fantasy
Rachel Heng: Suicide Club review - skin-deep dystopiaSunday, 29 July 2018
When Lea is nervous she picks at the skin near the nail of her thumb. When she draws blood the wound repairs instantly because she is a member of the Second Wave endowed with SmartBlood™ and DiamondSkin™. Aside from this tic she is an otherwise... Read more... |
A Monster Calls, Old Vic - wild, beautiful theatre that beguiles and bruisesThursday, 19 July 2018
A raw pagan vitality animates this extraordinary story about a teenage boy wrestling with tumultuous emotions in the face of his mother’s terminal illness. Director Sally Cookson has taken the potent blend of myth and realism in Patrick Ness’s book... Read more... |
Pin Cushion review - a twisted fable of daydreams and bulliesTuesday, 10 July 2018
On the surface, Pin Cushion is a whimsical British indie, packed with imagination and charm. But debuting director Deborah Haywood builds this on a foundation of bullying and prejudice, creating a surprisingly bleak yet effective film.Teenager Iona... Read more... |
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom review - dinosaurs in perilFriday, 08 June 2018
I see critics elsewhere have been churlishly sticking the boot into this latest episode of the now quite venerable dinosaurs-reborn franchise (Steven Spielberg’s original arrived in 1993). While this one isn’t a revolutionary transformation of the... Read more... |
Sophie Mackintosh: The Water Cure review - on the discipline of survivalSunday, 27 May 2018
A body can be pushed to the brink, to the point where thoughts flatten to a line of light, and come back from death, but the heart is complex and the damage it wreaks barely controllable. For Grace, Lia and Sky, the three sisters of Sophie... Read more... |
Coraline, Royal Opera, Barbican review - spooky story, underwhelming scoreThursday, 05 April 2018
With the eyes of musical fashion turned relentlessly on the calculating stage works of chilly alchemist George Benjamin, hopes ran high for a brighter spark in a new opera by his contemporary Mark-Anthony Turnage. Would Coraline, a music-drama for... Read more... |
DVD: Jupiter's MoonsWednesday, 07 March 2018
There’s a terrific drive to Kornél Mundruczó’s Jupiter’s Moon, a cinematic powerhouse of both technique and ideas. The maverick Hungarian director’s film, which premiered in last year’s Cannes competition, may occasionally bewilder – such is the... Read more... |
Ursula K Le Guin - Dreams Must Explain Themselves review - enraging and enlighteningSunday, 25 February 2018
Essay collections are happily mainstream now, from Zadie Smith to Oliver Sacks, with more and more bits and bobs coming from unexpected quarters. These patchwork quilts from remarkable writers can be significant, nowhere more so than with those from... Read more... |
The Shape of Water review - love in a Cold War climateWednesday, 14 February 2018
Guillermo del Toro has laid down markers as a wizard of the fantastical with such previous works as Pan’s Labyrinth and Crimson Peak (though we’ll skate nimbly around Pacific Rim), and now he has brought it all back home with The Shape of Water, as... Read more... |
Iolanthe, English National Opera review - bright and beautiful G&S for allWednesday, 14 February 2018
Very well, so ENO's latest Gilbert and Sullivan spectacular was originally to have been The Gondoliers directed by Richard Jones and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. But that Venetian fantasia has already been seen at the Coliseum in recent years,... Read more... |
Star Wars: The Last Jedi - a bold new chapterSunday, 17 December 2017
It’s impossible to view The Last Jedi independently from its predecessors. It’s the second instalment of the third trilogy of cinema’s greatest space opera. And it’s very much a product of what came before, but not in the way you might expect.After... Read more... |
Brigsby Bear review - the healing power of fantasyFriday, 08 December 2017
Like a bizarro-world echo of Lenny Abrahamson’s Academy-titillating Room, Dave McCary’s endearing indie feature takes a potentially hideous tale of abduction and control and transforms it using the amazing healing powers of fantasy and creativity.... Read more... |
