Reviews
Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, BBC Four review - the undying allure of the spying gameFriday, 03 April 2020
Mirrors and windows, looking at ourselves or out into the world, reflecting the culture or making it: compare and contrast. This was the subliminal debate in Spies (BBC Four), the latest instalment of Mark Kermode’s essays on the history and... Read more... |
Wild, Hampstead Theatre online review - timelier than anticipatedThursday, 02 April 2020
“The whole world is just tilting at the moment,” we’re told near the end of Wild, the Mike Bartlett play from summer 2016 that is available (through Sunday) online to help get us through these wild times right now. The first of three Hampstead... Read more... |
Four Kids and It review – a family friendly yarn that needs more magicThursday, 02 April 2020
With over one hundred books to her name and several hugely popular TV spin-offs, including the Tracy Beaker adventures, Jacqueline Wilson takes a no-nonsense approach to children’s fiction that reflects the realities of jigsaw families, mental and... Read more... |
Oliver Craske: Indian Sun, The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar review - a master receives masterly treatmentThursday, 02 April 2020
Ravi Shankar was one of the giants of 20th century music. A musician, composer and teacher, he had an extraordinarily fruitful career that spanned nine decades and reached the entire world. He did more to build a bridge between the music and... Read more... |
Bacurau review – way-out westernThursday, 02 April 2020
After his two mysterious, tightly-coiled and idiosyncratic first features, Neighbouring Sounds and Aquarius, the masterful Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho lets his hair down with an exhilarating, all-guns-blazing... Read more... |
The Trip to Greece, Series Finale, Sky 1 review - bittersweet swansong for the cantankerous comradesWednesday, 01 April 2020
Could this mock-mythic journey, emulating the trek homewards to Ithaca of Homer’s hero Odysseus, really be the final series of The Trip (Sky 1)? Or will Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon see sense, and realise that they’ll never have as many free lunches... Read more... |
Czech Philharmonic Benefit Concert online review – profound musicianship in sombre masked fundraiserWednesday, 01 April 2020
Less than six months ago Prague’s most prestigious concert hall, the neo-Renaissance Rudolfinum, was all glittering lights and packed, smartly dressed audience for the Czech Philharmonic’s hot ticket first performance there for 49 years of its... Read more... |
The Whalebone Box review - documentary through unreliable surrealismWednesday, 01 April 2020
The UK-wide lockdown has thrown the cinematic release schedule into chaos. Some films are postponed indefinitely, while others have opted for direct digital releases. It’s not ideal for anyone, but in a strange way it may play to The Whalebone Box’s... Read more... |
Pen15, Sky Comedy review - the horror of adolescent schooldays revisitedWednesday, 01 April 2020
The cringe-making horror of adolescent schooldays is vividly re-lived in this US import (on Sky Comedy), but with a cunning twist. Its supposedly confused and hormonal leads are played by 30-somethings Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, who blend... Read more... |
The Steph Show, Channel 4 review - magazine show debuts from host's front roomTuesday, 31 March 2020
As we are learning each day during lockdown, necessity is the mother of invention. In Channel 4's case, it is learning how the wonders of modern technology can save a situation: to wit, The Steph Show was meant to come live daily from a shiny... Read more... |
Elton John’s iHeart Living Room Concert for America, YouTube review - the real star was a Mayo Clinic doctor named ElvisTuesday, 31 March 2020
Available in Britain now on YouTube for only a couple of days, Elton John’s iHeart Living Room Concert for America was put together in less than a week and was broadcast in the US on Sunday evening. In normal circumstances, the slot would have been... Read more... |
The Croft, Original Theatre online review – give me the remoteTuesday, 31 March 2020
With everyone in lockdown, observing physical if not social distancing, a story about isolation can have a particular resonance. And there are few places in the UK that are as isolated as some parts of the Scottish Highlands. Ali Milles’s tartan... Read more... |
