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
Brit pack: Woody Allen, centre, with from left, Sally Hawkins, Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell for the Venice premiere of Cassandra's Dream
There's music from the formidable Philip Glass and cinematography from the legendary Vilmos Zsigmong. But two aces are not enough for a really good hand, and Woody Allen's third film shot in London is a curiously patchy experience.
It's a Hitchcockian thriller without the master's touch, mildly entertaining but never gripping. Those who expect laughs from Allen, even when he's not a member of the cast, had better be prepared to sip thin gruel.
No one, however, could complain about the acting. Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor play Cockney brothers short of cash and even shorter on ideas of how to get it. They are both up to their knees in debt.
Farrell is a mechanic who sometimes wins but mostly loses in card games where the stakes are far too high for him. His girl (Sally Hawkins) tries to keep him straight, but without much success.
McGregor is an erstwhile businessman who falls in love with a smart and ambitious actress (Hayley Atwell) for whom he is probably a bit of rough trade.
The crunch comes when their decidedly fishy uncle (Tom Wilkinson) offers them £100,000 each to bump off a business colleague (Phil Davis) who is getting in his way. They are horrified at first but, when he says that family matters more than anything else, begin nervously to think they might just be able to accomplish the task. That's when the trouble really begins.
Both Farrell and McGregor give lively and convincing performances as a pair of south London chancers, Wilkinson is as good as ever as uncle, and the girls are fine.
Added to that, Allen's direction is fluent and his script less jarringly inappropriate than it sometimes was in Match Point. Yet the film never really catches fire and its black ending seems wildly improbable.
There's a lightness of touch about the whole proceedings that seems inappropriate for its theme, which is that if you go the whole hog in supporting your family, you might well end up in very dangerous territory.
But at least Allen is back in some sort of form after the debacle that was Scoop, his second film made in the UK, which went straight to DVD.
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