class system
63 Up, ITV review - age is beginning to wither themWednesday, 05 June 2019
The first film in this extraordinary series, Seven Up!, was made for Granada Television’s World in Action in 1964. It picked 14 seven-year-old British children from different social backgrounds, aiming to revisit them every seven years to see how... Read more... |
Cannes 2019: Parasite review - hilarious and horrifyingFriday, 24 May 2019
Like Snowpiercer before it, Bong Joon-ho’s rage-fuelled satire Parasite puts class inequality squarely in its sights. This time however, the story is grounded in the real world and concerns a family of hustlers who will do anything to get by. ... Read more... |
Cannes 2019: Sorry We Missed You review - essential Loach dramaSaturday, 18 May 2019
Who would have thought that Ken Loach could make a film more heart-wrenching than I, Daniel Blake? His new feature, co-written with his long-standing collaborator Paul Laverty, is a raw, angry and utterly uncompromising drama, showing that, for all... Read more... |
My Enemy's Cherry Tree: Wang Ting-Kuo review - a masterpiece from TaiwanSunday, 07 April 2019
Early every evening, Miss Baixiu comes to sit in an isolated café. She is the daughter of Luo Yiming, the respected employee of a successful commercial bank in charge of loans throughout central Taiwan. As a rich man, an aesthete and a... Read more... |
Minding the Gap review – profound musings on lifeFriday, 22 March 2019
Where would you go for a devastating study on the human condition? The home movies of teenage skaters would be very low down on that list. But most of those movies aren’t filmed, compiled and analysed by Bing Liu, the director of Minding the Gap.... Read more... |
Alys, Always, Bridge Theatre review - mildly perverse but rather dispiritingThursday, 07 March 2019
Okay, so this is the play that will be remembered for the character names that have unusual spellings. As in Alys not Alice, Kyte not Kite, etc. Anyway, Lucinda Coxon's adaptation of journalist Harriet Lane's 2012 bestseller for the Bridge Theatre... Read more... |
Ray & Liz review - beautifully shot portrait of povertyWednesday, 06 March 2019
Ray’s world has shrunk to a single room in a council flat. His life consists of drinking home-brew, smoking, gazing out of the window, listening to Radio 4 and sinking into an alcohol-induced stupour. There’s no need ever to leave his bedroom... Read more... |
Sadie Jones: The Snakes review - lacking feelingSunday, 03 March 2019
Bea and Dan are a young married couple. They have a mortgage on their small flat in Holloway and met while out clubbing in Peckham. She’s a plain-looking, modest and hard-working psychotherapist; he’s putting in the hours as an estate agent having... Read more... |
'I’ve told everyone that it’s a comedy – but will anyone laugh?' Jonathan Dove on his new Marx operaWednesday, 05 December 2018
Marx is having a terrible day. He is supposed to be finishing volume two of Capital but he’s distracted by his lust for the maid, workmen are taking away the furniture, his daughter thinks she’s caught a spy.... and what will his wife say when she... Read more... |
Laurent Cantet: 'Young people have different preoccupations nowadays' – interviewThursday, 15 November 2018
Like Ken Loach and the Dardennes brothers, Laurent Cantet is a filmmaker with a keen interest in social issues and themes, often using non-professional actors and a naturalistic approach, but perfectly willing to inject a little plot contrivance to... Read more... |
Peterloo review - Mike Leigh's angry historical dramaThursday, 01 November 2018
Considering how the UK prides itself on having created the "Mother of Parliaments" and its citizens having once chopped off a king's head for thwarting its will, remarkably little is taught in our schools about one of the seminal events on the way... Read more... |
Elmgreen & Dragset, Whitechapel Gallery review – when is a door not a door ?Saturday, 06 October 2018
A whiff of chlorine hits you as you open the door of the Whitechapel Gallery. Its the smell of public baths, and inside is a derelict swimming pool with nothing in it but dead leaves and piles of brick dust. Damp walls, peeling paint and cracked... Read more... |
