Film Reviews
City of Ghosts review - chilling but inspiring report on Syria's citizen journalistsTuesday, 12 June 2018
Raqqa was once a prosperous if little-known town in northern Syria. Since 2014, however, it has served as the de facto capital of ISIS’s self-styled caliphate, and as such has been physically decimated, its population subjected to increasingly horrific subjugation. Read more... |
Studio 54 review - boogie wonderlandMonday, 11 June 2018
You need to be of a certain age to recall the sheer ubiquity of Studio 54. For a few years in the late 1970s, even the sterner British newspapers were routinely stuffed with stories of who was there and what went on within the hallowed citadel (if not who went down, and on whom). Read more... |
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom review - dinosaurs in perilFriday, 08 June 2018
I see critics elsewhere have been churlishly sticking the boot into this latest episode of the now quite venerable dinosaurs-reborn franchise (Steven Spielberg’s original arrived in 1993). Read more... |
McQueen review - the dark brilliance of Alexander McQueenTuesday, 05 June 2018
Lee Alexander McQueen said that he pulled the horrors out of his soul and put them on the catwalk. Eight years after his death, and three years after the record-breaking Savage Beauty retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum and the V&A, his extraordinary story remains as powerful as ever. Read more... |
My Friend Dahmer review - sympathy for the devilMonday, 04 June 2018
“He’s not a sideshow attraction,” we hear towards the end of Marc Meyers’s queasily compelling My Friend Dahmer, when one of the “Dahmer Fan Club”, a group of high school sham-friends-cum-taunters who have been treating the film’s teen protagonist as if he was just that, has... Read more... |
Ismael's Ghosts review - call me novelisticFriday, 01 June 2018
The literary allusions and aspirations come thick and fast in this roomy, novelistic, most French of films from Arnaud Desplechin. Read more... |
Solo: A Star Wars Story review - timid and torpidSaturday, 26 May 2018
This is franchise film-making at its worst. A Han Solo: Year Zero origin yarn makes some sense, after Harrison Ford’s piratical hero finished on the wrong end of a lightsaber in The Force Awakens. Read more... |
Edie review - Sheila Hancock gets summit feverWednesday, 23 May 2018
There have been plenty of films about mountains, and they are mainly about men. The plot tends not to vary: man clambers up peak because, as Mallory famously reasoned, it is there. Whether factual or scripted, often they are disaster movies too: Everest, Touching the Void, the astonishing German film about the race to conquer the vertical wall of the Eiger, North Face. Read more... |
On Chesil Beach review - perfect playing in a poignant Ian McEwan adaptationSunday, 20 May 2018
Ian McEwan has said that he decided to adapt his 2007 novel On Chesil Beach for the screen himself at least partly because he did not want anyone else to do so (with earlier works, including Atonement, he was glad not to have taken on the adaptation). The sensitivity of the... Read more... |
The Rosenkavalier film, OAE, Paterson, QEH review - silent-era muddle expertly accompaniedFriday, 18 May 2018
Let's face it, Robert "Cabinet of Dr Caligari" Wiene's 1926 film loosely based on Strauss and Hofmannsthal's 1911 "comedy for music" is a mostly inartistic ramble. Historically, though, it proves fascinating. Read more... |
Filmworker review - a life dedicated to Stanley KubrickFriday, 18 May 2018
What would have happened to Leon Vitali if as a schoolboy he had gone to see that other 1968 hit sci-fi movie, Barbarella rather than Kubrick’s 2001? It’s impossible to imagine that a life devoted to the oeuvre of Roger Vadim would have merited a documentary. Read more... |
Cuckmere: A Portrait/Environment 2.0, Brighton Festival review - landscape, politics and art collideSaturday, 12 May 2018
Sitting between the South Downs and the sea, Brighton’s borders are defined by nature. The Downs’ 2010 designation as a National Park also legislatively limits urban encroachment. Read more... |
Anon review - adventures in cyber-noirFriday, 11 May 2018
Though set in a futuristic (although not by much) world in which information technology has almost taken over the human psyche, Anon still relies on a crumpled whisky-drinking gumshoe for its protagonist. Read more... |
Revenge - a blood-soaked joyThursday, 10 May 2018
Deep in an unnamed desert, a violent and psychedelic retribution is sought. The aptly named Revenge is a brutally rewarding experience, bringing classic horror and exploitation tropes kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Read more... |
Entebbe review – Seventies hijack drama remains groundedThursday, 10 May 2018
The freeing of a plane-load of hostages by Israeli forces at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976 produced an instant spate of movie versions. Read more... |
Lean on Pete review - a different kind of road tripFriday, 04 May 2018
British director Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete is a heartfelt and surprisingly stark affair. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Neil Young: Coastal review - the old campaigner gets back on...
As well as generating a ceaseless stream of albums, whether live, studio or culled from his copious archives, Neil Young has also amassed a fairly...
Album: Maria Somerville - Luster
Luster’s fifth track “Halo” has the lyric “mystical creatures… of Éirne,” referencing the Irish river and lough of the same name – both...
The Penguin Lessons review - Steve Coogan and his flippered...
As if penguins didn’t have enough to fret about with impending tariffs on exporting guano to America, here comes Steve Coogan to ruffle their...
Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre - turns out, they do fuck...
A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and,...
Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story - compelling portrait...
“I was born with the ability and the demon to write. I have been punished for it constantly.” Written and directed by Sinéad O’Shea, this...
Album: Ronny Graupe's Szelest - Newfoundland Tristesse
In this new album, three top-flight musicians based in Berlin, guitarist Ronny Graupe, Lucia Cadotsch (voice) and Kit Downes (piano) work...
Donohoe, RPO, Brabbins, Cadogan Hall review - rarely heard B...
The name Arthur Bliss always summoned up for me the image of a fuddy-duddy old buffer writing boring music. But as I’ve discovered his work over...
Album: Gigspanner Big Band - Turnstone
For lovers of British folk from the 1970s on, Peter Knight is a potent force – renowned for his years with Steeleye Span, in their 1970s heyday...