adaptation
Adam Sweeting
“Bela Lugosi’s dead,” as Bauhaus sang, in memory of the star of 1931’s Dracula. But of course death has never been an impediment to the career of the enfanged Transylvanian blood-sucker. Filmed and televisualised almost as frequently as Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula would doubtless join the cockroaches as the only entities to survive a thermonuclear holocaust.Whether we needed another new TV version is at least debatable, let alone this lumbering behemoth (for BBC One) from the conjoined brains of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, comprising three 90-minute slabs over consecutive nights. Moffat Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Matthew Bourne’s tally of hits is such that many of his dance-drama interpretations of old ballets and films were labelled “classic” as soon as they appeared. Yet The Red Shoes, Bourne’s 2016 tribute to the 1948 film, is arguably the one that most rewards repeat viewings. Thickly layered with entertaining detail, you can see it again and again and still find new things to love.It’s also unique in adding more dance than the original contained. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s film follows the rise of a talented young British dancer, Vicky Page, as she joins a foreign ballet troupe ( Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Two years ago Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle dusted off the Robin Williams vehicle from the Nineties with entertaining results, improving on the original with astute casting, a goofy script and special effects that didn’t take themselves too seriously.A sequel was inevitable. And as befitting a film that takes place inside a video game, to make it work the filmmakers had to go onto the ‘next level’ in terms of plotting and spectacle. They’ve achieved that, with a great deal of ingenuity, while perhaps predictably losing some of the freshness of the earlier outing.Jumanji is the literally Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This scary, electrically beautiful adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book about living on the faultline between imagination and reality is a fantastically alternative offering for the festive season. While the parameters of the story are dark, it’s an edgy, stunningly thought through tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind, and its ability to help us engage with the horrors that life flings at us. Though there is no shortage of Gothic special effects, the success of the production is due in no small part to Samuel Blenkin’s superb, comically gawky turn as the “Boy” at the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Inua Ellams’ Three Sisters plays Chekhov in the shadow of war, specifically the Nigerian-Biafran secessionist conflict of the late 1960s which so bitterly divided that newly independent nation. It’s a bold move that adds decided new relevance to the action, grounding proceedings that are more often generalised in their listless disappointment to a very particular time and place. We certainly view the travails of the Chekhov’s eponymous protagonists – instead of Olga, Masha and Irina, here they are Lolo, Nne Chukwu and Udo – in a different light when starving refugees and the battle Read more ...
Graham Fuller
British cinema has done so badly by Christmas that the revival of a film that parses the nature of the festival while mining its potential for sparking family strife is cause for celebration. Long neglected, The Holly and the Ivy (1952) has been handsomely restored by StudioCanal and deserves to become a seasonal staple alongside Scrooge (1951), Comfort and Joy (1984), and the BBC adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings (1986), which is currently available on YouTube only. The Holly and the Ivy was adapted by Anatole de Grunwald from Wynyard Brown’s West End hit. Set on Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Edward Norton has wanted to adapt Motherless Brooklyn since Jonathan Lethem’s acclaimed novel was first published 20 years ago. His film (as producer, writer, director and star) is an obvious labour of love, an evocative, entertaining, old-fashioned gumshoe noir, which fits snugly within the traditions of the genre while offering a refreshingly atypical hero.Forget Bogart’s Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, or Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes – sharply tailored, fast-talking, ineffably cool. Lionel Essrog (Norton) is a fledgling private eye with Tourette’s Syndrome, who can’t help but fire off spontaneous Read more ...
Graham Fuller
“Badass” – as applied to dynamic women – and “girl power” may be the kinds of exhausted clichés that are reductive in the #MeToo and Time’s Up era, but the new Charlie’s Angels movie revitalises the attitude they describe in a way that’s neither condescending nor retrogressive. Hunger Games actor Elizabeth Banks’s second feature as a director, and the first she’s written, is a pleasurably larky action rollercoaster that makes the most of its lowballed feminism. The three crime-busting warriors this time work for the European branch of the LA-based Charles Townsend Detective Agency. Read more ...
Owen Richards
Ophelia is one of Shakespeare’s most iconic yet underdeveloped dramatic roles. A sweet and naïve girl, she’s driven mad by Hamlet’s wavering affections and her father’s death. She was often the subject of paintings, yet rarely of novels until the 21st century. Ophelia, starring Daisy Ridley, is an adaptation of Lisa Klein’s 2006 book of the same name, and does a valiant job at not only filling in the blanks but bringing some flair of its own.Ophelia is a precocious child of the Danish court, handpicked by Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts, pictured below right) to join her ladies-in-waiting. She Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Professor Punch (Damon Herriman) was once famed throughout the lands as a masterful puppeteer, performing shows night after night with his dutiful wife Judy (Mia Wasikowska). Now, they have been relegated to the provinces. Specifically, the backwash of Seaside, Judy’s hometown far from the coast (as the prologue informs us), where they are raising their baby. They live amidst the daily stoning of presumed witches, and the paranoid grumblings of the small-minded citizenry. As odd couples go, they couldn’t be less well-suited. Punch is a philandering alcoholic with a short-fused temper. Judy on Read more ...
Owen Richards
Ophelia is one of Shakespeare's most enduring characters in both literature and art, and yet her part in Hamlet is limited to few lines and fewer motivations. Based on Lisa Klein's novel, the new film Ophelia challenges this interpretation. Daisy Ridley stars as the iconic maiden raising above the petty squabbles of flawed men. Director Claire McCarthy talks about bringing this new adaptation to screen.OWEN RICHARDS: How did you first become involved with Ophelia?CLAIRE MCCARTHY: The job came to me off the back of a film I made called The Turning, which has Rose Byrne in it, a wonderful Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It’s been 15 years since Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical version of P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins made its West End debut. Now, the magical nanny returns to the Prince Edward Theatre, with Zizi Strallen (who also headlined the UK tour) succeeding her sister Scarlett in the title role – all set to capitalise on the recent Emily Blunt-starring film sequel renewing our interest in the adventures of the Banks family.“I fear what’s to happen all happened before,” muses Charlie Stemp’s Bert at the start of the show. Well, yes and no. Fans of the original movie should be warned that the Disney Read more ...