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'The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies' (2014) directed by Peter Jackson
Christ almighty Peter, what happened to you? This final instalment in The Hobbit franchise marks the point where the final shreds of goodwill built up over the Lord of the Rings franchise circle the...
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'Exodus: Gods and Kings' (2014) directed by Ridley Scott
Exodus: Gods and Kings is very nearly a secular Bible adventure. Yahweh's influence is steadily pared back to a series of logically consistent natural disasters and vivid hallucinations after by Moses...
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'The Grandmaster' (2013) directed by Wong Kar Wai
If you go into The Grandmaster expecting wall-to-wall kung fu madness you're going to be bored to tears. If you're into Wong Kar Wai's woozily romantic arthouse aesthetics then you're going to be...
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'Birdman' (2014) directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
In Birdman Michael Keaton, an actor who achieved superstardom by playing a rubber-clad superhero in the early 90s and whose career has since faltered, plays an actor who achieved superstardom by...
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'Kon-Tiki' (2012) directed by Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg
Few things scare the crap out of me like the open ocean. The idea of being stranded in vast watery nothingness, suspended like a mote of dust above bottomless depths freaks me out, and that's even...
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'This Is Not a Christmas Play' at the Top Secret Comedy Club, 11th December 2014
This is Not a Christmas Play feels like the Christmas special of a sitcom that ran out of ideas a couple of series ago. Worse, someone forgot to pipe in the canned laughter. Were this television we...
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'Sikes and Nancy' at Trafalgar Studios, 12th December 2014
“Of all bad deeds that, under cover of the darkness, have been committed within wide London’s bounds since night hung over it, that was the worst. Of all the horrors that rose with an ill scent upon...
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'A Christmas Carol' at the Old Red Lion, 13th December 2014
With a drag queen downstairs belting out Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner, a tinsel-decked pub filled with the fruity aroma of Christmas pudding and rosy-cheeked customers clinking glasses of mulled...
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'King Charles III' at the Wyndham's Theatre, 13th December 2014
As a dyed-in-the-wool republican (FYI to Americans, not that kind of republican) Mike Bartlett's King Charles III was practically pornography. The play bills itself as a "future history", probing the...
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'Ex Machina' (2015) directed by Alex Garland
Science fiction that ponders whether an artificial mind is truly conscious is hardly breaking new ground. As far back as 1921 Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) explored the idea of...
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'Cabaret Confidential' at The Pheasantry, 18th December 2014
I've had good times in Pizza Express. Sure the quality of the pizzas varies drastically from location to location, but I've never had a truly bad Giardiniera pizza (artichokes, mushrooms, peppers and...
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'Chimera' at the Gate Theatre, 19th December 2014
You pick up a scalpel and peel back your skin. What lies beneath? Somewhere in that tangle of veins, bones and tissue must be some 'essence of you'. But what if 'you' wasn't really 'you' at all?...
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'Dreams from the Darkness' at Through the Looking Glass, 21st December 2014
Last night the druids gathered at Stonehenge for the winter Solstice: Alban Arthur. On the freezing Wiltshire fields, clad in velvet capes, antler headdresses, brass torcs and flint-topped staffs they...
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London City Nights Best of 2014: Gigs
As shiny new 2015 hoves into view, I've got to admit I'm going to miss the ol' scuffed up, 2014. I squeezed in an awful lot into 365 days, so with New Year approaching here's a few traditional 'Best...
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London City Nights Best of 2014: Art
I've had a kickin' year in art. Over the last 12 months I've performed in the Victoria & Albert Museum, at Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin and, my favourite, at Hackney WickED festival,...
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'The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death' (2015) directed by Tom Harper
In this review I will attempt to give you a rough simulation of just how annoying The Woman in Black 2 is. Please turn the volume on your computer up to get the full experience.The Woman in Black 2 is...
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'The Theory of Everything' (2014) directed by James Marsh
Will no one rid me of these troublesome biopics?! After suffering through 2014's Jersey Boys, Jimi: All is By My Side, Get On Up, The Butler, The Imitation Game, The Invisible Woman, and Saving Mr...
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London City Nights Best of 2014: Theatre
Whenever the big yearly theatre awards swing around I always a get a bit befuddled. Half the plays nominated I've never even heard of, and the winners tend to be things I thought stunk up the place....
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London City Nights Shittiest of 2014: Films
My god do I see some shitty films. Being a film critic isn't all free pizza, soapy titwanks from PR agents, open bars and big plates of complementary croissants (though it often very much is). All...
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London City Nights Best of 2014: Films
In 2014 I saw 128 films in the cinema (a new record. Let's say a film is on average two hours long. That means I've spent about more than 10 days of the year sat in darkness, staring blankly at a...
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