FILM
The Hunger Games
(12A) 142mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Dystopian death games tell us everything we need to know about our modern obsession with dazzle - only without much sparkle.
REVIEW
Little wonder that this film of the cult novel has quickly been tagged the essential film of our times.
It is fairly dripping with the zeitgeist, plucking at every 21st century theme and nightmare to make a dark satire.
Essentially, The Hunger Games are The X-Factor - only with death and glory instead of a raspberry and an "X" for the losers.
It touches on the fatal attraction of celebrity, the Faustian pacts with the masses and the commercial necessity of an emotional back story to land the lucrative sponsorship.
The film itself though is a little more irksome than the trend-spotters would have you believe.
At a hefty 142 minutes there is a lot of agitated set dressing and not enough conflict and connection.
None of this is to fault Jennifer Lawrence as our tomboy heroine Katniss Everdeen who has to fight to death 23 other teenagers for the pride of her district in a future world that resembles North Korea with a touch of Nazi chic.
Lawrence is earnest and solid and wholly convincing in this colourful world of camp and campfires.
If this harmless if muted twaddle had been allowed to run its course it could have been a worthy successor to Lord Of The Flies - but director Gary Ross has other ideas.
The cruel manipulation essential for a ratings-winning death hunt is fair enough but Ross has introduced such cack-handed and convenient get-outs and contrivances that nothing, ultimately, is very threatening or credible.
Saturday, 14 April 2012
Film review: Wild Bill (15)
FILM
Wild Bill
(15) 96mins
★★★★★
IN A NUTSHELL
Touching, funny and fierce, this story of East End lost boys finding each other is an impressive debut from Dexter Fletcher.
Dexter Fletcher has not wandered far in his impressive directorial debut - a tale of mockney gangsters and broken homes.
Instead of exotic travels into a fantastic other-world, the star has dug deep in the familiar and found, within his impressive cast of characters, true heart.
Set in Stratford against the chill winds and steely structures of an Olympic site under construction, he has put together a warm and touching tale of Western-brand redemption.
So easily could he have deviated into the high-camp Guy Ritchie geezer territory - and there is an undoubted nod to the stylish tics of his Lock, Stock director.
But this is so much more - and so much more rewarding - than a drug dealer's dandy dance.
Fletcher's years in the business have not gone to waste - every 30 second cameo is a face and a performance - Marc Warren, Andy Serkis, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng, Jaime Winstone, Sean Pertwee - memorably here and gone.
At the fulcrum of the piece is Bill himself, played with a hapless vulnerability by Charlie Creed-Miles.
Out of prison, he seeks his family only to find his two boys fending for themselves and doing quite happily without him thank you very much.
He wants to flee but circumstances force the lost boys together and shoots of tenderness begin to merge and intermingle.
Dean (Will Poulter) resents that his dad is back, taking over the role he adopted when mum did a runner. Jimmy (Sammy Williams) is more amenable to the stranger, which only incurs his sibling's wrath. For his part, artless dodger Bill is more wayward older brother than father figure.
The makeshift family is clueless but not entirely hopeless as they grope around unfamiliar feelings.
Meanwhile, the outside world keeps intruding. Bill's not wanted by his old dealer pals but his youngest is getting caught up. It needs sorting and Bill has to decide if he's prepared to go to war for a kid he barely knows.
Fletcher, who co-wrote with Danny King, balances the tone perfectly allowing for the foolish lie that the inevitable moistness of the eye is born of laughter not sentiment.
Wild Bill
(15) 96mins
★★★★★
IN A NUTSHELL
Touching, funny and fierce, this story of East End lost boys finding each other is an impressive debut from Dexter Fletcher.
Dexter Fletcher has not wandered far in his impressive directorial debut - a tale of mockney gangsters and broken homes.
Instead of exotic travels into a fantastic other-world, the star has dug deep in the familiar and found, within his impressive cast of characters, true heart.
Set in Stratford against the chill winds and steely structures of an Olympic site under construction, he has put together a warm and touching tale of Western-brand redemption.
So easily could he have deviated into the high-camp Guy Ritchie geezer territory - and there is an undoubted nod to the stylish tics of his Lock, Stock director.
But this is so much more - and so much more rewarding - than a drug dealer's dandy dance.
Fletcher's years in the business have not gone to waste - every 30 second cameo is a face and a performance - Marc Warren, Andy Serkis, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng, Jaime Winstone, Sean Pertwee - memorably here and gone.
At the fulcrum of the piece is Bill himself, played with a hapless vulnerability by Charlie Creed-Miles.
Out of prison, he seeks his family only to find his two boys fending for themselves and doing quite happily without him thank you very much.
He wants to flee but circumstances force the lost boys together and shoots of tenderness begin to merge and intermingle.
Dean (Will Poulter) resents that his dad is back, taking over the role he adopted when mum did a runner. Jimmy (Sammy Williams) is more amenable to the stranger, which only incurs his sibling's wrath. For his part, artless dodger Bill is more wayward older brother than father figure.
The makeshift family is clueless but not entirely hopeless as they grope around unfamiliar feelings.
Meanwhile, the outside world keeps intruding. Bill's not wanted by his old dealer pals but his youngest is getting caught up. It needs sorting and Bill has to decide if he's prepared to go to war for a kid he barely knows.
Fletcher, who co-wrote with Danny King, balances the tone perfectly allowing for the foolish lie that the inevitable moistness of the eye is born of laughter not sentiment.
Stage review: Sweeney Todd, Adelphi
STAGE
Sweeney Todd
Adelphi Theatre
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Blood flows, stomachs churn but hearts swell in this intelligent, witty, gripping and grim musical.
REVIEW
Darkness swamps old London town. Darkness shades the characters and shapes the humour too in Stephen Sondheim's dextrous re-telling of the tale of the blood-thirsty barber and his pie-making pal.
Director Jonathan Kent is equally dextrous in his staging of this marvellous musical - putting the grisly crime scenes up high and the lives down low.
The setting is like an abandoned East End warehouse and the light arrives sliced and diced by thick lattices and the swirl of fog never truly clears, either from the stage or the gin-addled assembly.
But this is not the old London town of Fagin, nor even Sondheim's setting of 1849. The London of the beadle and Bedlam is, curiously, the 1930s but this temporal dissonance is only marginally irritating and does not deflect from the hellish vision plumped on the sombre Adelphi stage.
Michael Ball is sombre too. He is a creature of twisted hatreds. Gone is the Sunday teatime beaming cherub to be replaced with a charcoal black gnarled gargoyle, satanic in appearance and intent.
Barber Todd is back from the colonies, dispatched there by the evil Judge Turpin who had his lascivious eye on Todd's daughter Joanna.
Now Joanna is full grown but still a bird in a cage and Todd wants reunion and revenge, although not necessarily in that order.
Chicken-fleshed John Bowe plays the flagellating judge who wants to turn ward into wife, bellowing his self-serving justifications while his sidekick Beadle (Peter Polycarpou) wheedles.
As Todd waits for his trap to close he practises his cut-throat technique on random strangers, at one point singing a jaunty love song as he slices. Blood spurts and dribbles reminding us that, at heart, this is a gory and stomach-churning piece.
What the music lacks in melody it remakes with melodrama. Refrains may be brutal but some of the dark lyrics are rich with clever comedy and an absolute feast of wit and wordplay.
Star of the show is Imelda Staunton who takes full advantage of the pie-based puns. Her magnificent creation of Mrs Lovett is touching, tender, brutal, murderous. She is wicked and wickedly funny turning customers into pies and pies into profit.
She manages to convey - in short stabs of dialogue - devotion, comedy, variation and a wonderful glint of demonic energy.
Although the score lacks a rousing climax and the story - like Todd's customers - sputters somewhat to its end, the rich concoction - and Staunton's breathtaking turn - brought the crowd to its feet knowing they are in the presence of a masterpiece fully realised.
Until September 22, adelphitheatrelondon.com
Sweeney Todd
Adelphi Theatre
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Blood flows, stomachs churn but hearts swell in this intelligent, witty, gripping and grim musical.
REVIEW
Darkness swamps old London town. Darkness shades the characters and shapes the humour too in Stephen Sondheim's dextrous re-telling of the tale of the blood-thirsty barber and his pie-making pal.
Director Jonathan Kent is equally dextrous in his staging of this marvellous musical - putting the grisly crime scenes up high and the lives down low.
The setting is like an abandoned East End warehouse and the light arrives sliced and diced by thick lattices and the swirl of fog never truly clears, either from the stage or the gin-addled assembly.
But this is not the old London town of Fagin, nor even Sondheim's setting of 1849. The London of the beadle and Bedlam is, curiously, the 1930s but this temporal dissonance is only marginally irritating and does not deflect from the hellish vision plumped on the sombre Adelphi stage.
Michael Ball is sombre too. He is a creature of twisted hatreds. Gone is the Sunday teatime beaming cherub to be replaced with a charcoal black gnarled gargoyle, satanic in appearance and intent.
Barber Todd is back from the colonies, dispatched there by the evil Judge Turpin who had his lascivious eye on Todd's daughter Joanna.
Now Joanna is full grown but still a bird in a cage and Todd wants reunion and revenge, although not necessarily in that order.
Chicken-fleshed John Bowe plays the flagellating judge who wants to turn ward into wife, bellowing his self-serving justifications while his sidekick Beadle (Peter Polycarpou) wheedles.
As Todd waits for his trap to close he practises his cut-throat technique on random strangers, at one point singing a jaunty love song as he slices. Blood spurts and dribbles reminding us that, at heart, this is a gory and stomach-churning piece.
What the music lacks in melody it remakes with melodrama. Refrains may be brutal but some of the dark lyrics are rich with clever comedy and an absolute feast of wit and wordplay.
Star of the show is Imelda Staunton who takes full advantage of the pie-based puns. Her magnificent creation of Mrs Lovett is touching, tender, brutal, murderous. She is wicked and wickedly funny turning customers into pies and pies into profit.
She manages to convey - in short stabs of dialogue - devotion, comedy, variation and a wonderful glint of demonic energy.
Although the score lacks a rousing climax and the story - like Todd's customers - sputters somewhat to its end, the rich concoction - and Staunton's breathtaking turn - brought the crowd to its feet knowing they are in the presence of a masterpiece fully realised.
Until September 22, adelphitheatrelondon.com
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