Reviews
Deutschland 89, Channel 4 review - the Wall comes down, what next?Saturday, 06 March 2021
Joerg and Anna Winger’s gripping drama of East Germany, a loose portrait set over the final decade of that country’s existence, has reached its culmination, and this first episode of Deutschland 89 landed us right in the unpredictable maelstrom of... Read more... |
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche review - memorialising her motherSaturday, 06 March 2021
There was always something a little diffident about teenage Marion Elliott-Said, who created her on-stage persona Poly Styrene after putting together her band X-Ray Spex from a small ad in the back pages of the NME in 1977. Male fans and the music... Read more... |
Two LSO concerts on Marquee TV review - vibrant triptychesFriday, 05 March 2021
In amongst the heavy-hearted duty of supporting orchestras by watching their concert streamings – not something I’d do by choice – there are two real joys here. One is the discovery of Austrian composer Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony of 1916. The... Read more... |
Coming 2 America review - Eddie Murphy returns as African Prince AkeemFriday, 05 March 2021
Eddie Murphy – one of the biggest stars of the 1980s – has taken his time in making a sequel to the enormously successful Coming to America, which was released in 1988. In that film, directed by John Landis, Murphy played another of his cheeky,... Read more... |
Into the Darkness review - disappointingly soapy Danish WWII dramaFriday, 05 March 2021
Can a film be both too long and too short? If so, Into the Darkness definitely fits the bill. Anders Refn’s long-nurtured family epic follows Karl Skov (Jesper Christensen, more famous as a Bond villain), a self-made Danish industrialist... Read more... |
Die tote Stadt, Komische Oper Berlin, OperaVision review – when catharsis goes missingThursday, 04 March 2021
A word about grief. Many of us have learned a lot about it this past year; many knew about it before that. When someone we love dies, we grieve. This is normal. This is human. It is agony, but it’s not actually a mental illness. Having Paul, the... Read more... |
Berlinale 2021: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn review – cheeky, timely and very provocativeThursday, 04 March 2021
The Romanian director Radu Jude invariably serves spicy satire that challenges his compatriots to face historical crimes and present failings. The latest is an erudite and daft, raunchy and knockabout, endlessly provocative film that, for sake of... Read more... |
The Terror, BBC Two review - nightmare in the Arctic wastesThursday, 04 March 2021
Admittedly, Antarctic explorer Captain Scott was at the other end of the earth from the protagonists of The Terror (BBC Two), but they would surely have concurred with his anguished observation: “Great God! This is an awful place.” Based on Dan... Read more... |
Moxie review - likeable if confused high school comedyWednesday, 03 March 2021
A teen comedy with a thematic difference, Moxie has enough memorable moments to firmly establish comedian Amy Poehler as a director worth reckoning with in what is her second film, following Wine Country in 2019. Telling of the teenage Vivian's... Read more... |
Your Honor, Sky Atlantic review - Bryan Cranston suffers fear and loathing in New OrleansWednesday, 03 March 2021
Nice to find Bryan Cranston taking the lead in a TV series again (this is his first since Breaking Bad ended in 2013), and the role of New Orleans judge Michael Desiato fits him like a well-tailored suit. Our first glimpses of him at work in his... Read more... |
Pioneering Women, Oxford Ceramics Gallery online review - domestic pleasuresWednesday, 03 March 2021
Pioneering is an attractive adjective in this context, alerting the spectator to what has been, over the past half century, an extraordinary body of contemporary ceramics produced by women. Underlying the notion of a gender-defined exhibition is a... Read more... |
Frances Larson: Undreamed Shores review - journeys without mapsTuesday, 02 March 2021
Beatrice Blackwood had lived in a clifftop village between surf and jungle on Bougainville Island, part of the Solomon archipelago in the South Pacific. She hunted, fished and grew crops with local people as she studied their social and sexual lives... Read more... |
