Hollywood
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse review - a new hope for the superhero genreTuesday, 11 December 2018
After Sam Raimi’s original mixed-bag trilogy, Andrew Garfield’s all too familiar outing as the webslinger, and last year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, it would be fair to say we’ve had enough Spider-Man films. Despite the potential fatigue from yet-... Read more... |
True West, Vaudeville Theatre review - sizzling take on seminal Sam ShepardThursday, 06 December 2018
Don't be deceived by Kit Harington's matted, slicked-back hair that is immediately visible the minute the audience enters the boisterous West End revival of True West. By the time the director Matthew Dunster's production has roared to a close two... Read more... |
Dietrich: Natural Duty, Wilton's Music Hall review - elegy for oneWednesday, 21 November 2018
Getting the look right is half the battle: in that, Peter Groom's one-time-Captain Marlene Dietrich is a winner from the start. The looks at the audience nail it too, heavy-lidded and lashed but transfixing, charismatic, winning instant complicity.... Read more... |
DVD: Mansfield 66/67Tuesday, 26 June 2018
There’s long been a fascination with the death of busty, blonde, Marilyn-alike Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield. The fact that it supposedly resulted from a curse by the occult showman and head of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, builds in an element... Read more... |
Score review - breathless dash through music and filmThursday, 05 April 2018
The crucial yet almost indefinable role of music in film – it’s a subject ripe for exploration and celebration, from the musicological technicalities of leitmotifs and ostinatos, through to the colourful characters working to bring directors’... 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... |
The Killing of a Sacred Deer review - edge-of-seat psycho-thrillerFriday, 03 November 2017
At first glance, the meetings between heart surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) and a 16-year-old boy, Martin (Barry Keoghan), lead one to fear the worst for the kid. Their stilted exchanges in public places, during which the man gives the teen... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Mulholland DriveTuesday, 30 May 2017
David Lynch’s Hollywood horror film is casually stripped here of what seemed fathomless mystery back in 2001. Former Cahiers du Cinema editor Thierry Jousse kicks off a packed extras disc by using Lynch’s 10 clues on the original DVD case to easily... Read more... |
CasablancaTuesday, 14 February 2017
You must remember this. It’s December 1941, the month of Pearl Harbour. Richard Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), an American, probably a Communist, who fought Franco in Spain and ran guns to Ethiopia when Mussolini invaded, has given up the fight against... Read more... |
Interview: Marius de Vries, musical director of La La LandSaturday, 14 January 2017
La La Land needs no further introduction. A homage to the golden age of the movie musical, to Michel Legrand and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, it contains perhaps the catchiest score to come out of Hollywood in many years. Unless you have a heart of... Read more... |
La La LandTuesday, 10 January 2017
An increasingly fractious America could take a leaf from the ravishing opening sequence of La La Land. A cross-section of drivers caught in LA freeway gridlock forsake their vehicles to become a dizzyingly frolicsome community that look capable of... Read more... |
Christmas Book: When Broadway Went to HollywoodSaturday, 24 December 2016
Tinseltown's relationship to its more sophisticated, older New York brother is analogous to Ethan Mordden's engagement by Oxford University Press. The presentation is a sober, if slim, academic tome with an austere assemblage of black-and-white... Read more... |
