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To Olivia – movie review

Revered children’s author Roald Dahl and Academy Award winning actress Patricia Neal had a tumultuous marriage. And director John Hay puts it under the microscope in To Olivia. Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) and Neal (Keeley Hawes) brought up a family in Buckinghamshire. The highly imaginative Dahl revelled in vocalising off-the-wall stories to his children. That was…

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The Card Counter – movie review

With a haunting look in his eyes, Oscar Isaac (Dune) excels in Paul Schrader’s (First Reformed) intense crime drama The Card Counter. Isaac is William Tell, a cheerless loner who likes to go under the radar. As an elite card player, he travels extensively between casinos, but doesn’t like to draw attention to himself. To…

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Supernova – movie review

In Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, Sam (Colin Firth) is a classical pianist, and his partner Tusker (Stanley Tucci) is a writer. Now middle-aged, the couple have been together for decades. They know how to press each other’s buttons, but are still very much in love. One day they decide to dust off the old camper van…

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Lightscape (Royal Botanic Gardens) – theatre review

The expression “many hands make light work” immediately springs to mind when describing the specially created “night trail” through the Royal Botanic Gardens. An enormous amount of work has clearly gone into preparing the spectacular light and sound show known as Lightscape in the finely manicured surrounds. I wandered the meandering path, which spans 1.8 kilometres, stopping…

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The Square – movie review

Esoteric claptrap or a masterful and challenging work? There’ll be advocates on both sides with The Square, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. It’s slow moving and tortuously long. I defy anyone to neatly make sense of it all because there are undoubtedly obtuse elements. Underpinning it is the meaning of art….

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