A mind-numbing comedy for senior citizens, Never Too Late relies on fanciful nonsense to move the story forward. A voice-over by Jacqui Weaver as Norma McCarthy sets the scene. Norma once met a handsome soldier Jack Bronson (played as an elderly gent by James Cromwell) the day before he shipped out to Vietnam. If he’d…
In Curtis Vowell’s comedy Baby Done, outdoorsy Zoe (Rose Matafeo) works as an arborist, alongside her boyfriend Tim (Matthew Lewis). Theirs is a happy union. All their coupled-up friends seem to be having babies, but the thought of being tied down makes Zoe shudder. And then she discovers she’s pregnant. Shellshocked Zoe doesn’t tell Tim…
Liam Neeson brings his Taken persona to the lead role in the action-drama Honest Thief. He plays ex-marine, Tom, who went on to become a successful bank robber. Tom looted 12 small-town institutions of more than $9 million over eight years. But a year ago he stopped – because he met Annie (Katie Walsh), who…
Greta Thunberg is a piercingly direct and effective communicator and yet she’s a teenager and has Asperger’s syndrome. She’s both admired and loathed (more than that, belittled) by world leaders and is single-handedly responsible for a movement. The fascinating documentary I Am Greta plots her path from a lonely figure outside Stockholm’s parliament in 2018…
She, Grace (Annette Bening) is intelligent, strong willed, heavily opinionated, volatile and fearsome – a force of nature. He, Edward (Bill Nighy) is intelligent, introverted and averse to confrontation. He likes to be left in peace. Married for 29 years, both are unhappy. She wants to work through it, believing they are a couple for…
Savage is brutal, devastating, powerful. It features a war of attrition borne of a tyrannical upbringing in New Zealand told in three time-frames over 24 years. Savages is the name given to a patched-up gang started by a couple of cell mates from juvenile detention. But let’s go back a step, Danny – known in…
In New York, a crotchety, chain-smoking Chinese-American grandmother gets lucky after leaving a casino … and then all hell breaks loose. Sasie Sealy’s black comedy, Lucky Grandma, places granny in the middle of a turf war between rival gangs. It all starts when Lei Lei the Fortune Teller (Wai Ching Ho) tells Grandma (Tsai Chin)…
Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie) works hard – in a bar and at a mortuary – to keep her head above water and make something of herself. But, of course, the bills keep coming in. In 2004 it looked like the world was at her feet. That was when she won the title of Miss Juneteenth*…
Director Egor Abramenko delivers a creepy creature-feature with Sputnik. It starts with two cosmonauts planning to return to Earth, but quickly morphs into something else entirely. It’s 1983. After a Soviet space mission returns into barren Kazakhstan, the support team find one of the intrepid travellers hasn’t make it and the other – the commander…
Much ado about nothing; or a quirky film of substance? My strong inclination about On the Rocks is toward the former. Suspicion is a dangerous thing. Often it is realised. Sometimes it is not. It can drive a person crazy. Laura (Rashida Jones) is an author with a case of writer’s block. She’s married to…
