Reviews
emma.simmonds
Set in the near future on the outskirts of New York, Robot & Frank sees a grizzled ex-con warm to his mechanical helper, eventually enlisting him as a criminal accomplice. It might sound like the plot of a genre flick (Short Circuit springs to mind) but, like the robot in question, this little movie will knock you sideways with its soul. Boasting beautiful performances and ample humour, director Jake Schreier’s accomplished feature debut considers the preciousness and precariousness of memories – how they make us who we are, and indeed what it means to be alive.Frank Langella plays our 70 Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Twelve-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein) likes to get the most out of the holiday season, in the Alps that loom above his nondescript town. The little tyke is a very adept thief, stealing skis and ski gear on the slopes, then selling them to his neighbours. Simon’s entrepreneurial cut and thrust is at odds with his purpose, which is merely to provide for himself and his twenty-something sister Louise (Léa Seydoux), who despite her age is the childlike dependent of this unusual family unit, unable to hold down a job, wasting her time – and their money – with the local boys.Director Ursula Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
With the gloriously deadpan comedies 25 Watts and Whisky, co-writers and directors Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll were the leading lights of Uruguayan cinema, not exactly heading the kind of renaissance seen in other Latin American countries in the 2000s – the country’s industry is miniscule – but certainly making two of the region’s most idiosyncratic films. Then Rebella killed himself, a tragedy that threw his friend into a grief that seemed to end his career also. So it’s wonderful to see Stoll back in business, even if his new film doesn’t pack quite the punch we’d hoped.3 concerns a Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
Confinement is a thread running through English Touring Opera’s autumn season. In Albert Herring it is in the priggish village; in The Emperor of Atlantis it is in the circumstances of its creation within the Terezín concentration camp; in The Lighthouse, it is one room with curved walls and the interminable wait for the relief ship.This 1979 chamber opera by Peter Maxwell Davies, who also wrote the libretto, is based on real events: in 1900 a supply ship stopping at the lighthouse on a tiny Outer Hebridean island found it in good shape but deserted, with no sign of its three keepers. The Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The title couldn’t be more resonant, as the economic crisis makes the one-time First World visibly slip another notch. But in Tony Krawitz’s adaptation of Christos Tsolkias’s novel, the meaning is also literal: this is a bloody continent of unquiet ghosts.When Greek-Australian photographer Isaac (Ewen Leslie) defies the horrified wishes of his family to visit Greece, where they apparently fled fascist persecution, incredulous long-shots of Athens show an ugly white concrete sea of over-development. Close-up, it’s strewn with garbage, wild dogs, and refugees which are Europe’s main currency Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Samuel Beckett recalled sinking into a "whirl of depression" while writing All That Fall. Audiences at this production - those, that is, who have managed to score a ticket for this short, sold-out run - are unlikely to emerge into Jermyn Street in a similarly gloomy frame of mind.Apart from the exceptional nature of the evening - a rarely seen piece and a superlative cast in an intimate, up-close, 70-seater setting - All That Fall is revealed here as a bawdy, bucolic comedy, and a perversely life-affirming one full of marvellous one-liners, even if they are, of course, also spiked with grim Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There must be something on the air; a few foreign comics (including Edinburgh Comedy Awards newcomer winner Daniel Simonsen) were performing in English at this year's Edinburgh Fringe and now one of them, Germany's Michael Mittermeier, has brought his Fringe show, A German on Safari, to London for a short residency at Soho Theatre.It's a brave (some would say foolhardy) thing to perform comedy - an artform that relies on nuance of expression and shared cultural references - in a foreign language, but it's a particularly brave thing to do with English, an old language of bastardised pedigree, Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
From the makers of Little Miss Sunshine comes a funny, ethereal love story in the same vein as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Sunshine’s not all they have in common.Calvin Weir-Fields (smash the surname and you get Weirds) is a bestselling author - or was, back in the day when he was a teen. Now, he’s in second novel hell. As played by Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), Calvin's tall, nervy, nerdy, sweaty and only occasionally confident. His psychiatrist (nicely cast Elliot Gould) is there to help him through writer’s block until the “muse” appears. And so she does. Unlike Sharon Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Pity the A-level English student: for them the “rarely seen masterpieces” that creep onto the curriculum and into the theatres. Judging from the frequently giggling reaction of the audience last night of around 100 17- and 18-year-olds, Eugene O’Neill’s tricky tragedy Desire Under the Elms isn’t going to be winning too many A*s among them next summer. Which is a pity, because this is a tough, gnarled play which strips human instincts to their bones. Hatred is its key emotion, loneliness its key condition.David Attenborough in his unputdownable book The Life of Birds tells of the female Read more ...
Nick Hasted
As Julian Assange continues to hold the world’s authorities at bay behind embassy doors, this new biopic offers Young Assange: a Melbourne teenager among the first generation of computer hackers, who cracked the Pentagon’s code on the Gulf War’s eve.Australian writer-director Robert Connolly specialises in lean, socially committed thrillers, and makes the tapping of keyboards and inner workings of Assange’s brain gripping enough. Alex Williams plays Assange with now familiar arrogance, mixed with youthful vulnerability. Connolly sources his disdain for power in an adolescence spent being Read more ...
Helen K Parker
In the event of an alien invasion it really is important to learn to prioritise. And to juggle. In XCOM: Enemy Unknown you are plunged into the middle of just such an invasion. As the commander of an elite anti-alien unit you are responsible for the building, running and expansion of your XCOM base and its operations.This is where the juggling comes in, because very early on you find yourself asking questions: how many fighter planes am I building for South America? Have my researchers perfected the art of mind control yet? Have my engineers finished building those jet-packs?You have to keep Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Argentine Celina Murga’s two feature films to date, Ana and the Others and A Week Alone, mark her out as one of the most original voices in a country chock full of talent. Those films are concerned with individuals – respectively, a young woman and a group of children – in search of an identity, in a society that is giving them little direction. Her first documentary, Escuela normal, investigates this question at source.Murga follows the day-to-day chaos of a provincial high school, buckling under the weight of too few teachers and resources, and far more kids than the building can bear Read more ...