Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Is This Thing On? Bradley Cooper has previously directed A Star Is Born and Maestro, but they weren’t nearly as much fun as this. It’s a story of New Yorkers in the throes of mid-life crises, as Alex Novak (Will Arnett) separates from his wife Tess (Laura Dern) and finds himself floating in unfamiliar new waters. Their divorce also has a perverse knock-on effect on the lives of their close friends, Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Cooper), who both start suffering from copycat syndrome.The joy of the piece (written by Cooper, Arnett and Mark Chappell and loosely based on the life of Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Whether it’s the trenches of the First World War, or the halls and chambers of Vatican City, we’re becoming used to director Edward Berger creating highly believable, evocative and immersive environments for his stories. His latest is no different – except in one very particular way. Adapted from Lawrence Osborne's 2014 novel, by Rowan Joffe, it's a psychological drama of sorts, which follows the misadventures of the charlatan, gambler and drunk ‘Lord Doyle’ (Colin Farrell) as he swishes around Macau in search of handouts that can take him back to the tables and the elusive winning Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Oh yes, I actually do remember Patty Hearst. She was the American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter, who, at the age of 19, was kidnapped by the ultra-left Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. Some months after her abduction, a bank’s surveillance video showed her participating in a robbery.She seemed to have embraced the urban terror group, and was eventually captured and sentenced to jail. But what really happened to her in captivity? This is the question and the story which has inspired Katherine Moar’s Ragdoll, the follow up to her very successful debut play, Farm Read more ...
John Carvill
Thomas Pynchon is having a moment. Paul Thomas Anderson’s second Pynchon adaptation, One Battle After Another (loosely based on Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland), is a critical and commercial hit; and his new novel Shadow Ticket is garnering the sort of reviews and attention that generally tend to accrue to authors with much less of an aversion to playing the publicity game. For long-term Pynchon fans, this is heartening. Pynchon has never really gotten the recognition he deserves, compared with what critics would consider the big hitters of post-WWII US fiction. This despite the fact that Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Film festivals are a bran tub: what you find in them may be unexpected, and not always in a good way. Here are six I pulled out in my first week (minus one of my favourites, The Mastermind, which I will review when it goes on general release next week).Jay Kelly If the indie supremo Noah Baumbach hadn’t popped up in person in his new Netflix-produced film, as the director of a sex scene between the younger version of his protagonist and a lead actress who discreetly farts, I don’t think I would have guessed who made Jay Kelly. He seems at times to be channelling Richard Curtis. There are Read more ...
Robert Beale
Dennis Russell Davies and his musicians from the Czech Republic’s second city began a UK tour last night with an enterprising programme and a large and appreciative audience in Manchester.Freddy Kempf as piano soloist was an undoubted part of the attraction, but he was not there to play a conventional concerto but to join the bouncing Czechs in their love of jazz idioms.The Brno Philharmonic could hardly omit Janáček from their concert, as theirs is the city in which he spent most of his career, but it was a brief acknowledgment in the form of four out of six of his Lachian Dances – an early Read more ...
David Nice
Britten’s Albert Herring is one of the great 20th century comic operas; only Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest draw such whole-hearted laughter. If it’s never been performed in the London Coliseum before, that’s because it’s a chamber opera with a 14-piece ensemble in the pit. This clever compromise shouldn’t be going to Lowry, Salford for its third and fourth performances but touring the country in much smaller houses.Even so, it works at ENO’s London home, just as Britten’s other portmanteau operas, The Rape of Lucretia, devastating in Graham Vick’s Read more ...
Justine Elias
The enduring image of the 1984-1985 Miners' Strike is that of men standing arm in arm against police and of mass protests devolving into mayhem – with protesters being beaten and knocked to the ground.But it wasn’t just men who were on the front lines, as Iron Ladies recalls. Directed by Daniel Draper, the documentary focuses on the essential and inspiring efforts of working-class women – some wives and daughters of miners, some neighbours – who organized as Women Against Pit Closures.Though some of the women had previous connections to local party politics, or to the CND and other protest Read more ...
David Nice
Forty years ago, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was born, and I heard Handel’s Solomon in concert for the first time. Charles Mackerras’s sprightly performance convinced me it was a masterpiece. Now I’m not so sure, despite the presence of two national singing treasures, Nardus Williams and Helen Charlston, and great double choruses superbly delivered by 32 vibrant voices under the ever-reliable guidance of John Butt. Bad librettos don’t usually detract from music as fine as Handel's, but this one takes the palm for silliness. Palms, in fact, and cedars and other Holy Land Read more ...
Justine Elias
A fizzy mystery cocktail with a twist and a splash, The Woman in Cabin 10, based on Ruth Ware’s bestseller, sails along like the sleek superyacht that provides its deadly setting.A welcome blend of Scandinavian noir and Agatha Christie, this Netflix movie assembles a disparate cast of suspects led by a billionaire host (Guy Pearce, pictured below) and his cancer-stricken and even richer wife (Lisa Loven Kongsli). To promote their new cancer charity, the couple invites top donors, plus a rock star, influencers, and a random tech genius, aboard a three-day cruise across the North Sea.Along for Read more ...
David Nice
Never mind the permutations (anything up to eight hands on the two pianos); feel the unwavering quality of the eight pianists and the 13 works, each perfect in their proper place across two and a half hours of more or less continuous music. Above all, applaud the artistic directors of the London Piano Festival, Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen, for choosing so unerringly how and with whom to celebrate this spectacular 10th anniversary. Given the even distribution of superb pianism and compelling repertoire, it will merely be a matter of personal preference what came out tops for various Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A month after Soft Cell’s "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" single peaked at number three in the UK charts, Marc Almond issued a single credited to Marc and the Mambas. March 1982’s "Sleaze (Take it, Shake it)" / "Fun City" was produced by his Soft Cell partner Dave Ball, who also contributed drums and synth.Over 1982 and 1983, Marc and the Mambas seemed to be on Almond’s mind as much as Soft Cell. There were albums and live shows. Radio sessions and TV appearances too. Running Marc and the Mambas in parallel with Soft Cell seemed –and seems – pretty burdensome.Yet it was seemingly what Read more ...