family relationships
The Dance of RealityWednesday, 19 August 2015
The British release of the first film made by Alejandro Jodorowsky since 1990’s The Rainbow Thief is an event. Although the Chile-born director disowned that, his reputation was secured with El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973) and consolidated... Read more... |
The Scandalous Lady W, BBC TwoTuesday, 18 August 2015
What exactly do we expect when a drama opens with the declaration, “This is a true story”? The Scandalous Lady W, based on Hallie Rubenhold’s biography Lady Worsley’s Whim, brought us some unusual 18th century marriage shenanigans that ended in one... Read more... |
Mistress AmericaFriday, 14 August 2015
People talk at and not to one another in Mistress America, the latest collaboration between director Noah Baumbach and actress Greta Gerwig and the first to make me wonder whether the unarguably gifted real-life couple might benefit from... Read more... |
DVD: GlasslandFriday, 14 August 2015
For sheer, visceral performances we’ll be lucky if we get anything as strong this year as the central roles from Jack Reynor and Toni Collette in Gerald Barrett’s Glassland. Their mother-son relationship has such an almost unbearable intimacy to it... Read more... |
52 TuesdaysThursday, 06 August 2015
An affectingly restrained Australian drama of adolescent development coloured by the repercussions of a parent undergoing gender transition, 52 Tuesdays may initially seem understated in its exploration of the balances (and imbalances) of family... Read more... |
Life in Squares, BBC TwoTuesday, 28 July 2015
London, 1905. For the Stephen siblings, setting up an independent household in Bloomsbury freed them – especially the sisters, Vanessa and Virginia – from Victorian familial conventions. It resulted in a heady mix of creative endeavour and endless... Read more... |
Ruth & AlexWednesday, 22 July 2015
All the charm in the world provided by two seasoned pros can't make a satisfying whole out of Ruth & Alex, a glutinous portrait of a longtime marriage that is gently tested when the eponymous couple decide to move house. Burdened with a... Read more... |
The Gathered Leaves, Park TheatreSaturday, 18 July 2015
Families. Whether it's the House of Atreus, the court at Elsinore or the Archers, they tend to be of compelling interest. For most of us, loyalties, guilty secrets, truths that will out, petty jealousies and sentimentality tend to be the order of... Read more... |
Ant-ManFriday, 17 July 2015
With its teeny tiny protagonist Ant-Man joins a movie tradition that includes The Incredible Shrinking Man, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Innerspace. And yet the 12th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe feels like a fresh perspective on the modern... Read more... |
The WondersWednesday, 15 July 2015
Somewhere in rural Italy around the border of Umbria-Lazio and Tuscany, a family is trying to make the best of trying circumstances. Their mainstay is the production of honey. They have sheep. There are blackberries on their land. But money is short... Read more... |
The House of Mirrors & Hearts, ArcolaThursday, 09 July 2015
Musicals are cheesy by nature, aren’t they? If not cheesy, then picturesque. The cast of Les Mis may be grimy and poor, but they’re picture-postcard poor. Even modern musicals play by the rules.But Aemonn O’Dwyer and Rob Gilbert break most of them... Read more... |
A Number, Young Vic TheatreWednesday, 08 July 2015
The reason that Caryl Churchill is Britain’s best living playwright is that her work is endlessly enquiring and peerlessly intelligent. When she wrote this play about the subject of human cloning – which had its premiere at the Royal Court 2002 with... Read more... |
