Annabelle Comes Home is the third film featuring the sinister doll from the Conjuring universe. Gary Dauberman, the screenwriter of the Annabelle films, makes his directorial debut. Determined to keep Annabelle from wreaking more havoc, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) drive the possessed doll to the locked artifacts room in…
The fourth of the great Stephen Sondheim musicals that Victorian Opera has tackled since 2013, A Light Night Music remains as charming and funny as when it was first conceived nearly 50 years ago. With music and lyrics by Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler, the musical was inspired by the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film…
Malthouse Theatre’s production of Wake In Fright is no less harrowing than when the eponymous novel was first published in 1961. But the play will make far more sense if you have an appreciation of the story before you walk in. Otherwise, I think you might understand the pieces, but not the full play in…
Assigning human characteristics to animals invariably makes for cute viewing and that’s the case in the The Secret Life of Pets 2. This film follows the success of the original (2016) in which terrier Max (the voice of Patton Oswalt) had to learn to share his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper) with a new dog, a…
Yesterday is highly contrived and holds few surprises, but it’s still a heart-warming story. It’s also a showcase for the music of The Beatles. The basis of the tale is pure fantasy and from there it’s basically an adult fairy story. The film follows a decidedly ordinary guy thrust into most extraordinary circumstances. Humour, warmth…
Brilliant staging and puppetry mark the MTC’s Storm Boy; a theatrical adaptation of Colin Thiele’s 1964 novel of the same name. The book has also been turned into two feature films, one in 1976 and the other earlier this year. This version remains faithful to the original. Youngster (Conor Lowe) lives in isolation in a…
Puttin’ on the Ritz is an all-singing, all-dancing affair with the occasional spoken interlude. Six vocalists and 10 dancers from London’s West End take us back to the Golden Age of Hollywood for a couple of hours. We’re talking about music from names such as Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Al Jolson…
Wild Rose asks whether personal ambition should take a back seat to more immediate responsibilities. This feel-good story about a country music singer in the making features a stellar performance by Jessie Buckley in the lead role. In her early twenties, Rose-Lynn (Buckley) – single and with two kids under 9 – has just spent…
Men in Black: International is a disappointing resurrection of the franchise. Some elements of Men in Black I first fell in love with remain. But it features an overly convoluted storyline and too many awkward attempts at humour. It’s hard to believe that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones kicked off the series in 1997….
Mayhem abounds in Travesties. Set in Zurich in 1917, the play follows a British consular official, Henry Carr, who locks horns with a Dadaist, Tristan Tzara. Dadaism is an artistic movement that started around the First World War, meant to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world. Carr also falls for Cecily, a librarian with…
