England
Matt Wolf
You have to hand it to Felicity Kendal: this ever-game actress is fearless about treading in the footsteps of the British theatre's grandes dames. In 2006, she starred on the West End quite creditably in Amy's View, inheriting a part originated on both sides of the Atlantic by Judi Dench. And here Kendal is at that ongoing West End incubator, the Menier Chocolate Factory, reviving the 1987 play, Lettice and Lovage, that the late Peter Shaffer wrote as an extravagant bouquet for his beloved Maggie Smith. The flowers on this occasion, alas, are starting to wilt. The problem partly rests Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Guy Ritchie is back birthing turkeys. Who can remember/forget that triptych of stiffs Swept Away, Revolver and RocknRolla? Now, having redemptively bashed his CV back into shape with the assistance of Sherlock Holmes, the mockney rebel turns to another of England’s heritage icons in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.Do, however, dump that fantasy of yours of a triumphant return to the multiplex for medieval chivalry and courtly romance. Messrs Malory, Tennyson and dear old Lancelyn-Green can start rotating in their tombs now because King Arthur is basically Lock, Stock and One Stonking Sword, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Jez Butterworth is back. Even before the critics have uttered a single word of praise The Ferryman, directed by Sam Mendes and set in rural Derry in 1981 at the height of the IRA hunger strikes, sold out its run at the Royal Court in hours. It transfers to the West End in June. That’s good news for British theatregoers. in 2012, the last time Butterworth had a new play at the Court, almost no one saw it: The River starring Dominic West ran for three weeks in the theatre’s tiny upstairs space. Two years later it turned up on Broadway with Hugh Jackman in the lead.Will The Ferryman match the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The first series of The Last Kingdom in 2015 kicked off with a blockbuster episode which managed to encompass savage violence, dynastic rivalry and a speedy tour of the state of Britain in the ninth century, while allowing the central protagonist, Uhtred, to grow from boy to man. It was a virtuoso feat, and one which the opener of series two couldn’t quite repeat.But have no fear. The new series has been steadily building momentum, and with this explosive fourth episode it once again looked like one of the very best things on television. It was here that Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon), the Saxon- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“What’s it like to be a child prodigy?” is a question asked by violinist Min Kym several times in the course of this fascinating, agonising memoir. There’s no simple answer, but this description rings true: “There’s that peculiar sensation of feeling completely normal within yourself, but acutely aware that you are different.”And it’s something you never entirely grow out of. As she says later on, “Talent is a burden you can’t throw off.” Music came to her with ridiculous ease, but other aspects of her life have proved more problematic. The younger of two daughters of a Korean family living Read more ...
Sarah Kent
“My mother has always been a bit of a mystery to me not only as an artist but also as a mum,” declares Nick Willing by way of introduction to his film for BBC Two on the painter Paula Rego, who turned 82 in January. What follows is as far removed from a traditional biopic as you could hope to find. There are no experts wittering on about Rego’s importance to contemporary British art or analysing the meaning of her strange, narrative pictures and the powerful women who inhabit them. There’s no bigging up of her career; you have to wait until the end to learn that in Portugal, where she Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the end, SS-GB promised more than it could deliver, but it still left us with some memorable images (not least in the cleverly-crafted opening titles) and several excellent performances. The ending even dangled the faintest hint of a sequel, though presumably not one written by the author of the original book, Len Deighton.What this dramatisation did best was to plant chilling glimpses of what it might have been like to be occupied by the Third Reich, and it did so without resorting too much to the familiar cliches of the way Nazism is usually portrayed. Beatings and torture were used more Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Has the British seaside ever looked more alien than in Roman Polanski’s absurdist drama Cul-de-Sac? Filmed on Holy Island, the tide steals the causeway that led craggy American gangster, Richard (played by Lionel Stander) to an isolated, run-down castle where he proceeds to terrorise the couple who live there. Richard’s partner in a heist-gone-wrong drowns slowly in their getaway car – they’ve stolen a driving instructor’s jalopy – and he holes up with George (Donald Pleasence) and Teresa (Francoise Dorléac) and torments them. Very much influenced by Beckett and Pinter, this Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Why? That's the abiding question that hangs over The Girls, the sluggish and entirely pro forma Tim Firth-Gary Barlow musical that goes where Firth's film and stage play of Calendar Girls have already led. Telling of a charitable impulse that succeeded beyond all expectations, the real-life scenario makes for heartening fare in our seemingly heartless times. But the fact remains that this latest version of the narrative brings very little that is fresh to the table, unless you're so desperate for a new British musical at any cost that its mere existence is justification enough. As Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“What if the Germans had won the war?” has been a recurring theme in fiction, from Noel Coward’s Peace in Our Time to Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and Robert Harris’s Fatherland. There was even a predictive pre-war “future history” version, in the form of Katherine Burdekin’s 1937 novel, Swastika Night.In SS-GB, tellified from Len Deighton’s novel by writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who’ve written all the recent Bond movies), it’s November 1941. The RAF’s famous “Few” having failed to stem the Nazi onslaught – the blackly-ironic opening sequence showed us a Spitfire flown by Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Two years ago BBC Four had a film about a year in the life of Scafell Pike. Arriving at glacial pace is the sequel: Life of a Mountain: A Year on Blencathra. The star this time round is more of a best supporting character actor than a headline performer. It’s only the 18th highest of England’s peaks. As one photographer explained, you can’t get a decent shot of all of its five-felled south-facing expanse. For a long time it even had the wrong name imposed on it: Saddleback, on account of the dipping ridge between its peaks. Alfred Wainwright, who still has the final word on these things in Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a nice pairing to these two character-led documentary films, as reflections on concepts of partnership presented from different ends of the spectrum of innocence and experience. Treating innocence, Someday My Prince Will Come (2005) is the story of 11-year-old Laura-Anne, growing up in an isolated village on the Cumbrian coast, as she begins to engage with the boys around her.There’s an almost conscious naivety, as well as plenty of humour in its observation of childhood, as the director follows his subjects over the course of a year in the deprived community in which they live, its “ Read more ...