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1 week ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
We have always lived in an era of contradictions, but the cultural sphere has never been quite so paradoxical and, indeed, parasocial. This era is one in which the commoner and the celebrity are more connected than ever due to the veneer of relatability afforded by social media. But this digital intimacy is simultaneously deepening our divisions, as unattainable lifestyles are thrust incessantly in the faces of ordinary people.
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1 week ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
Homer’s Odyssey has been adapted countless times on the big screen. From Theo Angelopoulos’s haunting Ulysses’s Gaze to the Coen Brothers’s comedy caper O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the canonical text is ripe for reinterpretation. However, it has, for the most part, not been reinterpreted with The Return; Uberto Pasolini’s adaptation is a largely faithful one.
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2 weeks ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
The Ex-Wife is back and more twisty than ever, with Céline Buckens’s Tasha starting a new life following a series of traumatising events. At the end of the first season, Tasha’s duplicitous husband, Jack (Tom Mison), attempted to run her off the road to kidnap the couple’s daughter, Emily, and be with his ex-wife, Jen (now played by Katie McGrath). This resulted in a horrific car crash in which Emily was killed. Or so it would seem.
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3 weeks ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
The Most Precious of Cargoes | Movie reviewBased on Jean-Claude Grumberg’s book of the same name, The Most Precious of Cargoes is a haunting rumination on the power of love over unimaginable evil. As a Holocaust survivor whose father was murdered by the Nazis, Grumberg intended his novel to be a fairy tale merging fact and fiction. Accordingly, Michel Hazanavicius’s animated film does an excellent job of appealing to both children and adults.
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1 month ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
Mary and the Hyenas at Wilton’s Music Hall | Theatre reviewWith the proliferation of manosphere-propagated misogyny and violence against women and girls, the story of one of feminism’s most resonant figures is a timely one. Mary and the Hyenas, as its decidedly indie group moniker would suggest, is a postmodern musical about Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
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1 month ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
Decades in the making, The Alto Knights sees Robert De Niro reunite with frequent collaborator Barry Levinson and Goodfellas and Casino screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi. In the past, De Niro has acted alongside fellow legends Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Ray Liotta, to name a few. Now, his co-star is himself. Taking on the dual roles of real-life mob bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, he is a marvel on screen. In old age, Frank looks back on his eventful life.
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1 month ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
With the ubiquity of AI and augmented reality, Netflix’s The Electric State is a timely exploration of the ethics of robotics. However, the Russo brothers’ new film is not some dystopian nightmare; instead, it’s an anachronistic action adventure that merges nostalgia with sci-fi. In an alternate 1990s, robots rebel against their human creators, sparking world war.
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1 month ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
The Last Laugh at Noël Coward Theatre | Theatre reviewThe tragicomic hero has long been an archetype of British comedy. Set against a dusty, damp dressing room, The Last Laugh imagines a meeting between Tommy Cooper (Damian Williams), Bob Monkhouse (Simon Cartwright) and Eric Morecambe (Bob Golding), each ageing and ailing on the periphery of fame. Written and directed by Paul Hendy, the play begins with a sluggish Cooper getting ready for a performance, only to be greeted by his comedic peers.
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2 months ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
In his feature-length directorial debut, Adam O’Brien imagines motherhood as a horror story. Set almost entirely in a quintessentially gothic house, the film sees Meredith (Emily Hampshire) overcome with anguish and neuroses following the birth of her first child, Alex. This is compounded by the apathetic behaviour of her disengaged husband, Jared (François Arnaud), and the isolation of the sleepy suburbia in which she lives. There’s ample opportunity for feminist discourse here.
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2 months ago | 
theupcoming.co.uk | Antonia Georgiou
“Memory pairs the living with the dead.” Those are the words, uttered in foggy darkness, that set in action the events of The Years, Eline Arbo’s outstanding adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s titular 2008 memoir. It’s a concurrently objective yet subjective, depersonalised yet deeply personal account of a nameless woman’s struggles from her formative years to old age.
