drugs
Project Power - so-so attempt to reinvent the superhero genreFriday, 14 August 2020What if there was a pill you could pop that gave you superpowers? The only catch is that, while it might make you invisible or bullet-proof, it might also boil your brain or make you explode with just one hit.That’s the premise of Henry Joost and... Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival 2020: Beyoncé, Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., marijuana and time travelWednesday, 01 July 2020Coronavirus blah blah blah. Glastonbury cancelled. What to do? Didn’t go to the 2010 festival for reasons too tedious to go into. Suffered the worst FOMO of my life. This is different. There is no Glastonbury. But sitting around at home… we’ve all... Read more... |
Have a Good Trip, Netflix review - a breezy journey into the mindSaturday, 23 May 2020Don’t do drugs, kids. For the past 50 years, that’s been the consistent message. But how much of what we know about psychedelics is just fearmongering? Do you really want to jump out of a window? Will you permanently lose your mind? To find out the... Read more... |
Khaled Nurul Hakim: The Book of Naseeb review – a bold debutSunday, 17 May 2020A small-time heroin dealer harbours idealistic dreams of building a hospital “to help da limmless in Peshawar and Kabul”. This is the premise of The Book of Naseeb, the debut novel from Khaled Nurul Hakim. Perhaps audaciously billed as a “degraded... Read more... |
Selah and the Spades, Amazon Prime review - boarding-school cliques go gangsterSaturday, 18 April 2020“They always try to break you down when you’re 17,” says queen bee Selah (Lovie Simone) in Tayarisha Poe’s impressive directorial debut. As leader of the Spades, one of the five Mafia-style ruling factions in the exclusive Haldwell boarding-school... Read more... |
Earth and Blood, Netflix review - tense and broody thriller ultimately falls shortSaturday, 18 April 2020There are quite a few good things to be said for Julien Leclerc’s Earth and Blood. It’s a terse and uncluttered thriller which makes full use of its main location, a battered old sawmill in the midst of a dank expanse of forest, and Leclerc has... Read more... |
Alma's Not Normal, BBC Two review - bare-knuckle comedy pilot hits the spotThursday, 09 April 2020Creating the opening episode of a new comedy series is like flipping pancakes with one hand while playing the Moonlight Sonata with the other. You have to introduce your characters and invent the world they live in, while squeezing in enough plot to... Read more... |
First Love review - Miike delivers thrills and spillsSaturday, 15 February 2020He's one of Japan's foremost directors, and if you’ve witnessed one of his films before, you know what to expect from a Takashi Miike yakuza film. High-octane, boundary pushing fun from first frame to last. And that’s exactly what First Love is.The... Read more... |
The Gentlemen review - it ain't woke but don't fix itThursday, 02 January 2020Guy Ritchie enjoyed his greatest commercial success with 2019’s live-action fantasy Aladdin, the most atypical project of his career, but The Gentlemen finds him back on his best-known turf as a purveyor of mouthy, ultra-violent geezerism. It’s 21... Read more... |
21 Bridges review - police corruption thriller sets a cracking paceWednesday, 20 November 2019Thanks to a powerful cast and crisp direction from Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, Luther), 21 Bridges drives home its story of good cops, bad cops and a Big Apple rotten to the core with bulldozing force. Centre stage is Chadwick Boseman as Andre... Read more... |
Doing Drugs for Fun, Channel 5 review - why the cocaine trade is no laughing matterWednesday, 09 October 2019Monday night’s first episode of this three-part series was a bit ordinary, as it introduced its cast of British recreational cocaine users and explained why their habit may be ill-advised. We learned that the British take more drugs than any other... Read more... |
High Society: Cannabis Café, Channel 4 review - pointless investigation into drug-takingWednesday, 04 September 2019This was the first of a two-part investigation into... well, I don't know what. The voiceover of High Society: Cannabis Café said it was an experiment “to test the alleged benefits of weed” and the people featured all had “a personal motivation... Read more... |