Reviews
London Film Festival 2022 - the winners and the losersFriday, 21 October 2022
The London Film Festival ended with the announcement of assorted prizes, all well-deserved. My colleague Demetrios Matheou has already written here about the Chilean political thriller, 1976, which won Best First Feature, and we’ll be writing... Read more... |
My Neighbour Totoro, Barbican review - dazzling stage adaptation of a Japanese classicThursday, 20 October 2022
As 10-year-old Satsuki observes as she arrives in the countryside with her little sister Mei, “We’re not in Tokyo anymore” – and they’re not in Kansas either, but there is a tang of Oz in the air. The 1988 Studio Ghibli film, My... Read more... |
Ax, LPO, Canellakis, RFH review - from the soil to the starsThursday, 20 October 2022
Good conductors should surely be seen as well as heard. Positioned behind Emanuel Ax’s piano in Brahms’s first piano concerto, with the two flanks of the London Philharmonic’s strings spread wide on either side across the stage, Karin Canellakis... Read more... |
Dave Gorman, Touring - comic in skittish moodThursday, 20 October 2022
Although PowerPoint has been around since 1987, and several comics have incorporated it into their shows, it's Dave Gorman who remains king of the form. And here he is again in PowerPoint to the People, an amiable evening in which he, as ever,... Read more... |
Bonfire Radicals, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - un-traditional folkies unveil their new albumThursday, 20 October 2022
Folk music? It’s all old blokes in shapeless clothes wailing on about ploughmen and fishermen, isn’t it?Not in the hands of the Bonfire Radicals it isn’t. In fact, their sophomore album launch at the Hare and Hounds not only challenged this somewhat... Read more... |
The Watcher, Netflix review - fear and loathing in the New Jersey suburbsWednesday, 19 October 2022
Netflix can’t get enough of Ryan Murphy, whose list of productions with the super-streamer includes Halston, Ratched and recent hit Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Now here he is again with The Watcher, a teasing little mystery based on a true... Read more... |
Vaughan Williams Anniversary Concert, Wigmore Hall review - choices, choicesTuesday, 18 October 2022
A 150th birthday cornucopia was anticipated: vintage chamber and vocal Vaughan Williams in a big Wigmore Hall three-parter alongside music by other great Brits. It turned out, instead, to be a handsome if overlarge horn sounding several cracked... Read more... |
Beabadoobee, Barrowland, Glasgow review - teenage kicks provide a familiar feelingTuesday, 18 October 2022
Rarely will the bar staff at the Glasgow Barrowland have had an easier night. The crowd for Beabadoobee was so youthful that the vibe felt more like a school disco at times, right down to clusters of parents at the back and on the sidelines... Read more... |
Hopper: An American Love Story review - a dry view of a much richer subjectTuesday, 18 October 2022
This rather disappointing documentary about the great American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) has such a dry parade of experts and such a slow linear narrative that it leaves plenty of time to be frustrated by all that’s been left out.Made by the... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2022 - women's voices powerfully to the foreMonday, 17 October 2022
Coming towards the end of the year, the London Film Festival generally has a “the best of the rest” feel to it, offering an excellent overview of the year’s releases. And what this edition shows is an encouraging, and very satisfying expression of... Read more... |
TS Eliot: Into The Waste Land, BBC Two / Four Quartets, Starring Ralph Fiennes, BBC Four review - a great 100th birthday present to a giant of modern literatureMonday, 17 October 2022
Can you make modern poetry come to life on a TV screen? The BBC has had two stabs recently at answering this question, as part of the centennary celebrations for TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, seen by many as the greatest poem of the 20th century. One... Read more... |
Halloween Ends review - the final cutMonday, 17 October 2022
It doesn’t really end till the last dollar’s earned. But David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy, and Jamie Lee Curtis’s signature role, draw to an eventually satisfying close here.Four years after Michael Myers’ bloody Halloween return, Laurie... Read more... |
