Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Persistent depression is debilitating and terrifying, as Alastair Campbell illustrated vividly in this punchily-argued film. We first saw him looking like a disturbed, miserable ghost, as he described in his video diary a sudden plunge into depression at New Year, 2018. He seemed to be ebbing away before our eyes.Campbell is shrewd and perceptive, but not easy to like. The former bellicose henchman of Tony Blair (and presumed model for Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It), Campbell was closely involved in the process leading to the 2003 Iraq invasion, and his arrogance and aggression often Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Stasiland is a fascinating mental space. As a historical location, the former East Germany, or GDR, is the archetypal surveillance state, in which each citizen spies on each other citizen, even if they are intellectual dissidents. The Communist state acts like Big Brother, keeping tabs on everyone. This was memorably invoked by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in his 2006 film debut, The Lives of Others. Now the National Theatre pays a similar visit to this unhappy place, with an intriguing play by Ella Hickson, which is given a thoroughly immersive production by Natalie Abrahami, using Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Film buffs who are also tennis fans (there must be quite a few of us who fit in that particular Venn diagram) will love this quirky and experimental documentary by Julien Faraut, which uses archive footage and narration to examine the idea of a shared passion for cinema and sport, and how they may unite on film.Faraut, as actor Mathieu Amalric explains in the voiceover, was working in the archives of the National Sport Institute in Paris when he discovered a huge pile of film reels by fellow Frenchman and documentarian Gil de Kermadec. They were part of a series of instructional 16mm films Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s remarkable that this meandering observational documentary about the five square mile airport west of London has stretched to a fifth series. Heathrow may have 77,000 staff and expect 80 million passengers to pass through this year, but that doesn’t mean everything they do is interesting.For instance, a slender storyline about Thai Airways passengers stranded without a seat when the airline replaced a double-decker Airbus A380 with a much smaller Boeing failed to fizz when none of the passengers became violent or unreasonable. In fact they were delighted to be paid £535 compensation per Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Rage 2 is a wacky Dayglo-infused post-apocalyptic world filled with various different factions who, for one reason or another, want you dead. Think Mad Max on magic mushrooms. Sounds kind of fun, right? You play the role of Walker, the last remaining Ranger following a major attack from arch nemesis General Cross. You're pushed into a wasteland world to recruit three main leaders from around a sprawling landscape littered with road blocks, bandit camps, broken bridges and desolate dunescapes, as you bring the pain to the main enemy faction, The Authority.Along the way you’ll meet the good, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Have we passed peak Hatton Garden? It’s now four years since a gang of old lags pulled off the biggest heist of them all. They penetrated a basement next door to a safe-deposit company, drilled through the wall, and made off with many millions quids’ worth in diamonds, cash and the like. All but one of them ended up in prison, where they will probably see out their days, being all of them well past pensionable age.Owing to the age of the criminals, the story had immense appeal to that section of the British film industry that rushes to glamorise London gangsters. The burglary triggered a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Primal Scream have played in this city, in the recent past, at the 4,500 capacity Brighton Centre but tonight they’re in a venue which holds well under 400. A bananas atmosphere reigns when bands of their stature play intimate shows, and so it is tonight. When frontman Bobby Gillespie leads the group on and asks the crowd to join in with their 1991 classic “Movin’ On Up”, they respond as if going into the encore, a mass roared chorus. The evening seems to peak at its start but then maintains that level of excitement throughout.This a warm-up for forthcoming gigs and festival appearances to Read more ...
Katherine Waters
There are children screaming in a nearby playground. Their voices rise and fall, swell and drop. Interspersed silences fill with the sound of running, the movement and cacophony orchestrated by a boy who leads on the catch tone. It's simultaneously otherworldly and juvenile, adept and improvised – a fitting soundtrack to Anish Kapoor's latest exhibition at Lisson Gallery. While Kapoor is best known for his perception-manipulating sculptures, his painting practice spans four decades and is the explicit focus of this exhibition. Three groups of paintings occupy three rooms; the first Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Director Asif Kapadia's documentary on the controversial 1980s sporting legend Diego Maradona premiered at Cannes this week, and there's something unsatisfying about the fact it doesn't have a one-word title. It would have created a neat synchronicity with his previous two films (Amy and Senna), but we soon learn why this is the case.Kapadia's central thrust is the dichotomy of the public and private lives of a superstar, whose legend even the uninitiated are familiar with. The private figure is Diego – a sweet (self-described) mummy's boy from the slums of Argentina who rose through the Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Is there some tongue-in-cheek irony in BBC Two starting a five-part biographical documentary on Margaret Thatcher this Monday? Mrs Thatcher was Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Conservative to boot, and regardless of gender her years of leadership were among the most forceful and controversial ever. And it may be just days – May ends in June, as one headline put it – before the second Conservative female Prime Minister bows out amidst Brexit chaos and the potential implosion of the Conservative Party as a capable political force.In this first episode, Making Margaret, we heard from Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Musical odd couples don't come much stranger than Sting and Shaggy. Last night, at the Roundhouse, that didn't stop the rock star playing yin to the reggae man's yang. Their contrasting styles and personalities blended together in an evening that reached its climax in a barnstorming fusion of "Roxanne" and "Boombastic". The unlikely partnership dates from 2017 when Sting was invited to sing on Shaggy's "Don't Make Me Wait". During the recording process, the two became genuinely good friends. Soon they hit on the idea of recording an entire album together. The Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Mid-career, moving ever further away from composing for concert platform and church towards the stage, Berlioz found himself unsure where his take on Faust belonged. In the end he hedged his bets and titled it a "dramatic legend". Staging it as an opera, as he really wanted, requires the work of a theatrical plastic surgeon. Connective tissue is needed to flesh out the story, to join the four limbs of the work and stitch together its self-contained archetypes of 19th-century music drama: military march, ballet, drinking chorus, archaic ballad and so on.To raise the curtain on Glyndebourne Read more ...