11 h. ago Ballad of a Small Player review – Colin Farrell seeks redemption in Edward Berger’s high

Debts, secrets and a cartoonish Tilda Swinton catch up with Farrell’s self-styled ‘Lord Doyle’ as he confronts his own destiny in a chance to win salvationThe vast emptiness of luxury hotels is part of the mystery and spectacle of Edward Berger’s intriguing if static and overwrought psychological drama-thriller; it is about a desperate chancer and gambling addict, faced with the metaphysical crisis of renewing or annulling his existence by staking everything on a single bet. Screenwriter Rowan Joffe adapts the 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne, whose title is ironic. He would not have these problems if he really was a small player. He is a big player and a big loser, although his smallness comes through in other ways.Colin Farrell plays a professional gambler who styles himself “Lord Doyle”, adrift in the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau, the Asian Vegas; he is a despised “gweilo” or foreign ghost. Farrell shows us a seedy guy with an outrageously spivvy moustache and a flop sweat, runn...

Sport

4 d. ago Ballad of a Small Player’s Colin Farrell and Edward Berger admit they have ‘terrible’ poker faces

Colin Farrell and Edward Berger admitted they would be “terrible” in a game of poker at the premiere for Ballad of a Small Player.

Events

5 d. ago Celebrities at the ‘Ballad of a Small Player’ London Film Festival Premiere

Celebrities at the ‘Ballad of a Small Player’ London Film Festival Premiere  Red Carpet Fashion Awards

Politics

5 d. ago Colin Farrell ‘lived in casino’ to play gambler in Ballad of a Small Player

Colin Farrell has revealed that he “lived in a casino” to get in character for his role as a gambler in Ballad of a Small Player.

Sport

5 d. ago ‘It’s like fencing with a close friend. Terrifying in a lovely way’: Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton on taking a gamble with their new drama

The actors star in Edward Berger’s woozy casino film Ballad of a Small Player. Amid the opulence of a Macau hotel, they talk risk, addiction and Fabergé eggsOn a humid morning in Macau, a blue-and-orange phoenix embellished with more than 60,000 flowers is hatching from an enormous pink Fabergé egg in the lobby of the Wynn Palace hotel. The haughty bird basks in the attention of onlookers as it rotates on a diamond-encrusted perch to the triumphant sound of clarions, before returning to its shell. Chancing upon this spectacle, you think to yourself, “How lucky that I was passing at that precise moment!” Stick around and you will be disabused of your sense of good fortune: the hatching occurs every 15 minutes without fail.It is summer 2024, and Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton are guests here while shooting Ballad of a Small Player, directed by Edward Berger (Conclave) and based on Lawrence Osborne’s clammy 2014 novel about ghosts, guilt and gambling. Farrell plays Brendan Reilly, an ...

Events

8 d. ago Ballad of a Small Player release date and cast as Colin Farrell unrecognisable in new trailer

Netflix fans area already predicting new thriller Ballad of a Small Player to be an awards winner.

Sport

4 w. ago A Big Bold Beautiful Journey review – Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell play the game of love

Giddy romantic fantasy sends its two commitment-phobe leads on a magical road trip through their pasts that may lead them back to loveKorean-American auteur Kogonada has until now been known for his intriguingly complex, cerebral essayistic movies, such as Columbus and After Yang, whose emotional content, though potent, isn’t immediately obvious. Now he has made the leap into a big, bold, primary-coloured romantic phantasmagoria, as if Chris Marker had remade The Umbrellas of Cherbourg for the American multiplex with two unfeasibly beautiful Hollywood stars. This is a musical without musical numbers (without its own musical numbers, anyway) and a romantic comedy mostly without comedy – an imbalance it shares with most romcoms in fact. The screenwriter is Seth Reiss, co-author of the (much chillier) drama The Menu, with Ralph Fiennes as a scary chef.What Kogonada and Reiss are offering is a likably, if obtusely uncynical, heart-on-sleeve wish-fulfilment spectacular, which gradually r...

Events