Takashi Mikke's 100th film arrives with a flurry of blades, bloodworms and vengeance. Blade of the Immortal is Miike’s 3rd chanbara (“sword fighting) film and is based on the long running manga by Hiroaki Samura. Miike’s take on the source material is frenetic, fascinating and wonderful, truly befitting his century of films.
Read MoreWith A Legacy of Spies, John le Carre returns to the scene of the novel that put him on the map. While the much publicised return of George Smiley is making the headlines, the story is set upon the shoulders, in my opinion, of one of his most interesting characters, Smiley’s right hand, Peter Guillam.
Read MoreSeptember 1938. The world teeters on the brink of another war. Hitler is eyeing the Sudetenland and is hours away from mobilisation. In London, Chamberlain is doing everything to keep the piece. A summit is arranged in Munich and two men travel there with plans of their own in Robert Harris' fantastic latest novel.
Read MoreAn interwoven tale set 550 years apart, Jane Johnson's novel tells the tales of Kate, a woman hiding from torment at home, and Blessing living in the final days of the Emirate of Granada who creates a torment of his own. Johnson has crafted a superior tale that grabs you from the off.
Read MoreClare Mulley's new biography looks at two incredible, yet very different women who were pinoneering Test Pilots for the Third Reich. In The Women Who Flew For Hitler, Mulley looks at what drove these women in a male dominated flying world and the very different directions they chose under a Nazi flag.
Read MoreHeroic failure is something that Britain has always done well. With Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan has crafted an incredible film about an incredible event. With that as his setting, Nolan may have made his best movie yet.
Read MoreThe men and women who resisted Hitler have been cast as heroes and villains of both the left and right. The conspirators and their actions have been remembered in black and white, with the viewer choosing the colours with which to paint them. In Danny Orbach’s new history of the resistance, The Plots Against Hitler, he very convincingly shows us that rather than pure saints or sinners, the complexity and contradictions of the conspirators makes them that most difficult of things to digest, human.
Read MoreFor as long as he can remember, the great chase films were whirling around in Edgar Wright's mind (as they do us all). Great films like Walter Hill’s The Driver, John Landis’ The Blues Brothers and Richard C. Sarafian’s incredible Vanishing Point to name but three. For twenty odd years, Wright has wanted to honour them and put his own, very singular, stamp on the genre. With Baby Driver he has crafted something special, his very own car chase musical.
Read MoreAdrian Goldworthy's novel Vindolanda take us to Britain before the Wall, were our hero Ferox, a Briton naturalised into Rome, finds himself in the far north. With depression stalking him, a crisis arises that requires him to put his skills back to work and uncover the misdeeds of his own and the scheming of those who consider him a traitor. Vindolanda is vividly told and, once it gets going, a highly enjoyable ride.
Read MoreThe Blackbird series of aircraft, by the legendary Lockheed designer Kelly Johnson, is the subject of James Hamilton-Paterson's latest non-fiction venture into aviation. Hamilton-Paterson tells a tale of Cold War paranoia and desperation that lead to an incredible aircraft that lived out beyond Mach 3 on the meter. Blackbird is a worthy tribute to her designer, those brave Habu and the incredible craft they rode.
Read MoreThe Dark Ages in Britain are a fertile period to mine. The sources, few as they are, talk of kings and warlords, battles and death, and then arrive the men from the North. It is the period of Beowulf and Arthur, of a Britain living in the decay of the Roman withdrawal and the arrival of a new God to fight the old. Into this mix, Matthew Harffy has thrown a young warrior, Beobrand, into the turmoil of Northumbria to find his fame.
Read MoreSpeculative fiction is one that treads a fine line. Too far one way and it is dismissed as preachy or too far the other and it falls into the science fiction netherworld. When realising a world where global warming has changed the map of our world and America has again fractured North and South. With American War, Omar El Akkad has trod that line deftly with an extraordinary look at the cultivation of hate.
Read MoreUnprecedented is Tiger Woods looking back at at his first Master win, 20 years ago now. Tiger is a towering figure in modern golf. He literally changed the game. Looking back at the 1997 Masters at Augusta National though, Tiger provides a wonderful insight into what made those incredible four round unprecedented in the illustrious history of The Masters. And a fascinating look it is too.
Read MoreTheir Finest does that difficult thing of being funny about a period and reverential about it at the same time. And above it all is Gemma Arterton. Her performance is subtle, humorous, strong and committed. Their Finest is one of those increasingly rare occasions where a film happily sits across generations and manages to please all.
Read MoreAs George Bernard Shaw once famously wrote: "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance." In the case of David Baddiel's new show My Family: Not The Sitcom, he doesn't so much make them out to dance, as line his parents up and conga them around the Playhouse Theatre. That and spending two hours taking his mother's grammar and her spelling of masturbation to task.
Read MoreA stunning biography of the Koh-i-noor diamond that has been coveted for millennia. Dalrymple and Anand cover the myths and history of the most famous rock in the work with a deft yet firm touch. Beautifully written, Kohinoor is a superb biography of one of the most divisive items in the world.
Read MoreA look back on the epic battle between Ford and Ferrari in the late 1960's at Le Mans. The 24 Hour War recounts the troubled birth of the legendary Ford GT40 and the lengths the Ford Motor Company went to to beat the world over the course of a day. While a solid racing documentary, the focus is disingenuous and Amerocentric, which does a disservice the international racers that made the GT40 what it was.
Read MoreLife Moves Pretty Fast is a race through why 80's films were better, deeper and better (did I mention better?). Hadley Freeman's look back at some of the standout films of the decade is a fabulous conversation on that era and why we've lost that heart in our films today.
Read MoreA thriller is a funny thing. It really serves one purpose, to capture the reader and make sure they keep turning the pages. For something so simple, it is a very hard thing to get right. With Find Me, J.S. Monroe has crafted a dark, twisty, twisted thriller that keeps the pages turning.
Read MoreI have loved Robert Radcliffe's previous five novels, to the point I even read one of them as an eBook. Radcliffe’s new tale is his most ambitious yet. Airborne is the first of trilogy of novels telling the tale of a boy caught between countries, in search of a father and who finds two; John Frost, godfather of the Parachute Regiment and Erwin Rommel, The Desert Fox.
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