Angel of Mine is a slow-moving thriller about intuition and obsession. Inspired by real events, it follows divorced mother Lizzie Manning (Noomi Rapace). She’s emotionally fraught, as she battles for custody of her son and juggles a job as a sales rep for a cosmetics line. An encounter with Lola (Annika Whiteley) turns Lizzie’s life…
As you enter the theatre, all you can see is a steel-framed bed with a thin mattress and blanket. To the left is an old wooden chair; with an army-issued flask and food container, a pair of worn boots. Think the World War I. At nearly 18 years of age, Private Thomas “Tommo” Peaceful –…
In 2017 IT became the highest grossing horror movie of all time. Now the sequel IT Chapter 2 is here. It takes place 27 years after the events of the first film. You may recall that in IT, the seven members of the Losers’ Club took on and defeated the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård)….
How can you stand up to a bully? That’s the question at the centre of the crime drama Dogman. Timid dog groomer Marcello is separated from the mother of his young daughter, whom he adores … and vice versa. He lives in a barren, downtrodden Italian neighbourhood and gets on well with everyone. To make…
If provocative theatre and the art of confrontation are your thing, then have I got a play for you! Ulster American is wildly funny, but not for the feint-hearted. Playwright David Ireland takes aim at politics and the treatment of women. Jay Conway (Steve Bastoni) is an arrogant – but Oscar-winning – actor. The American…
If you don’t know the names Betty Burstall and Buzz Goodbody, I’m not sure you’ll be all that much wiser after seeing the play The Other Place. In Carlton in 1967 schoolteacher Burstall begins sketching plans for what will eventually become the iconic La Mama Theatre, the pre-eminent, independent home of new, experimental unseen Australian…
Last year Widows took the crime drama genre out of the hands of men and into those of women. The Kitchen tries to do the same thing but fails. We’re in New York City in 1978. The 20 blocks of pawnshops, porn palaces and dive bars between 8th Avenue and the Hudson River owned by…
You’ve next seen a family Christmas quite like this before. Australian Realness has each cast member playing dual roles – one bourgeois and the other uncouth. The time frame is Australia in the late ‘90s. The posh and haughty meet the rough and ready. And for one heavily pregnant family member, a dream quickly turns…
Gerard Butler is at it again … saving the leader of the free world from a secretive group intent on bringing him down. Angel Has Fallen is the third installment of the franchise that kicked off with Olympus Has Fallen in 2013, followed by London has Fallen three years later. Secret Service Agent Mike Banning…
A Midnight Visit is an immersive theatrical experience that combines dreams and whimsy with performance art. I spent a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours visiting three dozen specially decked out rooms inside an abandoned North Melbourne warehouse, dubbed the House of Usher. In the anteroom (representing a funeral home) an undertaker expresses his condolences for…
