Film review: A Most Wanted Man (15)

A Most Wanted Man
(15) 122mins
★★★✩✩

Director Anton Corbijn's sombre spy film is dressed in graffitied concrete, kebab shop neon and cold steel blue.

Spiral Notebook: The line of least resistance

Tower Hamlets charity Real has a strong chance of claiming the disabled services contract that was initially won by out-of-towners Pohwer.

Art: How Turner squared up to the oblong tendency

Late Turner: Painting Set Free
Tate Britain

For the longest time pictures were brick-shaped. Photographs in an album and portraits on the wall were often pre-figured to the Golden Ratio, that pleasing aspect that had mathematical as well as aesthetic qualities.

Art: Clare Woods on her commission for London's river services

Cranky and Idler may sound like sneaky nicknames for your deadwood colleagues but in the hands of artist Clare Woods, they are shimmering takes on the River Thames.

Film review: Lucy (15)

WHAT'S ON

Lucy
(15) 89mins
★★★★✩

Nothing in Lucy feels particularly new. It doesn't require a great deal of brain capacity to spot the references - 2001, Limitless, The Matrix, Inception.

Film review: The Rover (15)

WHAT'S ON

The Rover
(15) 108mins
★★★✩✩

Guy Pearce is mad, bored and has nothing to lose. Well, he has one thing to lose and that's his car (not the Rover of the title, sadly). When the dusty Aussie emerges from a roadside bar and sees criminals making off with his wheels, he finds a purpose that makes him less bored but more mad.

Spiral Notebook: This is not a cute cat meme

The hutia of the Caribbean; the Guadaloupe storm petrel; the Stephens Island wren - you can't see any of these creatures in the wild.

They are extinct, victims of an imported predator that has created unparalleled damage to indigenous populations - the cat.

Book reviews: Feral, by George Monbiot; The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith

BOOKS

Feral
George Monbiot
(Penguin)
★★★★✩

"Shifting baseline syndrome" is a curse of the re-wilding movement, one of a list of foes that also includes sheep, Scottish landowners and stupid EU diktats.

Film review: God's Pocket (15)

WHAT'S ON

God's Pocket
(15) 88mins
★★★✩✩

The work of Philip Seymour Hoffman has always been compelling and watchable.

Spiral Notebook: What happens when local councillors play at international geopolitics

COMMENT

Pro-Palestininan campaigners clog up Blackwall tunnel in support of the victims of the Gaza confict. Jewish organisations report an increase in anti-Semitic attacks.

And what does the mayor of Tower Hamlets do? Tweet a picture of a Palestinian flag outside the Town Hall.