fri 11/10/2024

Benedict Cumberbatch

The Power of the Dog review - of rawhide and roses

The archetypal fascinating male in Jane Campion’s films – whether his allure for a woman owes to his earthy virility or emotional sensitivity, his animal appeal or his soul – has a malign other.That’s true of The Piano (1993), In the Cut (2003) and...

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The Current War review – lacks the spark of invention

We like to think of scientists and inventors as innocent dreamers, trampled upon by the cruel old world. Of course, that’s not wholly true. Just look at today’s tech and social media industries. In fact the man cited as America’s greatest ever...

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Brexit: The Uncivil War, Channel 4 review - Benedict Cumberbatch gets the best tunes

One day this all will be over. Give it half a century. In 50 years' time, there will be documentaries in which today’s young, by then old, will explain to generations yet unborn exactly how and why Britain went round the twist in 2016. Much as we...

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Patrick Melrose, Sky Atlantic review - an olympiad of substance abuse

Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels have been admired for their prose style, scathing wit and pitiless depiction of a rotting aristocracy. Benedict Cumberbatch claims that Hamlet and Melrose were the two roles he was desperate to play, and now...

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The Child in Time, BBC One review - lost in translation

Apparently this is the first time an Ian McEwan novel has been dramatised for television, but whether The Child in Time was the best choice for that singular honour is open to question. It’s watchable enough, but this version (made by Benedict...

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Sherlock, Series 4, BBC One

Sherlock’s back in the here and now, and not before time. Twelve months ago, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes laid down his mobile phone to return to Edwardian London for a plate-spinning deer-stalking mind-warping one-off. The Abominable Bride, though...

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Doctor Strange

Aiming for the trippy qualities of The Matrix and Inception, Doctor Strange is possibly the most enjoyable Marvel foundation story since the first Iron Man, mixing wit with visual pyrotechnics.  Benedict Cumberbatch plays supercilious...

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The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Richard III, BBC Two

Benedict Cumberbatch, it turns out, was born to play the blasted, blighted Richard III, as one might expect from an actor whose long-term apprenticeship to both classical theatre and television converged to bring the BBC's Hollow Crown series to a...

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Sherlock: The Abominable Bride, BBC One

Since Benedict Cumberbatch is now one of the world's most in-demand actors, and his sidekick Martin Freeman isn't doing too badly either, getting them on a set together is like trying to get Simon & Garfunkel to do a reunion. Hence Sherlock...

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The South Bank Show: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sky Arts

It’s huge, it’s just huge, said Benedict Cumberbatch, struggling to express the scale of the challenge that playing Hamlet presents. As Lord Bragg reminded us, Cumberbatch is the lead in the middle of the fastest-selling theatrical event...

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Hamlet, Barbican

The set turns out to be the thing now that Benedict Cumberbatch's star turn in Hamlet has finally arrived, trailing in its wake a level of expectation, hysteria and scrutiny that might well have made many a lesser actor head for the hills. None...

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The Imitation Game

“He should be on banknotes.” Benedict Cumberbatch has spoken of his character, real-life hero Alan Turing, as if he knew him. Turing, who died in 1954, was the father of computing and, more importantly, a secret WWII hero as told in The Imitation...

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