The best way to get anything other than disappointment out of Fifty Shades Darker is to enter the cinema with extremely low expectations. Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson return as the young couple Christian Grey and Anastasia (Ana) Steele in this, the second chapter of the bestselling Fifty Shades erotic romance trilogy by EL James….
The fifth in the animated action adventure series that began in 2002, it is once again saber-toothed squirrel Scrat’s epic pursuit of an elusive acorn that drives events in Ice Age: Collision Course. Scrat is catapulted into the universe, bounces off and through planets, pilots a flying saucer and wears a space suit, all the…
US soul sensation Leon Bridges is releasing his new album, Coming Home, this week (on Friday, 19 June) on the Hallux label. The singer’s stage presence and soulful tunes are garnering comparisons with the great Sam Cooke; despite the fact Bridges is still only 25. You can judge for yourself come Friday. In the meantime,…
A sea change turns into a tsunami of grief in Sixty Seconds by Jesse Blackadder. Here’s the blurb: The Brennans – parents, Finn and Bridget, and their sons, Jarrah and Toby – have made a sea change, from chilly Hobart to subtropical Murwillumbah. Feeling like foreigners in this land of sun and surf, they’re still…
Michael Pearce’s feature film debut Beast explores the line between evil and misunderstanding. Moll Huntford (Jessie Buckley) was home-schooled by her domineering mother, Hilary (Geraldine James) after an incident at school more than a decade earlier. Now a tour guide on the Channel Island of Jersey, she can’t stand the constraints placed on her at…
Brad Furman knows his way around a legal drama. After all, he directed the much-admired The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) with Matthew McConaughey. But he bites off a bit more than he can chew with City of Lies, a fact-based drama about high-profile murder and police corruption. This mostly well-made film concerns the 1997 murder of…
If any setting was just made for Guillermo del Toro, it’s got to be the circus. Colour, spectacle, carnies, creepy clowns, “freaks” – it positively screams for treatment from the modern master of smart horror. But del Toro is mercurial. Just as he turned his hand to big-budget action in Pacific Rim, he pivots in…
I’m theatre traditionalist at heart; I don’t like puppets, audience participation…. or magic. So needless to say, The Illusionists: Direct from Broadway is my first (somewhat reluctant) show of its sort. And what a spectacular show I must admit it is. From the moment it begins with The Trickster (Paul Dabek) cheekily pitting two young…
Vive la difference and don’t you get it in spades with this unexpected, fun and fanciful comedy set in a small French provincial village. The Bélier Family concerns a 16-year-old girl, played by newcomer Louane Emera (a former contestant on the French version of television’s The Voice). Her close bond to her beloved family is…
J M Barrie first created the character of Peter Pan, the boy who could fly and who never grew up, back in 1902. He then featured the character in the 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, which enjoyed incredible success. Since then the character has featured in several stories, and…
