childhood
A Sicilian Ghost Story review - a beautiful, confusing journeyTuesday, 31 July 2018
Childhood is an inimitable experience – the laws of the world are less certain, imagination and reality meld together, and no event feels fixed. A Sicilian Ghost Story recreates this sensation in the context of real world trauma, producing a... Read more... |
Summer 1993 review - the tenderest fabric of childhoodFriday, 13 July 2018
Carla Simón’s debut feature Summer 1993 is a gem of a film by any standards, but when you learn that its story is based closely on the thirtysomething Catalan director’s own early life, its intimacy becomes almost overwhelming. It has at its heart a... Read more... |
Fun Home, Young Vic review - a simply sublime musical memoirThursday, 28 June 2018
It seems only too fitting that David Lan’s luminous reign at the Young Vic should draw to a close with this bold, creatively thrilling international import. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s Tony-winning musical, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2013,... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Setúbal Music Festival 2018: youth leads the wayFriday, 15 June 2018
"Get those creatures off the stage, or I won't answer for what I'll do". The exclamation of the Prima Donna in the backstage prologue of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, about to share her grand opera with lower forms of theatrical life, seems... Read more... |
The Ciambra review - supremely effective storytellingThursday, 14 June 2018
The Ciambra is a wonderful and subtle piece of filmmaking. Director/writer Jonas Carpignano captures the genuine heart and fire of family relationships with an amateur cast of relatives, led by the magnetic young Pio Amato. By trusting the audience... Read more... |
La finta semplice, Classical Opera, QEH review - consummate musicianship stokes early MozartThursday, 07 June 2018
You can always be sure of impeccable casting and spirited playing as Ian Page takes his Classical Opera through Mozart year by year. Just don't expect more than the glimmer of genius to come in 1768, though. It doesn't matter in those admirable... Read more... |
Tully review - Charlize Theron plumps for sentimentThursday, 03 May 2018
Inside Tully – or maybe inside Charlize Theron’s massively pregnant belly – is a darker, more daring film trying to get out. There are startlingly original moments, but it’s as if writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, creators of Juno and... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Andrey Zvyagintsev - The Return / The BanishmentTuesday, 17 April 2018
Andrey Zvyagintsev is without doubt one of the great film-makers of our time. If you only know Leviathan, it's about time you looked at the rest of his considerable oeuvre. What is it about Russian cinema? Since the 1920s, Russia has brought us a... Read more... |
Wonderstruck review - beautifully designed but emotionally unengagingFriday, 06 April 2018
What is it about Brian Selznick’s ornate illustrated fictions that leads good directors to make bad films? Turning The Invention of Hugo Cabret into Hugo was a near disaster for Scorsese, and now comes Todd Haynes’s stifling... Read more... |
Coraline, Royal Opera, Barbican review - spooky story, underwhelming scoreThursday, 05 April 2018
With the eyes of musical fashion turned relentlessly on the calculating stage works of chilly alchemist George Benjamin, hopes ran high for a brighter spark in a new opera by his contemporary Mark-Anthony Turnage. Would Coraline, a music-drama for... Read more... |
DVD: BoyFriday, 02 March 2018
Following his irreverent superhero reboot Thor: Ragnarok, one of 2017’s most distinctive blockbusters, and his quirky Kiwi indie comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016, it’s fair to say that interest in New Zealand director Taika Waititi’s back... Read more... |
Mom and Dad review - daft and dark zombie thrillerWednesday, 28 February 2018
As Mom and Dad opens, after a comically shocking preface, the Ryan family are presented as a typical all-American middle-class family – albeit one that, strangely enough, can afford a daily maid who cooks their breakfast. The family bicker good... Read more... |
