documentary
In Search of Greatness review - Gabe Polsky's absorbing sports documentaryFriday, 15 May 2020
Ask any great sportsman or woman about greatness and they'll tell you it's as much achieved as made; natal talent isn't worth much if you don't practise, or are unfit, or don't have a hunger to win. But much of modern sport has become obsessed with... Read more... |
The Atom: A Love Affair review - hot fusion and cold heartsThursday, 14 May 2020
It’s fair to say that humanity’s relationship with nuclear energy over the last 50 years has had more highs and lows than a Spanish soap opera. From the Manhattan Project to Hinkley Point, it’s been a controversial technology that has promised both... Read more... |
Romantic Comedy review - a not-so-guilty pleasureSaturday, 09 May 2020
Only those who really love you can deliver the hard truths, and for filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, that one love is romantic comedies. Better known as one half of band Summer Camp, Sankey is a self-confessed romcom expert, having watched nearly every... Read more... |
The Shadows at Sixty, BBC Four review - pop's age of innocenceSaturday, 02 May 2020
Back in the day, the weekend started with Ready Steady Go. Now Friday evenings are once more essential viewing, and not just because we’re all locked down. While the endless ToTP reruns are often no more than bad-taste wallpaper, the music... Read more... |
The Village, ITV review - the weird and wonderful micro-climate of PortmeirionWednesday, 29 April 2020
Portmeirion, the Italianate village created by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis on the River Dwyryd estuary, might have been designed to provide the perfect surreal setting for the 1967 TV series The Prisoner. But though it resembles an opium... Read more... |
Rebuilding Notre-Dame: Inside the Great Cathedral Rescue, BBC Four review - a race against timeThursday, 16 April 2020
One year on the world is drastically altered, but footage of Notre Dame’s stricken spire collapsing in flames is no less shocking. That this event, endlessly replayed, has not paled against the new reality of daily death tolls is testament to the... Read more... |
Return to Belsen, ITV review - Jonathan Dimbleby retraces his father's journey to a nightmare worldWednesday, 08 April 2020
When the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany was liberated by the British 11th Armoured Division on 15 April 1945, the BBC’s reporter Richard Dimbleby was there to record the occasion. It was Dimbleby’s report for BBC... Read more... |
The Whalebone Box review - documentary through unreliable surrealismWednesday, 01 April 2020
The UK-wide lockdown has thrown the cinematic release schedule into chaos. Some films are postponed indefinitely, while others have opted for direct digital releases. It’s not ideal for anyone, but in a strange way it may play to The Whalebone Box’s... Read more... |
DVD: The StreetTuesday, 31 March 2020
Zed Nelson brings enormous humanity to this portrait of the changing identity of Hackney’s Hoxton Street as gentrification impinges on its long-established community. Shops that have been there for decades vanish overnight, fancy new pavement cafes... Read more... |
Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All, Netflix review - epic two-parter on pop's first superstarThursday, 26 March 2020
Coming in at around four hours, in two parts, this 2015 documentary is ostensibly about Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, but really, via the prism of his existence, it’s as much about America’s journey through the first two thirds of the 20th century.... Read more... |
Putin: A Russian Spy Story, Channel 4 review - inside the mind of a man without a faceTuesday, 24 March 2020
Director Nick Green’s new three-parter follows on the heels of his A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad and comparisons are sure to be made between his two subjects. Though the finer degrees of political power-play – and the sheer quantity of... Read more... |
Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story, BBC Two review - disruptive political maverick eludes pigeonholingThursday, 19 March 2020
This patchwork of interviews and comments from male journalists and politicians interspersed with clips from television news and films, from The Godfather to The Avengers, was a zig-zag narrative of Dominic Cummings’s unique career as a political... Read more... |
