drugs
The Gentlemen review - it ain't woke but don't fix itThursday, 02 January 2020
Guy Ritchie enjoyed his greatest commercial success with 2019’s live-action fantasy Aladdin, the most atypical project of his career, but The Gentlemen finds him back on his best-known turf as a purveyor of mouthy, ultra-violent geezerism. It’s 21... Read more... |
21 Bridges review - police corruption thriller sets a cracking paceWednesday, 20 November 2019
Thanks to a powerful cast and crisp direction from Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, Luther), 21 Bridges drives home its story of good cops, bad cops and a Big Apple rotten to the core with bulldozing force. Centre stage is Chadwick Boseman as Andre... Read more... |
Doing Drugs for Fun, Channel 5 review - why the cocaine trade is no laughing matterWednesday, 09 October 2019
Monday night’s first episode of this three-part series was a bit ordinary, as it introduced its cast of British recreational cocaine users and explained why their habit may be ill-advised. We learned that the British take more drugs than any other... Read more... |
High Society: Cannabis Café, Channel 4 review - pointless investigation into drug-takingWednesday, 04 September 2019
This was the first of a two-part investigation into... well, I don't know what. The voiceover of High Society: Cannabis Café said it was an experiment “to test the alleged benefits of weed” and the people featured all had “a personal motivation... Read more... |
A Million Little Pieces review - addict's anaemic redemptionSunday, 01 September 2019
The high, crackhead days of James Frey (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are over in five adrenalized minutes, as he dances naked to the Smashing Pumpkins, then tumbles insensibly backwards from a ledge. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of Frey’s... Read more... |
Niall Griffiths: Broken Ghost review - Welsh visions of hope and lossSunday, 18 August 2019
The trend-hopping taste-makers who run British literary publishing have lately decided that “working-class” writing merits a small dole of their precious time and cash. To assess how long this latest patronising fad may last, check out the... Read more... |
Euphoria, Sky Atlantic review - teenage nervous breakdownWednesday, 07 August 2019
Being a teenager used to be fun, allegedly, but for the young cast of HBO’s controversial new hit series Euphoria it looks more like a nightmare ride through a theme park of bad trips. Filmed in various Los Angeles locations, Euphoria (showing on... Read more... |
CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - The Peyote DanceSaturday, 25 May 2019
Soundwalk Collective is a multi-disciplinary audio-visual collective founded by Stephan Crasneanscki, a musical psycho-geographer and field recorder, the source material of his works drawn from specific locations: in the case of The Peyote Dance, it... Read more... |
Rocketman review - fabulous musically but a tad miserable tooFriday, 24 May 2019
Rocketman opens with its hero in flamboyant stage costume stomping into a drab group therapy session. Pulling the sparkling horns off his magnificent head-dress and shuffling his feathered wings into a seat, Elton John demands of his fellow addicts... Read more... |
Cannes 2019: Pain and Glory review - a dour, semi-autobiographical portraitSunday, 19 May 2019
There’s a touch of Fellini’s 8 ½ in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film. It’s a forlorn, confessional tale, with Antonio Banderas starring as Salvador Mallo, a director in the latter stages of his career. His character acts as a cypher for Almodóvar,... Read more... |
Birds of Passage review - mesmerising Colombian family sagaSaturday, 18 May 2019
“Do you know why I’m respected?” demands Ursula (Carmiña Martinez), a Wayuu matriarch in La Guajira in northern Colombia, of Rapayet (José Acosta), who wants to marry her daughter Zaida (Natalia Reyes, soon to star in James Cameron’s Terminator... Read more... |
Mike Jay: Mescaline - A Global History of the First Psychedelic review - multiple perspectivesSunday, 12 May 2019
Humans have been consuming mescaline for millennia. The hallucinogenic alkaloid occurs naturally in a variety of cacti native to South America and the southern United States, the most well known of which are the diminutive peyote and the... Read more... |
