Reviews
sheila.johnston
Two people are in the car, one black (the driver, inevitably), one white. But this is not Driving Miss Daisy, nor Collateral; its two occupants aren't played by Oscar-hungry stars, and the ride does not end up at the expected - or, indeed, desired - destination. Instead, Goodbye Solo is a modest, apparently artless film shot through with troubling ambivalence.The first scene - a long single two-shot of the two main characters, much as they are seen in the above still - plunges us straight into their curious relationship. The passenger, William, is a man in his seventies with a shock of still- Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Last night was Sun night at the Royal Opera House, when the opening night of the ballet season was supposedly entirely attended by winners of The Sun’s ballet-ballot. Sadly the production, Mayerling, came into the ballot too late to get the full Sun promotional treatment in the riproaringly tautological style accorded to The Sun's opera experience, Carmen - “Carmen is such a slapper she makes Jordan look positively saintly.” Surprisingly, considering the possibility of a totally accurate "Royal in sex and drugs death pact" synopsis for Mayerling, The Sun wimped out with a hotel offer.However Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Animators often give their heroes superlative physical powers just because they can. Mr Fredricksen, the grumpy septuagenarian at the centre of Up, has by contrast a hearing aid, false teeth, a walker and a stairlift that's on the blink. It's a struggle for him to heave himself out of his armchair. He could betoken a bold break with movie stereotypes or simply be a sign that Hollywood, so long obsessed with the youth demographic, is finally wising up to the power of the grey dollar.Up arrives in Britain on the wings of ecstatic reviews from American critics. It is an immaculately polished Read more ...
Jasper Rees
This review cannot start without a confession. More of a disclaimer, in fact. What you are about to read will not by any reasonable definition pass as a balanced critical response. I began my time at Oxford University in exactly the same week as Boris Johnson and indeed Toby Young, one of the makers of When Boris Met Dave. As a student, I knew or met half the talking heads who took part. As a journalist I know or have met most of the others. They all, to a man (and woman), sound like Prince Charles. So was it any good, this playful account of the birth of the modern Tory party in the cauldron Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Considering that Stargate began as a colossally silly Roland Emmerich movie about ancient Egyptians with magic wands and spaceships, it's proving astonishingly resilient. The Stargate SG-1 TV series created a booming fanbase so eager for more that it spun off Stargate Atlantis. There have been straight-to-DVD movies, computer games, books and animated series. Now here's Stargate Universe, which – judging by this double length opener – creators Brad Wright and Robert S. Cooper might equally well have called Stargate Galactica, Stargate Trek, or even Stargate Lost.Or why not McStargate, since Read more ...
Jasper Rees
About three minutes in, Zombieland is shaping up to be quite the spewiest film in the history of Technicolor. While the lopped-limb count is also off the chart, the litrage-to-frame ratio of mewl and puke, of gump and vom and spurting, gushing intestinal bile sets new parameters for an opening sequence. We begin, in short, in medias res. Has any movie ever so totally shot its wad before you've even dipped a fist in your popcorn? (Apart from Saving Private Ryan, obviously.)Welcome to the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is zombiefied America, terrorised by marauding undead feasting lustily on Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A white kite flies high in black space, trembling, eagerly poised on a wind that shushes almost inaudibly. A man wearing black enters below, and in a low scoop of light prepares slowly in t'ai chi fashion with the calm of a ritual, making great black shadows with his arms and precisely angled legs. Then a small figure sheathed in black bodysuit, faceless, depersonalised, scuttles on and glues its feet to the man’s like a second black shadow. From then on every move the man makes is quadruplicated not only by his shadow but by his doppelgänger and its own shadow.This was the memorably graphic Read more ...
aleks.sierz
David Hare is one of the giants of contemporary British theatre. His skill is to be the Balzacian social secretary who records the mood of the day. So his recent work has examined the state of the nation in a poetic rather than a literal way, and the result has usually been emotionally powerful and resonant. Whether the subject is Thatcherism in Skylight (1995) or New Labour in Gethsemane (2008), Hare is the man the National calls for whenever it feels the need to update us on the temperature of the times. But last night, as his new play, The Power of Yes, opened at the nation's flagship Read more ...
howard.male
If Bowie, Bolan, and Roxy Music were the shimmering glam triumvirate of early 1970s British pop, then what were Mott the Hoople? Surely they don’t belong with the likes of the Sweet, Suzi Quatro and… er… Gary Glitter. In fact with their R&B and rock 'n' roll roots they’ve more in common with some of the decade’s more credible rockers such as the Faces or even the New York Dolls. It was in their ragged swagger and the stylised arrogance that vocalist Ian Hunter projected while implicitly inviting every teenager in the land to join his gang rather than that bacofoil-clad impostor’s gang.But Read more ...
ryan.gilbey
Woody Allen has made four. Christopher Guest starred in and co-wrote the best one of all time, then directed some damn fine examples of his own. Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais have built their careers and reputations on them. Now the Uttoxeter-born writer-director Shane Meadows has thrown his hat into the mockumentary ring with Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, the profile of a bitter, weather-beaten and entirely fictional roadie.The filmmakers have been careful to point out in interviews that Le Donk himself (real name: Nicholas) was cooked up many years ago by Paddy Considine, the actor who Read more ...
gerard.gilbert
Woody Allen has done a disservice to psychoanalysis, reckons Hagai Levy, the 45-year-old creator of HBO’s In Treatment, which starts tonight on Sky Arts 1. Levy had directed 270 episodes of a popular Israeli soap opera before he hit on the idea of a five-nights-per-week drama about therapy - the resulting show, Betipul , becoming an instant hit in his homeland. Retitled In Treatment, the drama was remade in America within a year of first screening in Israel.The HBO version, on which Levy acted as executive producer, stars Gabriel Byrne (Miller’s Crossing, The Usual Suspects) as Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“Let’s start with ‘I’m so lonely’,” says Simon Amstell at the top of his show, Do Nothing. As an opening line for most comedy evenings, that would be about as enticing as the oyster special at the Slurry Pond Inn but thankfully the ex-host of BBC’s Never Mind the Buzzcocks serves up an evening as witty as it is intellectually nutritious.Amstell’s previous stand-up shows have certainly been full of erudition, but some critics have complained they lacked in passion. Well he more than addresses that criticism here, as his emotions are often laid bare and his soul well and truly searched. If that Read more ...