Latest fromEntertainment Reviews

Top Muddle: Those who can't do, view
TimeOut writer Jacqueline Smith blogs on season three of New Zealand's Next Top Model.

Album Review: Howlin' Wolf, The Howlin' Wolf
One of the assertions on the cover of this album - released in 1969, reissued after a long absence - isn't true.

Movie Review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
If you missed the first film adaptation of author Jeff Kinney's comic novel for kids, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, don't sweat it. The second instalment is more of the same.

Movie Review: Super 8
Finally, here it is: An "event" movie of this blockbuster season which is neither a superhero flick nor a sequel.

Album Review: Seasick Steve, You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks
Seasick Steve - who makes his own guitars, counted Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain as friends and had Grinderman, Ruby Turner and K.T. Tunstall on his raw 2008 album Started Out With Nothing And I Still Got Most of It Left.

Album Review: Ghostpoet, Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam
Sauntering sleepily straight out of London, via Coventry, and with roots in Nigeria and Dominica, comes 24-year-old MC Ghostpoet (real name Obara Ejimiwe).

Movie Review: The Hangover Part II
Here's the thing. The first Hangover was funny because everybody was trying to remember what happened.

Movie Review: Sam Hunt: Purple Balloon and Other Stories
It's something of an irony that this portrait of our most accessible poet should be at times quite hard to watch.

Movie Reviews: Operation 8 and Last Paradise
The trial from the protracted case resulting from the "anti-terror" raids of October 2007 was to have started this week. But yet another legal hurdle has meant the arrested 18's day in court is still to come.

Movie Review: X-Men: First Class
For all the 21st century special effects which brings them to life on screen, most of the comic book superheroes still selling Happy Meals and movie tickets today started off many decades ago.

Book Review: <i>The Larnachs</i>
One of the most interesting things about reading a historical novel is working out what period detailing preoccupies the novelist and is used as a means of anchoring it to its era.

Book Review: <i>My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece</i>
Never mind its unappealing cover, this debut kids' novel is bound to enchant adults, too.

Book Review: <i>Before I Go to Sleep</i>
It's hard to think of a recent debut novel as original and ambitious in its premise - or as successful in its execution - as S.J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep.

Album review: Hugh Laurie, Let Them Talk
Yes, it's a record by that actor chap Hugh Laurie. And no, it's not House music.

Album review: Various, Late Night Tales: Trentemoller
The latest collection of late-night vibes is curated by Dane Anders Trentemoller - and what a (mostly, anyway) spooky come-down after a night out it would be.

Album review: Thurston Moore, Demolished Thoughts
This is the Sonic Youth guitarist's third solo album and there's not a screeching riff in earshot.

Album review: The Webb Sisters, Savages
Best known in the wider world as part of Leonard Cohen's touring band - the backing vocalists, multi-instrumentalists and cartwheelers - Charley and Hattie from Kent have at the studio desk here uber-producer, Peter Asher.

Movie Review: Lovely, still
For an hour, this debut feature is just a mercilessly cheesy old folks' love story. But then it turns preposterous and, in doing so, displays something suspiciously close to contempt for its audience.

Movie Review: The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde's 1895 classic comedy of manners is so well-known that it risks sounding like a dictionary of quotations.

Album Review: Kode 9 and the Spaceape, Black Sun
As a musician, DJ, and owner of record label Hyperdub, Kode 9 (real name Steve Goodman) from Glasgow was one of the pioneers of the dubstep scene in the early 2000s.

Movie Review: Barney's Version
The title character of the last novel by Canadian comic novelist Mordecai Richler is the ultimate unreliable narrator.

Album Review: Boris, Heavy Rocks/Attention Please
To release two albums at the same time is nothing for prolific Japanese experimental noise rock trio Boris, whose sound moves from thrashy punk through to psychedelia and ambient drones.

Book Review: <i>The Commonplace Book</i>
Commonplace books are literary scrapbooks - "salads of many herbs" as one compiler put it. They are eclectic, idiosyncratic repositories of bits and pieces that have taken a person's fancy.

Book Review: <i>Saints And Sinners</i>
Edna O'Brien turned 80 last year. The energy and immediacy of these 11 stories makes that hard to believe.

Concert Review: The Cure, Sydney Opera House
The Cure played their first show in the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday night as the centre-piece of Vivid Live