crime
Rachel DeLoache Williams: My Friend Anna review - a fraudster for the Instagram age?Tuesday, 06 August 2019
Of all the ventures that super-fraudster Anna Delvey might have chosen as bait for her victims, an exclusive art club was surely a masterstroke. Self regard, cunning, greed and snobbery have never been in short supply in the art world, but in the... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Ash Is Purest WhiteTuesday, 23 July 2019
Chinese director Jia Zhangke has made a masterful career from following the changes that his native land has undergone in the 21st century, catching the speed of its transition from old ideological order to the relentless dynamism of subsequent... Read more... |
CD: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - BandanaMonday, 24 June 2019
Don't let the presence of nerds' favourite Madlib on production duties fool you: this is a big bad bastard of a West Coast rap record. It's a cocaine-wholesaling, n-wording, gun-toting, dog-eat-dog-ing, murderous bastard of a rap record, in fact.... Read more... |
The Captor review - Stockholm syndrome sillinessThursday, 20 June 2019
The botched 1973 hostage incident which inspired the term Stockholm syndrome comes to flatly comic life here, the strange psychological phenomenon of captives falling for their captors over time being reduced to an absurd caper. Bringing out the... Read more... |
Wild Bill, Episode 1, ITV review - an American in LincolnshireWednesday, 12 June 2019
All is not well in Boston, Lincolnshire. Unemployment, immigration concerns, Brexit frustration, and the highest murder rate in the country. How do you solve the problems of contemporary Britain? Send in an American. And not just that. Bill Hixon (... Read more... |
Cannes 2019: Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood review - sun-soaked black comedyThursday, 23 May 2019
Moments before Quentin Tarantino’s blistering, outrageous work screened at Cannes, a message was delivered on behalf of the director, asking reviewers to avoid spoilers. It’s easy to see why. There’s a lot of pleasure in the film’s initial shock... Read more... |
Hatton Garden, ITV review - ancient burglars bore againTuesday, 21 May 2019
Have we passed peak Hatton Garden? It’s now four years since a gang of old lags pulled off the biggest heist of them all. They penetrated a basement next door to a safe-deposit company, drilled through the wall, and made off with many millions quids... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Woman in the WindowTuesday, 21 May 2019
The Woman in the Window (1944) was the first of the two riveting film noirs in which Fritz Lang directed Edward G Robinson as a timid New York bourgeois, Joan Bennett as the alluring woman ill-met on a street, and Dan Duryea as the dandified sleaze... Read more... |
Cannes 2019: Too Old to Die Young - nightmarish LA noirMonday, 20 May 2019
This year, Cannes has been adamantly defending traditional cinema, with more than a few jibes at Netflix (who remain persona non grata at the festival), but that hasn’t stopped them screening two episodes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s new Amazon TV... Read more... |
The Firm, Hampstead Theatre review - ferociously funny exploration of gang cultureWednesday, 15 May 2019
We are living in a time when gang culture rips and roars its way down London streets, and through newspaper headlines, at increasingly alarming levels. Recent news reports revealed how a surge in knife and gun crime is leading to more young black... Read more... |
Line of Duty, BBC One, series 5 finale review - big highs and BiggeloeMonday, 06 May 2019
The porn was a bit disappointing, was it not? Dear old Ted, no longer romantically active, admitted to being a user. The Superintendent Hastings fanclub sighed for sorrow to witness him toss away his status as an essentially decent heartthrob for... Read more... |
Line of Duty, Series 5, BBC One review - already it's dark, dirty and dangerousMonday, 01 April 2019
Congratulations to Stephen Graham, guest-starring in this fifth season of BBC One’s Line of Duty, for still being alive at the end of episode one, a favour not routinely granted to headline names in Jed Mercurio’s diabolical labyrinth of deception.... Read more... |
