New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: James Watkins.
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kelly Reilly, Thomas Turgoose, Bronson Webb
Description: Steve prepares to deliver a surprise wedding proposal to his girlfriend, primary school teacher Jenny, during a romantic weekend in the countryside at a beautiful, secluded lake. The couple pitches a tent and enjoys a leisurely swim in the flooded quarry but the peace is shattered by a group of rowdy youths led by 16-year-old bully Brett and his snarling Rottweiler. A fight breaks out and Steve accidentally kills the dog, forcing the couple to flee into the surrounding forest while Brett and his gang give chase.
Country: UK. 2008. 91mins
What lies beneath? Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and Steve (Michael Fassbender)
There are several good reasons why James Watkins’ horror thriller is one of the better British films of the year, and one reason why it isn’t one of the very best.The reasons it stands up as better than most are to do with the crisp and powerfully effective story-telling from the director, who also wrote the spare but literate screenplay, and the acting of Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender. These two are Jenny and Steve, two lovers who, after heading out of London for a break at a secluded lake, are cruelly set upon by a bunch of bloodthirsty teenagers.
Fassbender has already proved himself an exceptional performer — most recently in Hunger at Cannes — and Reilly, good in the otherwise disappointing Mrs Henderson Presents, is also a fresh and very promising talent. Both are subjected to some terrible things in the film and convince us on every level of this contemporary nightmare.
The downside to Eden Lake is simply that it plays shrewdly but shockingly to all our fears about modern youth. The posse of miscreants here are led by Jack O’Connell and Thomas Turgoose, both excellent in Shane Meadows’ This is England.
In a passage before the real drama begins, the lovers arrive at a pub where someone rudely bags the parking space they have found and, inside, their quiet drink is disturbed by screaming children and parents who scream right back at them. The signal is that the lower orders are very rude mechanicals and the nice middle-class couple are going to be rudely awoken
to the fact.
Later, the parents of the miscreants, when we finally see them, are characterised as lumpen chavs and, while one doesn’t subscribe to the tenets of political correctness in such films, more care was surely required before playing so thoroughly to what looks like a massive dose of prejudice.
Even so, it is impossible not to admire the way Watkins ratchets up the tension in his debut as director (he wrote My Little Eye) and keeps his tale strictly to 90 minutes.
Beware that there are several scenes which will make you want to look away, and all the more scary because they seem uncomfortably real.
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