Precious is a new-style weepie but one that is much more bracing than depressing
Precious
Theatre
Ian McKellen is captivating throughout. He delights in the play’s gallows humour, yet is also maudlin and poignant
Waiting for Godot
Theatre
Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high
Enron
Utterly, utterly brilliant. You really are in for a treat
Though 'Trilogy' has won rave reviews, I personally found myself exasperated after about an hour
We went on a quiet sunday evening and the food was excellent, but the experience let down by the service and ambiance
London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
With Into the Wild, his fourth feature as director, Sean Penn joins the ranks of the masters. A brave, beautiful and totally satisfying adaptation of the cult book by Jon Krakauer, it tells the (largely) true story of Christopher McCandless, who dropped spectacularly out after graduating college in 1990.
Donating all his money to Oxfam and cutting up his social security card, McCandless rechristened himself Alexander Supertramp, vanishing into the wilds of the South-West and, eventually, Alaska.
It is one of those peculiarly American odysseys, with echoes of Huck Finn, Woody Guthrie, Kerouac and Easy Rider, in which the true heart of America is found still beating among its drifters and outcasts. But the film, like the book, also speaks to a younger generation, for whom the word "career" is more threat than aspiration.
Penn's eye for landscape is unashamedly poetic, and he draws a powerfully nuanced performance from Emile Hirsch as Chris/Alex.
It's a long (148 minutes) but totally confident film, pulling off challenge after challenge - a hippy colony in the desert; a hilltop epiphany with veteran Hal Holbrook as a retired soldier who becomes a surrogate father; and above all, the extraordinary, shattering finale in Alaska.
Quite simply one of the year's great films.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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