terrorism
The Deminer review - life on the edge in IraqTuesday, 24 April 2018
Major Fakhir is a deminer, responsible for disarming hundreds of mines around Mosul every week. His American counterparts know him by a different title: Crazy Fakhir, a man who rides the edge of his luck, constantly in imminent danger. Yet to him,... Read more... |
Below the Surface, Series Finale, BBC Four review - tense and twisty to the bitter endSunday, 08 April 2018
In the previous couple of episodes, some light began to seep into the subterranean gloom of the Copenhagen kidnappers, or at any rate onto their identities and motivations. The military theme with which Below the Surface opened, with Philip Norgaard... Read more... |
Below the Surface, BBC Four review - terror in CopenhagenSunday, 11 March 2018
Read Adam Sweeting's review of the Below the Surface FinaleAfter recent experiences with the likes of McMafia, Troy and Collateral, mysteriously moribund affairs apparently designed by a committee of box-ticking zombies, many a viewer will turn with... Read more... |
Strike Back, Series 6 part 2, Sky 1 review - shoot first, talk laterThursday, 01 February 2018
After a mysterious mid-season break which seemed to catch everyone by surprise, Strike Back’s sixth season belatedly bounces noisily back. So far the story has ricocheted around the Middle East before detouring to Hungary, where our indestructible... Read more... |
The Believers Are But Brothers, Bush Theatre review - a gimmick in search of a storySaturday, 27 January 2018
Do boys never leave the playground? Just when I was reasonably sure that the crisis of masculinity was an old-fashioned trope – I mean, so very 1990s – along comes a one-man show that investigates how lonely young men, seething with resentment, surf... Read more... |
Stronger review - Oscar-worthy straight talk and tough loveSaturday, 09 December 2017
There are many obvious Hollywood responses to someone losing their legs in the Boston Marathon bombing. Director David Gordon Green waits his whole film to make one. His subject Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) possessed too little bullshit, and too... Read more... |
Goats, Royal Court review - unfocused and muddledSaturday, 02 December 2017
The civil war in Syria spawns image after image of hell on earth. Staging the stories of that conflict presents a challenge to playwrights: how do you write about horror in a way that is both accurate and entertaining? Goats, by Syrian playwright... Read more... |
Out from the Darkness: painting out prisonMonday, 13 November 2017
When I was sent to an adult high security prison aged 14 all the normal colour, shapes and movement that I saw around me each and every day as a child disappeared. It wasn’t there. Prison does that; it’s all straight lines, hard on the eye, hard to... Read more... |
Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11, Imperial War Museum review - affecting but incoherentWednesday, 01 November 2017
The Imperial War Museum’s Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 brings together art made in response to the immediate events and long-term consequences of the events of 11 September. In the main the exhibition is more historical survey of conflict-related... Read more... |
Patriots DayThursday, 23 February 2017
Patriots Day is a patriots’ film. It dramatises the grievous day on which American values were threatened on American soil like no other time since 9/11. Two bombs were detonated at the Boston marathon in April 2013: two bystanders were killed, 16... Read more... |
Us/Them, National TheatreTuesday, 24 January 2017
Unimaginable tragedy is given poignant, piquant form in Us/Them. The hour-long performance piece from Belgian theatre company BRONKS has arrived at the National after a much-acclaimed Edinburgh Festival premiere last year. In its intricate weave of... Read more... |
Conspiracy Files: The Trump Dossier, BBC TwoFriday, 04 November 2016
So we’re less than a week away from America’s choice. Many in the States have presented it as a kind of Sophie’s Choice – an unbearable outcome no matter who they choose. On the one hand they have a racist, sexist, braggart bully who has been named... Read more... |
