friendship
Bagdad Café, Old Vic review - sweet but scattershotFriday, 30 July 2021
A gorgeous song exists in search of a show to match over at Bagdad Café, the 1987 film that gave the world the memorably plaintive "Calling You", which is threaded throughout Emma Rice's stage adaptation of the movie with understandable... Read more... |
Off the Rails review - go for the scenery, not the scriptSaturday, 24 July 2021
Mamma Mia! hovers unhelpfully over every frame of Off the Rails, a road movie of sorts in which three women make a music-fueled pilgrimage to Mallorca to honour the wishes of a fourth friend, who has died before time of cancer.The difference here is... Read more... |
Last Easter, Orange Tree Theatre review - over-performative and strangely off-puttingSaturday, 17 July 2021
Last Easter has become a lot more relatable since it was forced to postpone this run at the Orange Tree Theatre, originally scheduled for 2020. It’s about a group of theatre-makers – an actor, a drag performer, a prop-maker, and a lighting designer... Read more... |
Edward St Aubyn: Double Blind review - constructing 'cognition literature'Tuesday, 16 March 2021
If it weren’t for the warning on the blurb, the first chapter of Double Blind would have you wondering whether you’d ordered something from the science section by mistake. It's a novel that throws its reader in at the deep end, where that end is... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Lynn + LucyMonday, 26 October 2020
If you’re after a relaxing Sunday watch, Fyzal Boulifa’s Lynn + Lucy is not the one. It begins as a story of old friends in a small town and ends as a complex and uncomfortable tragedy. The banality of the everyday is stripped away throughout the... Read more... |
Dolly Alderton: Ghosts review - a love story beyond romanceTuesday, 13 October 2020
There’s something simultaneously cringey and also addictive about Dolly Alderton’s prose. Ghosts is definitely feminism lite, a palimpsest for young women in London who are into yoga and small plates. But that is not to detract from the fact... Read more... |
Matthias & Maxime review - psychology and romance make for cinematic goldThursday, 27 August 2020
The emotional rawness of Xavier Dolan’s films reflects a rare humanity and empathy. For someone still only 31, the French-Canadian writer and director displays an uncanny sense of the passionate turmoil that animates his characters. The subtle... Read more... |
The Old Guard review - serious sillinessThursday, 09 July 2020
It’s hard to take The Old Guard seriously — it’s an action film about thousand-year-old immortal warriors. Pulpy flashbacks and fake blood abounds. But The Old Guard doesn’t need to be serious or even memorable: it’s a fun, feel-good film, a rare... Read more... |
Lynn + Lucy review - a bruising tale of female friendshipThursday, 02 July 2020
British director Fyzal Boulifa makes his feature film debut with a bruising account of female-friendship torn apart by personal tragedies and gossipmongers, on a council estate in Harlow. At under an hour and a half, Boulifa shows a gift for... Read more... |
I and You, Hampstead Theatre review - now streaming online, this YA play is oddly pertinentTuesday, 24 March 2020
The way that theatres and other arts institutions have leapt into action over the past week, providing a wealth of material online and new ways to connect with audiences, has been truly inspirational. Yesterday, the Hampstead Theatre re-released on... Read more... |
Onward review - do you believe in magic?Friday, 06 March 2020
Welcome to New Mushroomton: a fantasy land that’s forgotten itself. This is how we’re introduced to Pixar’s Onward, which is set in a Dungeons & Dragons daydream of suburbia. Director Dan Scanlon’s film is a tribute to his late father, but it... Read more... |
Sex Education, Series 2, Netflix review - the teen sex show we deservedFriday, 14 February 2020
Netflix’s Sex Education has returned to our screens and streams. The show made waves last year for its refreshing take on the teen comedy-drama. It took on abortion, consent and female pleasure — subjects strikingly absent from our actual high... Read more... |
