just ask the Mary Tyrone who is being given unforgettable life by Patricia Clarkson in London's latest version of Long Day's Journey into Night, which has arrived on the West End (and at the same theatre) a mere six years after the previous version of Eugene O'Neill's posthumously premiered masterwork; that one headlined a top-rank Lesley Manville in the same part.Arthritic and lonely, Mary looks towards a past where she was "so happy, for a time", away from the crushing realities of the present. Those include a consumptive young son, Edmund ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The notion of prison as a pressure cooker of human behaviour and emotions is hardly a new one, but it can provide formidable fuel for drama. It does so here in this ferociously gripping Danish series, which hails from the same production company as The Killing and The Bridge. It also boasts a forceful roster of acting talent, not least Sofie Gråbøl (aka Sarah Lund from The Killing) and David Dencik (from Chernobyl and McMafia, among other things).Both of them play prison guards at an establishment known as the House ("Huset" in Danish), where they and their fellow-warders are enmeshed in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The end of the first series of Kin found Dublin’s Kinsella crime family ridding themselves of bloodsucking drug baron Eamon Cunningham, but this was not an unalloyed blessing. As this second series opens, the Kinsellas are having to make new arrangements with the Batuks, the Turkish family who are the source of all the local drug supplies. Snag is, the Turks want the Kinsellas to repay Cunningham’s outstanding debt to them of €70m. Oh, and another thing – they want the head of Michael Kinsella (Charlie Cox), since he killed a senior member of the Batuk clan.Difficult decisions have to be made Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When Colombian drug potentate Pablo Escobar made his comment that “the only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco,” he ensured that Ms Blanco would achieve immortality in the annals of crime. Netflix’s new series about Blanco, starring and produced by Sofía Vergara, claims to depict Blanco’s life “as faithfully as possible”, though that famous line “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend” feels a bit nearer the mark.Blanco’s tangled biography has been considerably simplified for this Netflix version, but what emerges is a lurid, high-octane ride packed with sex, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The original title of this French crime drama was Pax Massilia, a reference to the classical roots of its setting in what is now known as Marseille. Dating back to the 6th Century BC, it’s supposedly the oldest city in France. An atmospheric mix of architectural styles, dramatic views, a Mediterranean climate and multiple ethnicities, it makes the perfect stage for this fast-paced and sometimes horrifically violent thriller.It’s directed by Olivier Marchal, an ex-cop whose CV includes Braquo and 36 Quai des Orfèvres. And while the eternal struggle between police and thieves is hardly the most Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was as long ago as January last year that the prolific Williams brothers, Jack and Harry, delivered their absorbing Australian Outback thriller The Tourist. Hitherto, product seemed to have been pouring out of them almost hourly, whether it was Liar, The Missing and Baptiste or The Widow, Rellik and Angela Black.Anyway, after this little sabbatical, here they are again with this six-part mystery, a whimsical fable about luck (or the absence of it), fate, memory and delusion. It also contains a little more than its fair share of violence, and the cold-blooded massacre of a whole police Read more ...
caspar.gomez
TUESDAY 27TH JUNE 2023I wake up around 11.00, get outta bed around 12.00.My carcass has been ridden over by Immortan Joe’s entire fleet of vehicles from Mad Max: Fury Road. My inner head has been scooped out like a cantaloupe. Where my brain once resided a blistered, reddened, atavist lizard id sits curled in upon itself, pulling levers. I need to write. I can barely recall how to use a spoon. Maybe I have Long Glastonbury? No time for mewling. Back in…THURSDAY 22ND JUNE 2023Shepton Mallet’s behind us. So’s the A361. We’re into the leafy lanes, bustin’ the pastoral with GN’R. Don Carlton and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When we consider the storied history of Portuguese television, we naturally think of… er… well, perhaps we'll get back to you on that. But in the meantime there’s Turn of the Tide (or Rabo de Peixe to give it its original title), Augusto Fraga’s surprising and captivating story of a tiny community in the Azores which suddenly finds itself awash with cocaine. It’s set in the titular village of Rabo de Peixe, and centres on four friends who are eking out their uneventful and unpromising lives in the picturesque but remote archipelago (the islands are about 1,000 miles out in the Atlantic from Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sometimes I go outside and look at our kitchen drain. Where there should be a vortex there’s a largely static pool. Tree roots have recently grown through the old pipes, their clumps colonised with fat, dog hair and coleslaw bits, and though a bit of handpumping will shift some of the stale water for a while, it really needs systemic attention from Dyno-rod. A good Dyno-rodding is what Chichester’s new production of Noel Coward’s The Vortex needs too.The catchline for the staging is that a real-life mother and son play the sex-mad mother and drug-addicted son of the drama, the subtle and Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Ain’t Too Proud? Ain’t too good either, I’m afraid. Which is a shame as there’s plenty of the raw material here that powers juggernaut jukebox musicals around the world, but this production has the feel of a cruise ship show with a much tighter band and better singers. We follow the rise of the Motown megaband, The Temptations, from the dark alleyways of Detroit to the top of the charts, supercharged by hits like “My Girl”, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”. Their stock-in-trade comprised power ballads sung in close harmony and stage shows that sold the songs Read more ...
Sarah Kent
“I believe Ayahuasca is something very deep,” says spiritual leader José López Sánchez in the documentary Antidote. “It’s not like selling palm oil or rubber. How many gringos have been healed with Ayahuasca? How many have discovered things about themselves and made positive changes? We should create an alliance with the Westerners; it would be a new path.”Sánchez works at the Temple of the Way of Light, a healing centre for Western tourists deep in the Peruvian rainforest. Visitors come in increasing numbers to drink Ayahuasca mixed with chacruna, a hallucinogenic cocktail that induces Read more ...