An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: David Ayer.
Cast: Christian Bale, Freddy Rodriguez, Eva Longori
Description: Christian Bale's back in American Psycho mode, channelling Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle for this intense study of a disturbed Gulf war vet who buddies up with an old pal after being rejected by the LAPD.
Country: US. 2005. 115mins
Welsh-born Christian Bale's riveting performance as a Gulf War veteran looking for work in LA is the chief reason to see this tough and pessimistic film, written and directed by David Ayer.
A subsidiary one is Ayer's frightening sense of what can become of such a soldier who wakes up screaming in the night, has burnt through his savings waiting for a job in the LA Police Department and seems to be going nowhere fast.
These are pretty mean streets he drives through in his battered car, usually accompanied by his unemployed and feckless best friend (Freddy Rodriguez).
Drink and drugs and general mayhem seem the only way to relieve his disappointment at not getting a job and not being able to marry his devoted Mexican girlfriend (Tammy Trull), whom he wants to bring back to the States.
He is on the edge of despair when offered a post in Homeland Security, which means travelling into druginfested Colombia where his tough military background will help him "terminate" the dealers.
It is employment that appeals to the worst side of his nature and, almost inevitably, his incipient psychosis manifests itself.
Ayer's portrait of the group of young men who roam LA cheating on their girlfriends and living high on little or no prospects carries reminders of Scorsese's Taxi Driver, and Bale's performance is almost as notable as Robert De Niro's in that film. You know he's on the edge of the precipice, unable either to deal with his past or to allow himself.to walk away from it.
Grittily made and well written, it goes into overdrive at the end and becomes more than a little melodramatic. But it forces you to ask the question: how many soldiers like this mentally wounded man are at present serving in Iraq?
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