Reviews
Simon Munk
Thief is the reboot of one of the oldest, and smartest of the stealth-action gaming series. Of course, as is customary in modern videogame design, the gameplay's been somewhat dumbed down. But it's not fatal here – leaving a stealthy and stylish successor that's a touch too repetitive.The Thief trilogy, which ran from 1998 to 2004, was a hugely influential set of stealth-action games. Splinter Cell and Dishonored, for instance, both owe a huge debt to the series' light and shadow-based stealth gameplay. But the series was difficult to master and slow in pace – with players required to Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Nick Cave called this ferocious, blackly comic Outback nightmare “the best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence”. Lost and almost forgotten since its 1971 nomination for Cannes’ Palme D’Or, as a film of innately Australian fear and loathing it compares well with Wolf Creek. But this tale of a smug English teacher having his civilised skin torn off him in strips during an endless week in a purgatorial mining town is less of a pure “Oz-ploitation” film than that. Though unhinged and buffeted by savage psychological currents, it's also precisely calibrated by Canadian director Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Hitherto, it has been routine for the average citizen to observe that while they could understand the causes of World War Two, getting a grip on why the world went to war in 1914 has been like trying to learn Mandarin while blindfolded and riding a bicycle. 37 Days, an account of the fateful few weeks leading up to the outbreak of war, has ambitions to change all that.In the first of three parts over three nights, we began (of course) with the assassination by Serbian agents of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, then were whisked away to the palaces and chancelleries of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Gabriela Montero stands out as different. She is an American-based improvising classical pianist of real quality. She has a courageous civil rights message to convey about the tragedy of unseen arrests and murders in her native Venezuela, but is nonetheless happy to take her curtain call draped in the colourful Venezuelan flag. That sense of difference is reinforced by the staid context of the Southbank Centre's International Piano Series: concerts which almost all start at 7.30 pm, with roughly half on Wednesdays. There's nothing inherently wrong with that predictability, given the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
This venue continues its promotion of American drama with another prize-winning play from across the pond. Hot on the heels of Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, with its casting of Emila Fox, comes this play by David Lindsay-Abaire, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his critically acclaimed Rabbit Hole, which also earned several Tony Award nominations and a film adaptation with Nicole Kidman. For Good People, Hampstead has tempted national treasure and Olivier Award-winning actress Imelda Staunton to play the lead.This is that rare thing — an American play about classHer character Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The first room of Ruin Lust is a knockout. Three large-scale pictures indicate the enduring fascination that ruins have held for artists over the centuries. John Martin’s apocalyptic view of Vesuvius smothering Pompeii in a vast cloud of volcanic ash (main picture) is like a vision of Hell. The engulfing dust storm is shaped like a fiery grotto – seductive yet repellent. In its fleshy recesses, the erupting volcano appears like a fire-spurting nipple, while the flames reflected in the water tinge the sea blood red, making it impossible to distinguish the actual waves from the lava swamping Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
The beautifully adorned Grand Budapest Hotel is not only home to the fastidious, foul-mouthed concierge Gustave H. and his bellboy and confidante Zero but to a myriad of other fantastic characters. This is director Wes Anderson's candy coloured ode to the art of storytelling, and his tribute to the actors he's collaborated with and strong friendships he's forged via his illustrious filmmaking career. Anderson's eighth film is a warming, welcoming and, of course, whimsical comedy caper which whizzes by at a break-neck pace and is gifted with his signature air of melancholy.This hotel is Read more ...
Mark Sheerin
Whether fingerprint or labyrinth, the swirly logo for Marrakech Biennale 5 feels apt. The festival has left its mark upon the city. It questions Moroccan notions of identity. And, going by the tagline, “Where are we now?” it reflects the ease with which you can get lost in this rich and bewildering land.But the artists in this 10-year-old event, know their way round North Africa. Almost a quarter of the 43 participants are from Morocco. Many more have strong links with the region. And the majority of works are site-specific, that is, fully orientated to the five main venues.Curator Hicham Read more ...
David Nice
Roll up, roll up, to hear Juan Diego Flórez deliver his nine cheek-by-jowl top Cs in the umpteenth performance of Laurent Pelly’s slick, often funny Donizetti comedy. Does the whole thing still fizz? Only up to a point in Christian Räth's revival. Yet I’d still rather see this – or Don Pasquale, or L’elisir d’amore – any number of times than endure any more of the composer’s “unjustly neglected” tinpot tragedies.Let’s be fair: Covent Garden’s ever-personable Director of Opera Kasper Holten warned us that Patrizia Ciofi was recovering from a virus. And that may have explained the cloudy middle Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If ever an Oscar ceremony pointed to the fundamentally schizoid nature these days of Hollywood’s defining love-in, the 86th annual Academy Awards was it. On the one hand, you had an out-gay host in Ellen DeGeneres taking selfies, ordering pizza, and generally trying to treat the crowd at the Dolby auditorium as an extension of her own funky, vaguely edgy persona.On the other, you had a running theme about heroism in the movies that landed as limply as leading actor Matthew McConaughey’s cringe-making acceptance speech, an extended paean to God and to the actor himself that seemed utterly Read more ...
Matthew Wright
A series about the bizarre shenanigans of a family of ludicrous aristocrats would seem an unlikely hit for 21st-century Sunday night telly. It worked for ITV’s Downton Abbey, though, and while that’s off air, BBC One is glueing over five million to the settee with Blandings, its adaptation of PG Wodehouse’s tales of the dotty Lord Emsworth, and his prize sow, the Empress. We're already well into the second series, with quite a roster of comic acting talent visiting Blandings Castle and threatening each week to destroy Lord Emsworth’s patch of bumbling, piggy Eden. In places, it’s a lot of fun Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
On paper this sounded promising: a gothicky song-cycle of historical London and the dark, seamy side of the city, performed a stone’s throw from where they do Jack the Ripper tours. Lead performers were Marc Almond, whose distinctive voice we have loved for 30 years, ever since his pervy soul debut with Soft Cell, and John Harle, a more than useful jazzy classicist who is often original and known for his TV theme tunes. Thown in the mix was some Iain Sinclair psycho-geography. An intriguing combination with a positively reviewed album The Tyburn Tree, of which this show was a presentation. Read more ...