Conclave – movie review
Subterfuge and tension abound in the compelling papal thriller Conclave. The Pope has died and…
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen (Arts Centre Melbourne) – theatre review
In a comic tour de force, Samuel Barnett has the audience in the palms of his hands. We hang on his every word, as he changes tack, time and again. It is a triumphant monologue, written by Marcelo Dos Santos and directed by Matthew Xia. The said performer, who assumes multiple character voices with aplomb,…
Conclave – movie review
Subterfuge and tension abound in the compelling papal thriller Conclave. The Pope has died and cardinals have been summoned from around the world to elect his successor. The man charged with the responsibility of seeing the process through to finality is the College of Cardinals dean, Brit Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes). Of late, he has…
Bearded (Theatre Works) – musical theatre review
Fear of coming out and the judgment associated with doing so are the subject of a new musical, focusing on the LGBTQIA+ community. A cast of 21 sings and shimmies its way through 16 numbers, including a reprise, as the story surrounding the final days of a political campaign unfold. It is 2017, at the…
Legends in Concert (The Palms at Crown) – music theatre review
This all singing, all dancing, hit song fest just gets better and better, year after year. What a show! What a production! Elvis may have officially left the building, but Bill Cherry, for one, does a mighty job of looking and sounding like The King, who would have turned 90 this week. And he’s up…
Disturbance Trip (High Rise) – music review
“This fuzzed-out live set from 1992 documents High Rise at their noise-soaked best.” Album Overview: Even though they are one of the most legendary bands of the 90s Japanese psychedelic underground scene, High Rise have a fairly small body of work, and until recently it’s been hard to get a hold of their records. The…
Top Ten Books of 2024 – book reviews
Percival Everett’s James, a reimagining and recontextualising of Huckleberry Finn is a masterpiece. Satirical, cutting, compassionate, but also in many ways reverential to the original text. Francis Spufford delivers an amazing alternate history crime novel in Cahokia Jazz. Noir detective styling allows an exploration of a richly imagined alternate America of the 1920s with a…
School of Rock The Musical – musical theatre review
It’s lively. It’s cheery. It upends political correctness. In fact, it is the perfect holiday treat. I speak of School of Rock The Musical, featuring the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Glenn Slater and book by Julian Fellowes. Based on the 2003 film, which was a hit for Jack Black, who played…
Paddington in Peru – movie review
Paddington (the voice of Ben Whishaw) gets back to his roots in a rollicking adventure with the Brown family in Paddington in Peru. The intelligent bear remains living comfortably with the clan, although there is now little connection between the parents and their two children. Judy (Madeleine Harris) is applying for university entrance and mum…
Nosferatu – movie review
Atmospheric, Nosferatu puts the bite on an impressionable youngster, who carries her commitment to Dracula into her marriage, with terrifying consequences. Writer and director Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse) is at the helm of this supernatural horror film. He was inspired by Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) and by the screenplay for Nosferatu: A Symphony of…
Top movies of 2024
Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash Despite some dire rumblings, the Australian cinema scene posted a respectable 2024. According to Screen Australia, overall attendances showed a small rise of around 200,000 on 2023 – from 57.9 million to 58.1 million. The gross box office however grew about 5%, from $940 million to $985 million. This…
