Category: Film

Original sin; utter hubris

FILM REVIEW: FRANKENSTEIN. This review is premised on the version of the work with Jonny Lee Miller as the creature. A man makes a living creature by pulling together alchemical possibilities and graveyard detritus sewn together with a crude hand. And thus starts one of the western world’s […]

A tale of monsters and broken men

FILM REVIEW: FRANKENSTEIN. This review is premised on the version of the work with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature. What is it that gives us humanity? Nay, that gives us life? The stuff that distinguishes life from death is the substance of the 1817 prototype gothic horror novel […]

The guys your parents warned you about

FILM REVIEW: VOËLVRY — THE MOVIE. THEY WERE MORE than just angry young Afrikaans-speaking men. Musicians of the ilk of Johannes Kerkorrel, James Phillips, Koos Kombuis, Bernoldus Niemand, Willem Möller and others had the edge that could force change in a country locked down by blind racist imperatives. […]

Whirligig revenges and yellow stockings

THEATRE REVIEW: TWELFTH NIGHT Humour is easily one of the most difficult genres to uphold: it dates; what may have been pants-wettingly hilarious in the 1500s, might be simply boring or perplexing today. In the hands of Simon Godwin, however, the gender fluid wildness of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth […]

More beautiful than a summer’s day

THEATRE REVIEW: ROMEO AND JULIET. THERE IS SOMETHING eminently satisfying and comforting in this world, where everything is off kilter, of knowing that certain traditions are being upheld with a great sense of fierceness. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London has, in its wisdom and generosity, established a free […]

The meaning of treasure. And cheese.

THEATRE REVIEW: TREASURE ISLAND. PATSY FERRAN IS a Spanish-born actor, who at the time of the stage debut of the National Theatre’s Treasure Island was in her early 20s. The enormity of her presence, the wit and poetry of the manner in which she articulates and inhabits the […]

The rise and fall of Ms Eyre

THEATRE REVIEW: JANE EYRE. IF YOU’VE REACHED the point of misremembering the magic of theatre, having not seen anything live and outstanding since lockdown was declared a couple of weeks ago, look no further. Sally Cookson’s whopping three hour long production of Charlotte Brontë’s great 1847 classic Jane […]

Sugar and spice; passion and fierceness

FILM REVIEW: LITTLE WOMEN WE LIVE IN a world which is characterised by a lack of credibility and stability. Fake news has taken over the media industry like a cancer, spouting disbelief in every crevice. Violence of both a literal and a figurative nature is perpetrated wherever we […]

Lucian, lionised

FILM REVIEW: LUCIAN FREUD – A SELF PORTRAIT THE CHANCE TO be able to get so close to the work of arguably the 20th century’s most important painter, Lucian Freud, that you can see the shadow between brushmarks, is phenomenal. Exhibition on Screen: Lucian Freud – A Self […]