Tag Archives: Mark Strong

FILM REVIEW: ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’

By Ray Bennett “Kingsman: The Secret Service” could put the nail in the coffin of secret agent movies just as “Blazing Saddles” put the kibosh on westerns in the 1970s. It takes the increasingly absurd violent action of recent James … Continue reading

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London Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards highlight fringe

By Ray Bennett Fringe and repertoire theatres triumphed at the London Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards today as prizes went to productions at the Almeida, Chichester Festival, the Young Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court and the Bush Theatre. … Continue reading

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TIFF FILM REVIEW: Morten Tyldum’s ‘The Imitation Game’

By Ray Bennett TORONTO – Morten Tyldum’s engrossing drama “The Imitation Game”, about World War II codebreaker Alan Turing, gives Benedict Cumberbatch another complex character to explore and the result is a film that will please audiences and collect major … Continue reading

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FILM REVIEW: ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’

By Ray Bennett LONDON – The pleasures of a John le Carré novel on top of the sublime writing come less from plot than from atmosphere and character and that is why his best spy novels make splendid miniseries, not … Continue reading

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PREVIEW: Spies go back into the cold in ‘Tinker, Tailor’

By Ray Bennett When John Le Carré created his master spy George Smiley – who is about to be revisited in Optimum Releasing’s Working Title Pictures production of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” – he made him a fat man. The … Continue reading

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FILM REVIEW: ‘The Guard’ starring Brendan Gleeson

By Ray Bennett LONDON – There is a fish out of water in John Michael McDonagh’s entertaining Irish crime yarn “The Guard” but it’s not the black American FBI agent parachuted into Galway on the hunt for a gang of … Continue reading

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FILM REVIEW: Daniel Craig in ‘Flashbacks of a Fool’

By Ray Bennett LONDON — A burned-out movie star recalls the youthful trauma that drove him away from home in “Flashbacks of a Fool,” which despite a clunky title and a conventional structure proves a welcome diversion from 007 for … Continue reading

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RIO FILM REVIEW: Viggo Mortensen in ‘Good’

By Ray Bennett RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazilian director Vicente Amorim’s drama “Good,” based on a play by C.P. Taylor, is set in Nazi Germany and tells with escalating tension the story of a presumably decent man whose bland acquiescence … Continue reading

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