adaptation
Les Misérables, BBC One, series finale review - more moving than revealingMonday, 04 February 2019
It took the best part of six episodes, but we got there in the end: the reason David Oyelowo accepted the confusingly underwritten part of Inspector Javert in BBC One’s adaptation of Les Misérables was finally revealed. His pursuit of an ex-convict... Read more... |
Can You Ever Forgive Me? review - no page unturned in a comedy about literary forgerySaturday, 02 February 2019
What is it with all these new films based on biographies? Vice, Green Book, The Mule, Stan & Ollie, Colette… and that’s before we even get to the royal romps queening up our screens. At least Can You Ever Forgive Me? brings a lifestory... Read more... |
Burning review - an explosive psychological thrillerSaturday, 02 February 2019
Burning, which is the first film directed by the Korean master Lee Chang-dong since 2010’s Poetry, begins as the desultory story of a hook-up between a pair of poor, unmotivated millennials – the girl already a lost soul, the boy a wannabe writer... Read more... |
Pure, Channel 4 review - sex, OCD and the single girlThursday, 31 January 2019
“No one wants a pervert for a daughter,” thinks Marnie (delightful TV newcomer Charly Clive), a 24-year-old from the Scottish Borders, who has intrusive thoughts. Don’t we all? But relentless graphic images about “fucked-up sex” have been messing... Read more... |
Kes, Leeds Playhouse review - seminal Yorkshire story soarsWednesday, 30 January 2019
Robert Alan Evans’ adaptation of Kes is a dark, expressionist reworking of Barry Hines’ novella. It pays lip service to Ken Loach’s iconic film version, and most of the memorable bits are present and correct here: the wince-inducing rant from head... Read more... |
When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, Dorfman Theatre review - Cate Blanchett's underwhelming debut at the NationalThursday, 24 January 2019
When it was announced that Cate Blanchett was making her National Theatre debut with Martin's Crimp's new play, When We have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, its website exploded with people wishing to buy tickets. To those many thousands... Read more... |
Welcome to Marwen review - Carell and Zemeckis fail to hit strideSaturday, 05 January 2019
In the proverbial melting pot, this film has all the right ingredients. Steve Carell, playing aspiring artist Mark Hogancamp and occupying a similar space and place as Tom Hanks did in Forrest Gump, even shares that film’s director... Read more... |
An Impossible Love review - toxic romance across the yearsFriday, 04 January 2019
This is a love that begins sweetly, turns terrible, and is told with unflinching directness. Directed by Catherine Corsini, An Impossible Love is based on a novel by Christine Angot (known in France, and increasingly elsewhere, for her powerful... Read more... |
The ABC Murders, BBC One, review - John Malkovich's dark reboot of PoirotThursday, 27 December 2018
Sarah Phelps’s annual reboot of a canonical murder mystery by Agatha Christie has rapidly established itself as a Christmas staple of TV drama. And Then There Were None, The Witness for the Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence (which was postponed to... Read more... |
The Long Song, BBC One, series finale review - a stirring adaptationFriday, 21 December 2018
There was a ruthless logic to the scheduling of The Long Song (BBC One). Broadcast over three consecutive nights, this fleet-footed adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel set during the era of abolition in 19th-century Jamaica swiftly gathered momentum... Read more... |
The Box of Delights, Wilton's Music Hall review - captivating adaptation of John Masefield's darkly thrilling novelTuesday, 18 December 2018
If you’re looking for a Christmas with more pagan edge than saccharine cheer, where the wolves are howling and the mythological characters are steeped in the terror and mystery of winter’s long dark nights, then make haste to Wilton’s Music Hall.... Read more... |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Piccadilly Theatre review - back for a heart-tugging encoreFriday, 14 December 2018
One emotional high point in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the much-lauded Simon Stephens adaptation that is back in our midst once more, comes when the teenage Christopher Boone is floated in the air as part of his dream of... Read more... |
