violence
American Psycho, Almeida TheatreFriday, 13 December 2013
Among the multiple achievements of American Psycho, any one of which might be enough to make Rupert Goold's long-awaited Almeida season-opener the banner musical of a notably busy year for the form, a particular paradox deserves mention up front.... Read more... |
DVD: Only God ForgivesTuesday, 03 December 2013
Reactions to Only God Forgives are going to be defined by expectations. Its star, Ryan Gosling, is an all-purpose arts polymath equally at home with music and film, who has directed and written as well as acted. Its director, the Danish-born Nicolas... Read more... |
War Requiem, BBCSO, Bychkov, Royal Albert HallMonday, 11 November 2013
How many reviews of War Requiem do you want to read in Britten centenary year? This is theartsdesk’s fourth, and my second – simply because though I reckon one live performance every five years is enough, Rattle’s much-anticipated Berlin... Read more... |
Machete KillsWednesday, 09 October 2013
In a deranged world where Charlie Sheen is President of the United States, Hollywood gets a much-deserved and highly amusing roasting. Robert Rodriguez’s sequel to Machete goes straight for the jugular by mocking Hollywood's golden child, that "... Read more... |
Metro ManilaMonday, 16 September 2013
The malign influence of the big city on countryside folk has fuelled filmmakers since cinema had the means to produce feature-length productions. In 1927, with the America-made Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, F. W. Murnau brought the disruptive... Read more... |
PietaSaturday, 07 September 2013
We learn from the front titles of Pieta that it’s Kim Ki-duk’s 18th film, and it won the Korean director the Golden Lion award at last year’s Venice film festival, against strong competition. Viewers may be asking themselves a rather different... Read more... |
Kick-Ass 2Wednesday, 14 August 2013
With this sequel to director Matthew Vaughn’s action-comedy based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John S Romtia Jr, writer/director Jeff Wadlow has done his best to make Kick-Ass 2 into a two-part franchise. It certainly doesn’t help that its... Read more... |
Only God ForgivesMonday, 29 July 2013
Introducing his latest film at a preview screening, the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn commented, "If Drive was like taking really good cocaine, Only God Forgives is like taking really good acid." It's an appropriate (and characteristically... Read more... |
The Fall, Series Finale, BBC TwoTuesday, 11 June 2013
In the end, it was always going to come down to the last episode whether The Fall was powerful female-driven drama or, to quote another writer for theartsdesk, “misogynistic torture porn”. That conclusion, however, was as elusive as the ending of... Read more... |
The Fall, BBC TwoTuesday, 14 May 2013
You have to wonder if there any alternative themes permitted in TV drama apart from murder (preferably multiple, committed by a serial killer) or paedophilia. New five-parter The Fall plonks itself down squarely in category A, with its story of DS... Read more... |
Spring BreakersWednesday, 03 April 2013
Whilst Zac Efron is getting urinated on in The Paperboy, his High School Musical co-star Vanessa Hudgens is taking the piss in an entirely different sense. In Spring Breakers Hudgens and Disney princess Selena Gomez bin their clean-cut images to... Read more... |
Django UnchainedThursday, 17 January 2013
With its exuberant blood-spray, rambunctious dialogue and generous running time, Django Unchained is writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s first full foray into Westerns. Although it’s not a remake, it pays tribute to Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Spaghetti... Read more... |
