Sing is an utterly charmless and joke-free comedy about some singing animals January 26, 2017 Matthew McConaughey voices a koala in this charmless children’s film about animals singing covers of pop songs. There really isn’t a whole lot more to unpack. Just farmyard karaoke cut with a thin plot about a theatre going out of business. No allegory, no fable, subtext nor message to decipher beyond “a pig in a [...]
Us/Them review: two-person show about the Beslan hostage atrocity is a minor revelation January 26, 2017 This two-person show explores the incomprehensible horror of terrorism in the eyes of a child. A pair of unnamed teenagers begin by recounting a normal day at school, bragging about how their town, Beslan, is superior to nearby Chechnya, where the women all have moustaches. Their tale darkens as the infamous hostage situation unfolds, with [...]
Christine film review: Rebecca Hall shines in a film that peers behind the gruesome headlines of the Christine Chubbuck case January 26, 2017 “If It Bleeds, It Leads” is the darkly prophetic slogan at the centre of this drama, about real life TV reporter Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) whose work pressures and mental health issues led her to commit suicide on camera in 1974. Even a cursory search for Chubbuck’s name makes for unpleasant reading, the stuff of [...]
Resident Evil 7 review: A gruesome return to form for the horror series January 25, 2017 Were it physically possible for a human skeleton to crawl out of a body through the mouth so that all the flesh peeled down to form a bloody skirt made of guts, and for that skeleton to run around the room getting tangled up in bunting and pulling bookshelves down on itself, then Resident Evil [...]
Jackie review: Natalie Portman leads an outstanding production about the creation of a political myth January 20, 2017 In Jackie, blood clings to the First Lady like it does to Lady Macbeth. It stains her powder-pink skirt-suit, congeals in her hair, splashes onto her face like tears. It horrifies and fascinates her; she wears it like war-paint, with something approaching pride. But no matter how many times she tries to scrub it off, [...]
Promises, Promises at Southwark Playhouse review: a badly dated comedy that’s a gilded celebration of lechery January 20, 2017 I can’t think of a more appropriate start to the Trump era than revisiting Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s 1968 Broadway hit – a breezy chronicle of workplace sexism in which Boys Will Be Boys, whatever the cost, and women are either brutalised angels awaiting Mr Right or mouthy broads lounging in the clutches of [...]
Lion review: Nicole Kidman’s tender performance lifts this true story about a missing boy Googling his way home January 19, 2017 By Hollywood standards, the story of Lion sounds relatively prosaic: a child gets lost, is adopted, and years later uses Google Earth to find his family. But the telling of it touches on so many heart-tugging topics that it’ll have anyone who’s ever lost a kid, found a kid, or even met a kid blubbing [...]
Split review: M Night Shyamalan twists again like it’s 1998 with this return to reform split personality movie January 19, 2017 Come on let’s twist again, like we did in the early 2000s. It’s been a long time since a new M Night Shyamalan film was greeted with excitement. With a miserable streak of flops including The Happening, The Last Airbender and Will Smith misfire After Earth, many had given up on the twist-loving film maker [...]
Wish List at the Royal Court peers inside the warehouse of online retailers like Amazon January 17, 2017 A barely concealed swipe at the working practices of big online retailers, Wish List tells the story of a young woman caring for her OCD-afflicted brother while struggling to make ends meet at her warehouse packaging job. Tamsin’s (Erin Doherty) jittery existence involves trying (and failing) to meet her impossible packaging quota, as a relentless [...]
FiSahara takes place under the baking heat of the African sun. Alex Dudok de Wit finds an event unlike any other January 16, 2017 There’s a territory sandwiched between Morocco and Mauritania, divided from the former in atlases by a dotted line, that carries the opaque name of Western Sahara. You might occasionally spot footage of it on the news, grainy shots of a sand wall lined with landmines and Moroccan soldiers, although most will struggle to place it [...]