‘Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?’ This ridiculous question was asked by Piers Morgan to chess wonder kid Hans Niemann who found himself caught up in a cheating scandal. So begins the fascinating documentary ‘Chess Mates’ out now on Netflix. For many, chess was seen as a game reserved for intellectuals and…
★★★☆☆ There’s something really uncomfortable about The Wasp at Southwark Playhouse Borough and I mean that as a compliment. Written by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, this twisting psychological thriller keeps you guessing for most of its 1 hour 40 minute runtime. It starts off fairly simple: two women who haven’t seen each other since school meet for tea and awkward…
The new trailer for the hotly anticipated Christopher Nolan blockbuster has landed and does not disappoint. The Odyssey is a classic Greek tale that tells the story of the Ithaca king Odysseus and his long adventurous journey home after the Trojan war to be reunited with his wife Penelope. Its one of the most famous…
When I first heard that there was a Michael Jackson film coming out, I was sceptical. A lot of that came down to the fact it was being produced by the Michael Jackson Estate, and that his nephew, Jaafar Jackson, was going to play him. It felt like it might be a bit too controlled, and not…
When you think of films about people switching bodies, your mind probably goes straight to Freaky Friday or 13 Going on 30. It’s a concept we’ve seen many times before but Swapped manages to make it feel fresh in its own way. Swapped is brilliant in its own right, marking Michael B. Jordan’s first animated feature since his Oscar win. Directed by Nathan…
Caroline Muirhead is an extraordinary woman though not in the way most stories would lead you to expect. This three-part limited series on Netflix (each episode running around an hour) begins like a modern love story before quickly descending into something far darker and more unsettling. At 29, Caroline meets Scottish farmer Sandy McKellar on Tinder, just…
“I have to betray them to save them.” Those words, spoken by Christine Marie, sit at the heart of this compelling and deeply upsetting four-part Netflix documentary series about the continued abuse within Utah’s Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints community. Christine and her husband, Tolga Katas, move slowly and carefully into the heart of the…
What would you do if your fiancée revealed, in front of your friends during wedding preparations, the worst thing they had ever done? In The Drama, this shocking confession becomes the catalyst for the film’s central conflict, as Emma admits that, at 15, she once planned a school shooting but ultimately did not go through with…
I haven’t seen many Michael Jackson documentaries before, and when he died I was too young to really understand everything surrounding him. I still liked his music, though, so watching this felt like filling in gaps I never properly explored. The title of this three-part BBC documentary raises a bigger question: whose story is it really telling? Is it…
When you watch a theatre show and you are completely absorbed in the production, thinking of nothing else, it becomes something special. This is one of those shows that I will think about for a long time. Watching Romeo and Juliet at the Harold Pinter Theatre felt like that kind of experience. For me, William Shakespeare is a hit and miss…
