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'Million Dollar Arm' (2014) directed by Craig Gillespie
Baseball and cinema make a weirdly compelling combination. I've never seen a truly astonishing American football or ice hockey film, and the only classic basketball film is a documentary (maybe...
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'Lucy' (2014) directed by Luc Besson
Lucy is the dumbest film about being smart ever. Working from the discredited (many, many times over) pseudoscientific myth about humans only using 10% of their brain at any time, this film imagines...
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'Pride' (2014) directed by Matthew Warchus
"Britain, 1984. Times are troubled. Burrowed away in her Downing Street lair, Thatcher regards mining communities with suspicious eyes. In the 1970s, the powerful National Union of Mineworkers called a...
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'Ballet Boys' (2014) directed by Kenneth Elvebakk
The Killers once asked “are we human or are we dancer?” Kenneth Elvebakk's Ballet Boys answers by demonstrating that you can be one or the other – but not both. His documentary, following three...
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'I Believe in Unicorns' at the Vaudeville Theatre, 25th August 2014
Two slightly hungover men in their late twenties/early thirties attending a Bank Holiday show "suitable for children aged 5-11" raises a few eyebrows. With no child in tow and let's face it, no...
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'The Guest' (2014) directed by Adam Wingard
The core premise of Adam Wingard's The Guest is a rumination on what it would be like if Captain America was a total dick. The answer is a bundle of silliness and over-the-top gore wrapped in a slick...
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'Cornershop' by Lucy Sparrow, 26th August 2014
I'm a bit late to the party in writing about Lucy Sparrow's Cornershop. Everyone from The Guardian to Buzzfeed to Time Out has been enthusiastically singing its praises. Even The Daily Mailhas given...
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'Sin City: A Dame to Kill For' (2014) directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank...
Nine years passed. Nine years. Nine. The years creaked by like a rusty car door tortured by an inclement, cold wind. We forgot Sin City, preferred to pretend it was all a bad dream. Noir is dead, its...
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IMPURITANS // LAUNCH⇪PAD at Trispace Gallery, 28th August 2014
The sign on the wall read "Performances may contain traces of nudity, violence, strobe effects, limited visibility and bodily fluids." My kinda night! Nestled underground in the cellars of the the old...
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'Autobahn' at the King's Head Theatre, 29th August 2014
In Neil LaBute's Autobahn a car interior becomes torture chamber, confessional booth and psychiatrist's couch. Divided into seven monologues and conversations, we meet characters in various states of...
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'Life of Crime' (2014) directed by Daniel Schechter
Poor Life of Crime. It never really stood a chance. You adapt an Elmore Leonard twisty-turny tale of witty criminals, pack it with awful haircuts and fashion and put together a decent cast. Things...
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'Dinosaur 13' (2014) directed by Todd Douglas Miller
A ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex bares its jagged teeth on the poster. There's a quote describing it as "awe-inspiring". Perhaps that's why some hapless parent plumped to bring a gaggle of excited five...
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'The Me Plays' at the Old Red Lion Theatre, 3rd September 2014
The Me Plays is like watching a dam burst in slow motion. Behind the façade of jokey, "whey lads!" banterish masculinity lies a miserable torrent of self-loathing, regret and misery. Over the course...
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'Return of the Soldier' at the Jermyn Street Theatre
I was a little restless by the time the interval arrived in this musical adaptation of Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier. Events so far were a touch too Mills & Boon for my taste; a romance...
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Aphex Twin 'Syro' Listening Party at The Laundry, 5th September 2014
You'd think we were lambs being led to the slaughter. After an hour's wait in a Hackney back street we're urged down a concrete ramp towards a dark cellar. Our phones are stripped from us and...
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'Sacro GRA' (2013) directed by Gianfranco Rosi
My theory was that a documentary that sounded so dull on paper simply had to be gripping on screen. The subject: the Grande Raccordo Anulare or GRA, Rome's equivalent of London's M25 ring-road. I...
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'Wingman' at the Soho Theatre, 10th September
It's a horrible feeling to realise you're going to hate something five minutes in. Your stomach clenches into a pressured ball as you glance furtively at the exit to the theatre, suddenly envious of...
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'Forbidden Broadway' at the Vaudeville Theatre, 11th September 2014
Forbidden Broadway is luvvie crack. Pricking pomposity is a rich seam of humour and there are few more puffed up targets than the West End. With half a billion pounds (!!!) spent on tickets to the...
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'You're Always With Me' at the Lost Theatre, 12th September 2014
You're Always With Me is a curious piece of theatre that often feels like it's fallen out of a time warp. Written by Soviet playwright Ilyas Afandyev in the early 60s it's a chewy chunk of social...
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'A Most Wanted Man' (2014) directed by Anton Corbijn
Despair looms large over A Most Wanted Man. As the last lead role of Philip Seymour Hoffman there's a pang of emotion as appears, every minute that ticks by one less until he'll never be in a new film...
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