1950s
Blu-ray: Melville - The Essential CollectionTuesday, 26 December 2017
A new box-set to relish, six French cinema classics by a cult director, along with a wealth of fascinating extras on a seventh DVD. The French film-maker Jean-Pierre Melville belongs to a class of his own: a precursor of the New Wave, an influence... Read more... |
Maigret in Montmartre, ITV review - dirty deeds in clublandSunday, 24 December 2017
Whatever the Waitrose and Morrisons commercials are telling you, as far as TV schedulers are concerned ‘tis the season for murder. Thus a Christmas Maigret has become an instant tradition, with Rowan Atkinson reprising his performance as Georges... Read more... |
The Crown, Series 2, Netflix review - all our yesterdays, cunningly rewrittenFriday, 08 December 2017
Beneath the creamy overlay of gowns, crystal chandeliers, palaces, uniformed flunkies and a sumptuous (albeit CGI-enhanced) Royal Yacht, a steely pulse of realpolitik fuels The Crown, returning to Netflix for its much-anticipated second series.... Read more... |
Sylvia, Royal Ballet review - Ashton rarity makes a delicious eveningFriday, 24 November 2017
On paper, the appeal of a Sylvia revival is questionable. If even the choreographer (Frederick Ashton) wasn't sure his 1952 original was worth saving for posterity, do we really want to watch a 2004 reconstruction posthumously pieced together from... Read more... |
Suburbicon review - George Clooney's jarring pastiche of the American dreamThursday, 23 November 2017
If you’re hoping for an incisive look at Fifties American suburbia in this unappealing film, directed and co-written by George Clooney, you’ll be disappointed. It’s hardly worthy of the director of Good Night, and Good Luck, also set in the Fifties... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Incredible Shrinking ManTuesday, 14 November 2017
The Incredible Shrinking Man starts innocently with a young couple bantering on a small boat off the California coast. Before what looks like an atomic mushroom cloud wafts towards the unfortunate Scott Carey, lightly coating him in glittery fallout... Read more... |
Ferrari: Race to Immortality review - death and glory in 1950s motor racingThursday, 02 November 2017
And so the mini-boom in motor racing movies continues, this time with a look back at the history of Ferrari and the intense on-track battles of the 1950s, a decade in which the Scuderia won four of its 15 Formula One World Drivers Championships. In... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Wages of FearTuesday, 31 October 2017
The opening shot sets the tone for what follows: a pair of duelling cockroaches attached to a string, tormented by a bored child. In 1953’s The Wages of Fear, we quickly sense that Henri-Georges Clouzot’s characters are similarly powerless. His... Read more... |
Insignificance, Arcola Theatre review - once-iconic play feels overwroughtMonday, 30 October 2017
Terry Johnson's award-winning 1982 play Insignificance hasn't been seen in London since the playwright directed a 1995 revival at the Donmar (though Sam West staged his own production a decade later in Sheffield). But even the intrigue inherent in... Read more... |
Breathe review - heroic but airbrushed struggle against disabilityThursday, 26 October 2017
It’s a challenge to review this film without resorting to adjectives like “plucky” and “well-meaning”, and its mainstream comfiness made it a strangely cautious choice for the opening night of the recent London Film Festival. Breathe is not only... Read more... |
The Death of Stalin review - dictatorship as high farceFriday, 20 October 2017
Like Steptoe and Son with ideological denouncements, Stalin’s Politburo have known each other too long. They’re not only trapped but terrified, a situation whose dark comedy is brought to a head by Uncle Joe’s sudden, soon fatal stroke in 1953. The... Read more... |
The Lady from the Sea, Donmar Warehouse review - Nikki Amuka-Bird luminous in a sympathetic ensembleThursday, 19 October 2017
What a profoundly beautiful play is Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea. It stands in relation to the earlier, relatively confined A Doll’s House, Ghosts and Rosmersholm as Shakespeare's late romances do to the more claustrophobic tragedies. And with what... Read more... |
