The shipyard painter, political activist and razor-sharp cartoonist Bob Starrett has just written a new book The Way I See It on his eventful life and times. Below we reprint one of his stories and review an essential read
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
OPENING with a sequence of atomic explosions and photographs of deformed babies, The Hills Have Eyes proceeds with one of the most shocking gorefests seen since this film was first made by Wes Craven in 1972.
THESE Foolish Things by first time director-writer Julia Taylor Stanley is a risible period piece starring Zoe (Stage Beauty) Tapper as a young wannabe actress trying to follow in her mother's stage footsteps in 1930s London.
FROM the director of Ghosts of the Civil Dead comes The Proposition - a visceral western set against the unforgiving landscape of the Australian outback during the 1880s.
THIS is an engaging, inspirational film which will succeed for many in its intention - moistening the eyes and planting a lump in the throat.
JEFF SAWTELL reckons that the Dardenne brothers' latest stab at realism is simply not close enough to society's terrible truths.
YOU have to suffer some 130 bum-and-mind-numbing minutes of Lars von Trier's plodding polemic before a searing montage of images of racial oppression in the US potently makes the point.
STAY, although shot and acted with considerable skill, relies too heavily on the cliches which beset films about psychiatrists.
AN imaginative rites-of-passage fantasy fable, MirrorMask is a fantastic first feature from the award-winning comic book artist Dave McKean, co-written with his long-time writer-collaborator Neil Gaiman.
JEFF SAWTELL is delighted to see a sophisticated political thriller about the current corporate conspiracy by US neoimperialists.