My, couldn’t we do with more peace and love in the world now, arguably more than ever? That is why Songs from the Canyon (that is Laurel Canyon) carries even greater weight in 2025. The geographic reference is to a mountainous neighbourhood in the Hollywood Hills, an oasis of tranquillity and the home of counterculture…
Highly regarded Australian journalist Peter Greste was arrested by Egyptian authorities in Cairo on 29th December, 2013. He was working there for Al Jazeera as a two-to-three week Christmas cover for another journo. Greste was taken into custody alongside two other Al Jazeera reporters, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. Written by Peter Duncan, The Correspondent…
Shocking, racially motivated fires – arson – in Germany in 1993 resulted in the death of five Turks. More than 30 years later, Mehmet Akif Buyukatalay’s clever satire Hysteria – the centrepiece of the German Film Festival – fans the flames of discontent. Buyukatalay’s second film focuses on a movie being made about those real-life…
Set in Tehran, this Oscar nominated film for Best International Feature is a distressing, but compelling watch. For the past 20 years, lawyer Iman (Missagh Zareh) has worked for the authoritarian regime in Iran. Now, to the delight of his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), he has been rewarded with an upgraded position as an investigator…
Evil pervades in the fifth collaboration between writer and director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther, Fruitvale Station, Creed). We’re in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932, which is where identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return after seven years away. They were part of the Chicago gangland scene,…
An entertaining psychological thriller, Drop involves menacing trolling in the most unlikely of circumstances. Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a widow and psychologist with a five-year-old son, Toby (Jacob Robinson). She is still traumatised by the domestic violence she experienced, to which Toby was privy. Since her husband died, she hasn’t been on a date, but…
A young employee, Eli (Oliver Tapp), is sacked from his sales job for his intimidatory social media posts outside work to ex-girlfriend Carina. She subsequently reported him to his employer. He is angry and aggrieved and seeks her out for an explanation, but she keeps blocking him. Short of rent money and in a dark…
New York-bound Circus Oz bring daring feats of athleticism and strength, as well as laughter to Melbourne Town Hall. They enjoy clowning around to entertain an appreciative audience, but these artistes – short and tall – are seriously good at the circus arts. As someone who has been fortunate to see many circus shows, there…
With a powerful and pulsating music base, inspired by Berlin in the 1920s, Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett is slick and sizzling, ribald and rambunctious. It presents the finest of cabaret, circus acts and gender bending bravado, which gives the middle finger to convention with a cheeky grin. It is hip and happening and the crowd…
The concept is a game show-based pop quiz with a musical focus, overlaid with a manufactured relationship breakdown by the host, Uma Dobie. Of the former, think Britney and Bizet, Madonna and Mozart, Beyonce and Bellini. Of the latter, when calling for her assistant, being her lover, Trevor, he appears on video, brutally dumping her,…
