Saturday Review

2 Guns, Baltasar Kormakur's new film, stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as a DEA agent and a naval intelligence officer who find themselves on the run after a botched attempt to infiltrate a drug cartel. While fleeing, they learn the secret of their shaky alliance: neither knew that the other was an undercover agent.Lucy Kirkwood's latest play Chimerica was sparked by the Tiananmen square protests in China 1989. As tanks roll through Beijing and soldiers hammer on his hotel door, Joe Moore, a young American photojournalist, captures a piece of history. When a cryptic message is left in a Beijing newspaper more than 20 years later, Joe is driven to discover the truth behind the unknown hero he captured on film.In What Remains, a major BBC1 drama series, a young couple move into a flat and discover a leak in the loft, which leads them to the remains of Melissa Young hidden in the eaves. She has not been seen for over two years. No one has raised an alarm or even noticed that she was gone. D.I. Len Harpe

Steve Coogan is back and stars in the film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa; which portrays the events of the greatest low-to-high ebb spectrum in Alan's life to date, namely how he tries to salvage his public career while negotiating a violent turn of events at North Norfolk Digital Radio.Had an accident at work? Tripped on a paving slab? Cut yourself shaving? You could be entitled to compensation. In Nick Payne's new play The Same Deep Water As Me, Andrew and Barry at Scorpion Claims, Luton's finest personal injury lawyers, are the men for you. When Kevin, Andrew's high school nemesis, appears in his office the opportunity for a quick win arises. But just how fast does a lie have to spin before it gets out of control?David Walliams, Frances de la Tour and Catherine Tate star in new BBC TV sitcom series Big School. Walliams is Mr. Church, a long-term teacher on the point of handing in his resignation when a new attractive French teacher arrives and re-ignites his interest in staffroom affairs.Award winning novelis

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's film Only God Forgives has already divided critics: five stars for some while others booed it at Cannes. Set in Bangkok, it's ultraviolent, awash with red, and has an extraordinary soundscape. It stars Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm and Kristin Scott Thomas. Roddy Doyle returns to the territory of the much-loved The Commitments - which will become a musical in the autumn - in his new novel The Guts. Jimmy Rabbitte is now 47 and has just been diagnosed with bowel cancer. He's not dying yet... but his brush with mortality leads him to embrace some of the passions of his youth.Southcliffe is a new Channel 4 drama by Tony Grisoni, starring Rory Kinnear and Shirley Henderson, directed by American Sean Durkin. It's a powerful drama set in a small town in the south east of England where the run-up to a spate of shootings and the terrible grief and consequences of the deaths are played out. Titanic was a musical that ran on Broadway just before James Cameron's film came out.

Chichester Festival Theatre's main stage is currently undergoing building works so a large temporary tent-like structure has been built outside - surely the perfect setting for a production of Barnum. Cameron Mackintosh co-produces the story of the extraordinary American showman.Frances Ha is a new film co-scripted by its star, Greta Gerwig, and directed by Noah Baumbach. It's a funny and touching coming-of-age story for Frances, a 27-year-old living in New York who can't quite bring herself to do anything or leave anywhere.Alissa Nutting's debut novel Tampa has attracted attention for its explicit description of a relationship between a female teacher and her 14-year-old pupil. Based on a true story, does it offer an insightful take on what happens when a woman does such a thing?The Mill is a new drama set in the Industrial Revolution by John Fay aiming to bring the history of Cheshire's Quarry Mill to life. It's on Channel 4 and takes true stories of some of the children who worked there and the writer hope

Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike star in the film The World's End, the last of the so-called Cornetto Trilogy following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, directed by Edgar Wright. Can Gary King make it through the pub crawl he failed to finish as a teenager in his home town of Newton Haven?Joe Wright directs Chiwetel Ejiofor in A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic, a powerful political play by Aime Cesaire charting the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba in the early days of Congolese independence.Rachel Joyce's novel Perfect tells the story of Byron, an 11-year-old boy who becomes deeply troubled by the prospect of two seconds needing to be added to time in the year 1972. Can it match the success of her debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry?A major retrospective and consideration of the ethos of the architect Richard Rogers: Inside Out is at the Royal Academy in Burlington Gardens, London - the title reflects his architectural style, putting the inner workings of a building on the outside, as he did in

Jane Campion's Top of the Lake comes to BBC2 starring Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men fame - here playing a detective investigating what's happening to a 12-year-old girl in a small New Zealand community. Also starring Holly Hunter and Peter Mullan and with influences from David Lynch to The Killing, will it hold UK audiences in its grip? The Spanish silent black and white film Blancanieves has been winning great acclaim for its intensity and beauty. Pablo Berger's film is a surreal take on the Snow White story. After The Artist, will the appetite for silent films continue? Untangling the Web is Aleks Krotoski's book taking a look at how the new technology has influenced our lives, from our sense of self to how we interact with others. Circle Mirror Transformation is an award-winning play by Annie Baker first performed off Broadway. It's now given a production starring Imelda Staunton and Toby Jones at the Rose Lipman Building in Haggerston, London as part of the Royal Court Theatre's Local project.And Club to Catw

Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston star in a much-anticipated production of Macbeth at the Manchester International Festival. The venue has been kept from ticket holders until almost the last moment... will the production live up to the expectation?Also from the Festival, intense music meets powerful documentary and extraordinary visuals in Massive Attack v Adam Curtis. And do it 2013: an art exhibition in which instructions - some to be done there in the gallery, some to be carried out later at home, some active, some philosophical - are given to participants.Ben Wheatley's new film A Field in England, set in the English Civil War and starring Reece Shearsmith, blends history, horror and humour ultimately to defy categorisation. It has a groundbreaking simultaneous cinema and home viewing release.And Harry Eyres' new book Horace and Me: Eyres' memoir of sorts that also reveals the Roman poet Horace's insight into life - still offering illumination in our own times.Joining Tom Sutcliffe to review are the poet

Sam Mendes' production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been years in the making and had to be juggled with his Skyfall directing duties. Now at last the musical has arrived at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with Douglas Hodge taking the role of Willy Wonka.Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life at Tate Britain is something of a response to critics in recent years who have suggested that the gallery should show more of the Lowrys it owns. He's a painter who divides art lovers: some say he's an underrated genius who's dismissed because he depicts the Northern working classes; others that his paintings lack depth. What kind of case does this exhibition make for him?Stories We Tell is a film made by the Canadian actress and director Sarah Polley about her mother Diane. Talking to different members of her family she uncovers an extraordinary story about her own birth. Using fake Super 8 footage as well as real, the film includes reconstructions of the past as well as interview in the present.Another documen

Conor McPherson's new play The Night Alive opens at the Donmar Warehouse, months after his extraordinarily successful work The Weir - written when he was only 26 - was revived there. The play reunites McPherson with Jim Norton and Ciarán Hinds.Before Midnight is the latest in Richard Linklater's sequence of films charting the relationship between Jesse and Celine - in the form of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Formerly it's been will they-won't they; now they have, but can their relationship survive for the long term? And do we stay with them on the emotional ride through their lives?Memory Palace is an exhibition at the V&A of artists' work inspired by a novella by Hari Kunzru. It imagines a dystopian future in which one man tries desperately to piece together what he remembers before it is lost.Phil Spector is a television film scripted and directed by David Mamet which describes itself as a work of fiction, but includes many characters and events from the real-life trial of the music producer. Al Pacino

The Amen Corner starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste has been lifting the roof off the National Theatre according to early audiences, thanks partly to the participation of the London Community Gospel Choir. An early James Baldwin play, Rufus Norris' production looks at the lives of men and women trapped in poverty and lack of opportunity, and extracts powerful drama from it.Joss Whedon had a week off at the end of shooting The Avengers - rather than have a break, he made another film with a group of friends. The result is Much Ado About Nothing - does its sparky charm capture the flavour of classic romantic comedies, as the director hopes?Neil Gaiman has a huge international following and is well known to the Radio 4 audience thanks to the recent dramatisation of Neverwhere. Now he has a new adult novel out, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which he says is a story of childhood, memory, magic and the power of stories.The Hayward Gallery in London is offering an Alternative Guide to the Universe - an art exhibitio

Steven Soderbergh's film Behind the Candelabra tells the story of flamboyant piano star Liberace and his five-year relationship with a young lover, Scott Thorson: Michael Douglas plays Liberace and Matt Damon Thorson. It failed to find a distributor in the US until HBO backed it but was then selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Is there substance under the sequins?Chagall: Modern Master at Tate Liverpool is a major new exhibition which takes an early decade in the artist's life, 1911-22. It was a time during which he travelled to Paris and married his childhood sweetheart and gives a opportunity to witness the impact of movements such as Cubism and Orphism in his work.Strange Interlude won Eugene O'Neill the Pulitzer Prize but its 5 hour running time and its experimental asides to the audience mean that it isn't performed as often as some of his other work. With abortion, mental illness and adultery at its heart, will its dramatic impact resonate in this new shortened version at the National Thea

Tom Sutcliffe and guests, Ellah Allfrey, Misha Glenny and Kevin Jackson, discuss the cultural highlights of the week including the £27m Mary Rose Museum opening in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard and David Mamet's RaceIn the UK premiere of David Mamet's play, "Race," starring Jasper Britton and Clarke Peters - known to television audiences from "The Wire" - Mamet sets out to write a play which explores racial tension. Mamet himself says, "Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near impossible to tell the truth." A playwright who likes to shock, most famous for his Pullitzer Prize winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, how close does he get to providing a truthful analysis in this play which explores one of contemporary society's most controversial themes, both in the UK and in the US.The new £27 million Mary Rose Museum opens in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard, showcasing the Tudor ship in a unique hot box. The Mary Rose is the only sixteenth century warship on display anywhere in the world, and the museum disp

The acclaimed US novelist James Salter is often described as "the writer's writer". He's now written his first novel in 30 years, at the age of 87: All That Is. Will his exquisite prose work for readers as well as writers?Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar has just won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama in America. A play about ambition, culture and faith set in New York, its topicality is undeniable. Now it opens at the Bush Theatre in London with Hari Dhillon and Kirsty Bushell.Michael Landy has been associate artist at the National Gallery for two years. His new exhibition of extraordinary kinetic sculptures of saints, Saints Alive, has been inspired by what he's seen there.The Iraq War is a series of 3 films made by Norma Percy and Brian Lapping. As before in their work, they've managed to persuade nearly all of the major players in the conflict to talk on camera, often sharing thoughts for the first time.And Something in the Air is the director Olivier Assayas' film set in the early 70s in the aftermath of what hap

Baz Luhrmann's long-awaited The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan hits the 3D screens promising a great party. F Scott Fitzgerald's book has had a troubled history in film... will Luhrmann be the one to make it work?Propaganda: Power and Persuasion at the British Library is a major and thought-provoking new exhibition that brings together wartime material alongside public health messages, banknotes and social media. Does it make a convincing argument about the definition of propaganda?Up the Women (BBC4) and Psychobitches (Sky Arts) are two new comedy shows highlighting women performers and writers; both star Rebecca Front. The number of women featuring in comedy has been the subject of scrutiny in recent years. How funny are these series?The Round House by Louise Erdrich was the winner of the US National Book Award 2012. It's the story of Joe who lives on a North Dakota reservation. His mother is brutally raped and the book considers the aftermath of that attack, highlighting the difficu

John Simm and Simon Russell Beale star in a new production of Harold Pinter's The Hothouse at the Trafalgar Studios in London. When Pinter first wrote the play in the fifties, he put it in a drawer and pronounced it useless. Was he wrong?Mira Nair's film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, based on Mohsin Hamid's Booker-nominated novel, stars Riz Ahmed as Changez, who finds his loyalty questioned and torn post 9/11.Terry Eagleton is one of the best-known literary theorists in the world. His new book is How to Read Literature. Will it enhance the reading experience?Mud, written by Jeff Nichols and starring Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes film festival. It's a coming-of-age movie set on the banks of the Mississippi.And The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson, is a tense search for a serial killer set in Belfast, beginning on BBC2 next week.Joining Tom Sutcliffe are Professor John Mullan and the writers Michael Arditti and Aminatta Forna.Producer: Sarah Joh

Pedro Almodovar's new film I'm So Excited! is a sky-high romp with The Pointer Sisters on the soundtrack but its plane stuck in mid-air is also a metaphor for Spain caught in economic crisis.Richard Eyre's production of The Pajama Game comes to Chichester with Joanna Riding and Hadley Fraser; a triumph on Broadway in 1954, the film version with Doris Day wasn't a critical success. Can a musical based on industrial relations in a nightwear factory prove zingy and uplifting?Lionel Shriver has turned her attention to obesity in the West in Big Brother. It's the story of a woman who tries to save her overweight brother from his own path of self-destruction.The first major solo exhibition in the UK of US artist Ellen Gallagher's work, Ellen Gallagher: AxME, opens at Tate Modern, featuring funny and challenging images from black cultural history.And US series Hannibal, created by Bryan Fuller, is about to begin on Sky Living... Hannibal Lecter is back. Fuller says the violence in the show is deliberately heightened

Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear star in the long-awaited production of Othello at the National Theatre, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Do the talent and charisma of its leads and a striking setting in a modern-day military conflict add up to the great theatrical event the audience is hoping for?Paul Raymond was a strip club and soft porn tycoon who became the richest man in Britain but he couldn't save his daughter Debbie from a drug-fuelled lifestyle and early death. Steve Coogan plays Raymond in Michael Winterbottom's new film The Look of Love and Imogen Poots plays his daughter, with support from Anna Friel and Tamsin Egerton. How illuminating is this biopic about his life and times?Vicious is a new sitcom on ITV starring two Sirs: Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen. Frances de la Tour features too in the show which is written by Gary Janetti, who's written for Will & Grace and Family Guy, and is co-created by Mark Ravenhill.New Order: British Art Today at the Saatchi Gallery showcases 17 artists who might com

John le Carré's new novel A Delicate Truth centres on the aftermath of a counter-terror operation codenamed Wildlife which takes place in Gibraltar. It raises difficult moral and emotional territory for all involved and is described as one of le Carré's most personal novels for many years.Promised Land is set in rural America and centres on whether a community will say yes to fracking when a big corporation arrives to try to buy up their land. Matt Damon and Frances McDormand star; Gus van Sant directs.Ben Elton's first sitcom for 8 years is The Wright Way, set in the Health and Safety department of a local council and starring David Haig. Will it repeat the success of The Thin Blue Line?Howard Brenton's new play focuses on the arrest of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and was written at his request: #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei opens at the Hampstead Theatre.And Richard Patterson lost 4 paintings in the warehouse fire that destroyed many of the works in the Saatchi collection in 2004. Now he's re-created one of t

The Rijksmuseum, the Dutch national museum of art and history, has re-opened after ten years of rebuilding, renovation and restoration. The building houses the country's collections of fine and decorative arts.In the film A Place Beyond the Pines a motorcycle stunt rider (Ryan Gosling) turns to robbing banks as a way to provide for his lover (Eva Mendes) and their newborn child, a decision that puts him on a collision course with an ambitious rookie cop (Bradley Cooper) who is navigating a department ruled by a corrupt detective.Americanah is the title of the new novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the Orange Prize award winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun. Americanah tells a story of love and race centred around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.The musical Once, which, on Broadway, won eight Tony Awards, including Best New Musical, has now come to London. Once tells the story of an Irish guy and an Eastern European girl who

The film A Late Quartet features a beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet who receives a life changing diagnosis. The quartet's future now hangs in the balance as suppressed emotions, competing egos, and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. Levels of Life, Julian Barnes's new novella, blends history, fiction and memoir around love, grief and ballooning. It opens in the nineteenth century with balloonists, photographers, and the actress Sarah Bernhardt, whose adventures lead the story into an entirely personal account of the author's own great loss.A history of our love affair with tea features in Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea TV two-parter. She travels from the back streets of Calcutta to the bright lights of Shanghai to find out how one small plant united East and West, triggered wars and helped win them. Along the way she witnesses a world of chai wallahs, opium smokers and Assam tea-pickers, and asks how the cuppa became such an important part of B