family relationships
DVD/Blu-ray: ColumbusTuesday, 27 November 2018
The director of this deeply charming debut feature is the Korean-American film critic who writes under the pseudonym Kogonada; one of his principle interests over the years has been the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, and there’s something of... Read more... |
Shoplifters review - deserved Cannes prize winnerSaturday, 24 November 2018
When a film is about a crime family, audience expectations tend to involve mobsters and thrills, but that’s not the territory that Hirozaku Kora-eda is exploring here. He opens his tale with a camera tracking leisurely across a Tokyo supermarket. A... Read more... |
Pinters Three and Four, Harold Pinter Theatre review - double bill boasts double acts to treasureTuesday, 13 November 2018
The West End is specialising in two-parters of late. To Imperium and The Inheritance we can add the latest duo of Harold Pinter one-acts that has opened in time to spread ripples of delight even as the nights draw in. "Delight", you may well ask... Read more... |
Wildlife review - Paul Dano's tense directorial debutSaturday, 10 November 2018
A revelatory moment comes hallway through Wildlife when frustrated American housewife Jeanette Brinson (Carey Mulligan) is observed standing alone in her family’s backyard by her 14-year-old son Joe (Ed Oxenbould), the film’s anxious, steadfast... Read more... |
DVD: Anchor & HopeTuesday, 06 November 2018
There’s a lovely feel of folk freedom to Carlos Marques-Marcet’s second film, which sees the Spanish writer-director setting up creative shop resoundingly in London – or rather, on the waters of the city’s canals that provide the backdrop for Anchor... Read more... |
The Wild Duck, Almeida Theatre review - meta, merciless and altogether brilliantThursday, 25 October 2018
Beware the smile that Edward Hogg wears like a shield in the opening scenes of The Wild Duck, the Ibsen play refashioned into the most scalding production in many a year by Robert Icke, here in career-surpassing form. Playing James Ekdal, the... Read more... |
Donkeyote review - a quiet revelationTuesday, 23 October 2018
It’s an undeniably quirky set-up: an elderly Spanish farmer who takes it upon himself to travel to America and walk – alone – the epic, 2,200-mile Trail of Tears, following the westward route taken by the Cherokee fleeing white settlers. Alone, that... Read more... |
LFF 2018: Roma review – Alfonso Cuarón’s triumphant return to MexicoSaturday, 20 October 2018
It’s not for nothing that Alfonso Cuarón’s mercurial CV includes Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because this director really knows something about alchemy. His last, the Oscar-winning Gravity, was a science fiction spectacular... Read more... |
Matthew Holness: 'I wanted to make a modern silent horror film'Friday, 19 October 2018
Watching Matthew Holness’ debut feature Possum, you’d be forgiven in thinking he was a tortured soul. Lead character Phillip (played by Sean Harris, pictured below) is a lean marionette of a man, prone to horrific flights of fantasy involving a... Read more... |
Company, Gielgud Theatre review - here's to a sensational musical rebirthThursday, 18 October 2018
The most thrilling revivals interrogate a classic work, while revealing its fundamental soul anew. Marianne Elliott’s female-led, 21st-century take on George Furth and Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical comedy Company makes a bold,... Read more... |
First Man - Neil Armstrong's giant leapThursday, 11 October 2018
Echoes of Phil Kaufman’s 1983 classic The Right Stuff resonate through Damien Chazelle’s new account of how Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The Right Stuff ended with the conclusion of America’s Mercury space programme in... Read more... |
Parents' Evening, Jermyn Street Theatre - chemistry so negligible it's antisepticThursday, 11 October 2018
The playwright Bathsheba Doran has blazed a stellar trail ever since graduating from Cambridge at the same time as David Mitchell and Robert Webb. After writing for them on the sketch show Bruiser, she earned her spurs as a comedy writer on Smack... Read more... |
