A cheeky gangster flick with attitude, Pixie is a bloody delight … and I do mean that literally. As the body count mounts, the star of the show, Pixie O’Brien (Olivia Cooke), bats her eyelids and schemes away. Pixie is the adopted daughter of a gangster who fell out with a bunch of gun-toting priests,…
The gritty and unrelenting Rosie is an affecting slice of life drama dealing with homelessness. With a severe shortage of rental properties and rising rents in Ireland, Rosie Davis (Sarah Greene) and her family have been left homeless and struggling. That happened after their landlord of seven years decided to sell the house they were…
How often do you hear about a good girl being attracted to a bad boy? So frequently, that it has all but become a truism. And that is the case in Lanford Wilson’s (who won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama) Burn This, which opened off Broadway in 1987. Set in the summer of 1983 against the…
Magnificent. Unquestionably, one of the most memorable shows you will ever see. Come From Away has retained all the humour, warmth and poignancy from when it first exploded onto the stage at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre in the middle of 2019. It has lost none of its ability to captivate an audience and hold each member spellbound. You laugh,…
A story of aspiration and achievement, the documentary Dawn Raid is a ripper. Dawn Raid Entertainment became an institution in New Zealand in the late ‘90s and noughties. Co-founded by a couple of young big guys from South Auckland who met at business school – but only completed about a year – and didn’t have…
A by-the-numbers revenge thriller, The Marksman centres around a Mexican cartel taking retribution against the family of a man who stole from them. That man – Uncle Carlos (Alfredo Quiroz) – knows he’s toast. With the cartel on his tail, he puts in a hurried call to his niece Rosa (Teresa Ruiz), telling her to…
Only The Animals surprised me. This remarkably well-constructed French mystery-thriller is three stories in one. Alice Farange (Laure Calamy) is in a loveless marriage in rural France. She’s having an affair with a strange loner named Joseph Bonnefille (Damien Bonnard), who barely tolerates her. Then Bonnefille seemingly callously ditches her giving no reason. There’s a…
Can plants talk? Some scientific research suggests they are sentient. A humorous new work by Karla Livingstone-Pardy and Zachary Sheridan (who are the writers and directors) takes this concept quite a few fanciful steps further. It concerns a young woman named Anne (Julia Kok) who was abandoned by her parents when she was a child in the…
We take our hearing for granted – until we can’t. Sound of Metal charts a deeply personal journey for a young man who’s going deaf. Heavily tattooed drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) has had a troubled past. Although four years clean, he previously took all manner of drugs, although his poison of choice was heroin. Then…
The creature-feature Shadow in the Cloud pays bizarre tribute to the bravery of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during World War II. It is 8 August 1943 and Flight Officer Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz) arrives at Auckland Allied Air Base. Her arm is in a sling, and she’s carting a brown leather bag. A…
