actors
Berlinale 2020: Never Rarely Sometimes Always review - raw and unflinching abortion drama hits homeFriday, 28 February 2020
Back in 2017, writer-director Eliza Hittman won over audiences with her beautiful coming-of-age drama Beach Rats. Her latest film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, is a more quietly devastating drama, shifting the focus away from sexual... Read more... |
Berlinale 2020: Berlin Alexanderplatz review - a contemporary twist on a classicThursday, 27 February 2020
Burhan Qurbani isn’t the first director to bring Alfred Döblin’s seminal 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, to the screen. First, there was the Weimar Republic era adaptation that Döblin himself worked on. Fifty years later, Rainer Werner... Read more... |
Actress Noémie Merlant: 'This is something that hasn't been told yet'Tuesday, 25 February 2020
Lest anyone believe that Parasite was the only ground-breaking foreign language film of the past year, Céline Sciamma’s fourth feature, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, arrives to remind us otherwise. Like Parasite, it... Read more... |
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood review - an emotionally honest biopicSaturday, 01 February 2020
The role of Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was made for Tom Hanks – and he excels in it. Rogers’ sixth cousin, Hanks has at his fingertips the compassion and warmth that made the zipper-cardigan-clad American children’s... Read more... |
The Lighthouse review - shiver me timbersThursday, 30 January 2020
A creepy lighthouse on a remote island, a blistering storm, a mermaid languishing on the shore and two fabulously bewhiskered actors chewing up the scenery like there’s no tomorrow. The Lighthouse feels like it’s been washed up in a bottle... Read more... |
Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, BBC Two review - hiding in plain sight?Tuesday, 24 December 2019
This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father... Read more... |
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil review - fantasy follow-up falls flatSaturday, 19 October 2019
Angelina Jolie is back again with those cut-glass cheekbones and ink-black wings, reprising her role as the self-proclaimed ‘Mistress of Evil’, in Joachim Rønning’s nauseating sequel to the 2014 live-action spin on Sleeping Beauty. As the... Read more... |
Mephisto [A Rhapsody], Gate Theatre review - the callowness of historyThursday, 10 October 2019
You wonder about the title of French dramatist Sam Gallet’s Mephisto [A Rhapsody], an adaptation for our days of Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel about an actor unable to resist the blandishments of fame, even if they come at the cost of losing himself.... Read more... |
Noises Off, Garrick Theatre review - sublime chaos in Michael Frayn's meta-farceFriday, 04 October 2019
“Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That’s farce. That’s the theatre. That’s life.” Michael Frayn’s laugh-til-you-weep backstage comedy transfers from the Lyric Hammersmith (where it... Read more... |
Ian McKellen On Stage, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a master relishes the joy of theatreThursday, 03 October 2019
Reviewing Ian McKellen's show is, in one sense, like appraising the Taj Mahal or Mount Everest: he too is an awe-inspiring phenomenon. In another sense, Sir Ian is not like that at all, going out of his way to be available to the adoring patrons... Read more... |
David Harewood: Psychosis and Me, BBC Two review - actor confronts his painful pastFriday, 17 May 2019
In the week that the Jeremy Kyle show has been yanked permanently off air after the death of one of its vulnerable guests, the timing couldn’t have been better for the BBC to show how sensitively the old-school broadcaster handles contributors with... Read more... |
Obituary: Bibi Andersson 1935-2019Tuesday, 23 April 2019
"One talks, the other doesn’t" is about as crude a description as could be of the Swedish masterpiece, Persona. Profoundly experimental even today, Ingmar Bergman’s film was at base about the intense, vampiric encounter between a mute actress... Read more... |
