family relationships
MommyWednesday, 18 March 2015
“Loving people doesn’t save them” could be the epitaph to the young Canadian director Xavier Dolan’s exuberant, emotionally draining fifth feature Mommy. Its vivid colours, concentrated in an unusual square screen ratio, seem to burst out with... Read more... |
Raised by Wolves, Series One, Channel 4Monday, 16 March 2015
For somebody who never seems to be short of things to say, journalist and author Caitlin Moran doesn’t half like to repeat herself. Raised by Wolves is, for those of you keeping score at home, her third attempt to tell the story of growing up chubby... Read more... |
A Second ChanceMonday, 16 March 2015
Susanne Bier follows the disappointing Serena with a well-acted and worthy drama that confronts societal prejudice, the sticky issues around child protection, and our inability to see what's right under our noses. Despite the plot's predictable and... Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Welsh National OperaSunday, 22 February 2015
After 16 years one might expect a revival of a repertory opera like Hansel and Gretel to come up with a dusty look and frayed edges. But Benjamin Davis has done a brilliant job pumping the life back into Richard Jones’s memorable but intricate 1998... Read more... |
Boa, Trafalgar StudiosTuesday, 10 February 2015
Casting existing partners is no guarantee of artistic success – for every Burton/Taylor, there is a Bennifer. Hannah Price has taken a risk, too, by pairing the revered Dame Harriet Walter with her comparatively unfamiliar American husband, Guy Paul... Read more... |
Little Light, Orange Tree TheatreSunday, 08 February 2015
The Orange Tree’s renaissance continues with this searing piece from playwright of the moment Alice Birch, who will shortly follow up last year’s subversive Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again with an interrogation of the porn industry for Rufus Norris’s... Read more... |
Dara, National TheatreWednesday, 28 January 2015
The history play has roots that go deep into our culture. We love to see stories that are kitted out in fancy dress, and long to savour a past that resonates with our present. In the case of Dara, which is adapted by Tanya Ronder from an original by... Read more... |
DVD: BoyhoodTuesday, 27 January 2015
Boyhood is an intimate film on an epic scale. Twelve years zoom past in 189 minutes, as we follow Mason Evans Jr.'s journey from primary school pupil to university student. That the film exists at all seems miraculous; you admire the producers’... Read more... |
Big Hero 6Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Following the critical and commercial hits Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, Disney's latest is a film which will win you over with its charming WALL-E-esque antics, oddball coupling and simple slapstick before it – somewhat annoyingly – reveals... Read more... |
DVD: Southern DistrictThursday, 22 January 2015
A Bolivian upper-crust family comes to gradual pieces in Juan Carlos Valdivia’s 2009 Southern District (Zona Sur), which won best director and script prize in the World Cinema section at Sundance the following year. Delayed in its UK DVD release,... Read more... |
WildTuesday, 13 January 2015
Stream-of-consciousness is a tough thing to pull off in the movies. Voice-over narration has now fallen so far out of favour that no internal monologue survives the journey from page to screen even remotely intact, and having your lead character... Read more... |
Big EyesFriday, 19 December 2014
The worlds of marital abuse and artistic fraud collide to eye-opening if also frustrating effect in Big Eyes, Tim Burton's film about the unmasking of an elaborate deception that ruptures a family along the way. The film has would-be Oscar contender... Read more... |
