mon 27/01/2025

Film Reviews

Film: Adventureland

Ryan Gilbey

Superbad was a modern-day coming-of-age comedy with inexplicable 1970s trimmings (the title, groovy credits sequence, Richard Pryor references and so on). Now its director, Greg Mottola, has made a period piece proper in the form of Adventureland, set in the mid-1980s in a cheesy, dilapidated Pittsburgh theme park where the rides make you throw up, and the stalls are rigged against any customer hoping to win more than a dying goldfish.

Read more...

9

Anne Billson

Another year, another animated film which plonks us down into the ruins of civilisation. After WALL-E , it's the turn of 9, but this time the causes of the apocalypse are not ecological; it's the fault of big bad machines which, like the ones in The Terminator and The Matrix franchises, have turned against us and reduced our cities to rubble.

Read more...

Julie & Julia

Josh Spero

If you tried to cross chefs, romantic comedy and cyberspace, you might end up with a YouTube video of Nigella Lawson recreating the diner scene from When Harry Met Sally. As much fun as that would be, it would hardly justify two hours of screen time. That’s where Julie & Julia comes in.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

RAM Song Circle, Wigmore Hall review - excellent young music...

After a week of illness, heading out into the Sunday afternoon cold and rain was not something I was overjoyed to undertake. But in the event this...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 88: Violent Femmes, Ringo Starr, ARXX,...

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Buñuel Mansuetude (Skin Graft/Overdrive)

...

Album: Gary Kemp - This Destination

If I’d have listened to this blind, I would have absolutely no idea who it was by. This isn’t the voice I...

Music Reissues Weekly: New York Dolls - Showdown At The Merc...

“A band you’re gonna like, whether you like it or not.” The proclamation in the press ads for the New York Dolls’ debut album acknowledged they...

Presence review - Soderbergh's haunted camera

The camera is the ghost in Steven Soderbergh’s 35th feature, waiting in a vacant house for its buyers, ambitious Rebecca (Lucy Liu, ...

Cymbeline, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - pagan women figh...

There’s not much point in having three hours worth of Shakespearean text to craft and the gorgeous Sam Wanamaker Playhouse as a...

An Interrogation, Hampstead Theatre review - police procedur...

In a dingy room with dilapidated furniture on a dismal Sunday evening, two detectives prepare for an interview. The old hand walks...

Album: ALT BLK ERA - Rave Immortal

The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far...