Reviews
Matt Wolf
Forty-one years since Jaws chomped its way into celluloid history comes a new addition to the shark film genre with The Shallows, in which Gossip Girl star Blake Lively plays a Texan surfer who goes mano a mano with a hungry fish. How much more does one really need to know? Not a whole lot beyond the inevitable truism that trouble starts brewing from the very moment our plucky heroine tells some new-found friends that she's "gonna be all right". At which point, cue the gradual isolation of the grieving Nancy, who has recently lost her mum, once an innocent swim in a remote corner of Read more ...
Barney Harsent
If you’re going to go toe-to-toe with Daredevil and Jessica Jones, the first two series in Netflix’s supremely realised and blood-spattered depiction of Marvel Comic’s Hell’s Kitchen, it’s as well to do it with conviction. By hosting Preacher, based on the comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Amazon went in swinging – low and hard, fighting dirty from the off.WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS!The series concluded on the streaming service this week, but even before it had aired there were concerns about whether it could ever do the comics justice. In fairness, the story of a man of the Read more ...
Florence Hallett
It is sobering to think that the medieval and Renaissance paintings that fill our galleries represent just a fraction of the artistic output of that period. Panel paintings – not to mention exquisitely fragile wall paintings – have for the most part succumbed to the ravages of time, and those not destroyed by fire or flood, acts of war or vandalism, or abortive attempts at restoration have simply faded, darkened or discoloured.Safely tucked away in libraries, illuminated manuscripts have survived in far greater numbers and, as such, form the most substantial, if most easily overlooked, legacy Read more ...
aleks.sierz
If you like the feeling of leaving a show, surrounded by the gently glowing faces of happy fellow audience members, then this is one for you. It’s a musical evening full of joyful singing – mixing classics by Mendelssohn and Bartok with a best-of chunk of the back catalogue from the Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne – that transports you to a different world. Adapted by Billy Elliot author Lee Hall from the 1998 novel Sopranos by Alan Warner, it delights with its onstage music and raucous lust for life, and offers an exceptionally exhilarating explosion of swaggering joy and rampaging Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
So much has happened since the first of June when Versailles flounced on to our screens with its flowing locks and flashing cocks. The British people have voted to widen the Channel, the Conservatives have a new leader, Labour doesn’t have one and Christopher Biggins has been expelled from the Big Brother house. As Louis XIV might have said: plus ça change…The title song (Now and Forever by M83) became increasingly haunting as the weeks and wigs (often with heads still attached) rolled by. The series lost interest in sex as more and more bricks were laid, the palace took shape and glory shone Read more ...
David Kettle
The big yellow banners proclaiming "Welcome, world" are out. And judging by the seething, heaving crowds, a fair portion of the world has indeed descended on Edinburgh, where the annual August festivals season has now been up and running for just shy of a week.For the Edinburgh International Festival, the city’s big brother event – as opposed to its unruly and far fatter sibling the Fringe – it’s been a very strong start, with a universally adored Bellini Norma starring Cecilia Bartoli (pictured below) kicking things off, and audio-visual son et lumière extravaganza Deep Time illuminating Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There are memorable appearances from two great actors playing close to the top of their game in Guillaume Nicloux’s Valley of Love, but they’re almost upstaged by something else. Nothing human – though their reunion and interaction in the film is being “directed” by an absent third party – but rather the environment in which they find themselves: the stark desert beauty and almost unbearable temperature of California’s Death Valley.The fact that they are played by Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, who play characters named Isabelle and Gérard, themselves two actors of a certain vintage Read more ...
Nick Hasted
David Brent is unwell. The irritating giggle that punctuates his verbiage is now hysterical. His reality show infamy in The Office led to a nervous breakdown, and the one-time boss of Wernham Hogg (Slough branch) is now a travelling tampon salesman for a sanitary firm. He’s a wearying man out of time to most of his younger co-workers, a laughing stock and irritant. It’s like late Hancock, replayed by a talentless buffoon.The Office was always excruciating as much as it was funny. The laughs come most cleanly this time in early, rapid-fire scenes of Brent the salesman at work, Willy Loman Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Did we really need to go through this all over again? The referendum campaign left roughly half the nation levitating on cloud nine, and roughly the other half feeling amputated. We all know what happened, but in this hour-long post-mortem Laura Kuenssberg went looking under rocks for extra titbits and morsels that could explain from the inside of the two campaigns how Britain voted for the trapdoor/sunlit upland marked Exit.The news is that there isn’t much news to report. Kuenssberg’s scoops have already been trailed in the prints: Clegg outing Gove as the source of The Sun’s non-story Read more ...
David Nice
Superior light music with a sting, done at the highest level: what could be better for a summer lunchtime in the light and airy Cadogan Hall? Our curator was that most collegial of top soloists, trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger. He'd invited colleagues of many nations, all of them first rate, but it was almost a given that chansonnier-composer HK Gruber would steal the show.That's not to undervalue Hardenberger's own unique contributions, kicking off as piccolo trumpeter with Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields strings in the fireworks-strut of fellow Swede Tobias Broström's Sputnik. Jan Lundgren' Read more ...
David Nice
If the BBC were to plan a Proms season exclusively devoted to youth orchestras and ensembles, many of us would be delighted. Standards are now at professional level right across the board. 20 years ago, the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland (★★★★★) couldn't compare with its Great British counterpart; now, although the age ranges are slightly different and the (or should that be the) National Youth Orchestra (★★★★) has vast wind and brass sections, playing levels appeared equal. It was only the matter of a conductor's questionable interpretation in the first concert and a superlative Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Coinciding with both Pokémon Go madness and a developing backlash against the insidious modern plague of mobile gadgets, Nerve is a moral fable for the social media era, and a Cinderella story that turns into The Hunger Games. Luckily, it's much more fun than that makes it sound.The movie's title is also the name of an online game in which players undertake increasingly risky dares while being egged on (via a mobile phone app) by unseen controllers. These have access to all the participants' various sources of online information (Facebook, Instagram, whatever), which they use to exploit the Read more ...