Film review: Starred Up (18)

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Starred Up
(18) 106mins
★★★★✩

The process of de-humanising begins from the first frame. Eric (Jack O'Connell) is moved like a pawn, treated like a loon and reduced to a series of louse-ridden tick boxes.

Dance review: Shadowland, Peacock Theatre

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DANCE
Shadowland
Peacock Theatre
★★★★✩

At the end of Shadowland, by way of an encore, the flexible folk of US-based Pilobolus said thanks - more accurately "cheers" - to the London crowd with a YouTube friendly silhouette romp depicting their journey across the pond.

Film review: Need For Speed (12A)

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Need For Speed
(12A) 130mins
★★★✩✩

How long will it be, I wonder, before the star of this game-to-screen howler loses his prefix?

Film review: The Grand Budapest Hotel (15)

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The Grand Budapest Hotel
(15) 100mins
★★★★✩

Director Wes Anderson often creates films that inspire admiration rather than love. They are products of the intellect, not unruly effusions of the heart.

Spiral Notebook: The arrogance of now

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

It is staggering to modern eyes that the Paedophile Information Exchange should have found any currency at all, let alone the championing voice of an authoritative body such as the National Council of Civil Liberties in the '70s.

Spiral Notebook: Driving the getaway-with-it car

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

I try to limit how often I pick apart Mayor Lutfur Rahman's empty rhetoric, partly because it's a full-time job and partly because it wearies the soul.

However, an occasional example suffices to cover the whole.

Film review: Non-Stop (12A)

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Non-Stop
(12A) 106mins
★★★★✩

Amid the airport warnings about gels, baby milk and sharp objects, there should be a 6ft 5in silhouette of wounded bear Liam Neeson. You simply don't want to be sharing cabin class with this gravity-stricken trouble magnet.

Spiral Notebook: Nothing lasts forever

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

I met a man the other day who made history. Or at least extended its boundaries.

Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum was one of the team who identified small indentations in slab of sedimentary rock as footprints and in doing so set a new marker on this country's ancient history.

How a secret trapped in the rock for a million years was revealed and gone within a fortnight

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"Diligence is the mother of good luck." So says the 16th century proverb its truth would be met with a nod of recognition for a team of scientists who discovered the Happisburgh footprints.

Spiral Notebook: The prime minister is taking charge of the flooding crisis. Feel better now?

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

Every saga has a tipping point. The Hanging Rails of Dawlish was perhaps the moment when the flooding story moved from an idiosyncratic spasm of mid-Atlantic weather patterns to a political crisis lapping at Downing Street's door.