Prince Hal (Timothee Chalamet) was never destined to become king of England. He was a playboy, drunkard and womaniser, and his tyrannical father Henry VI (Ben Mendelsohn) passed him over in the line of succession for his younger brother Thomas (Dean-Charles Chapman). But England at that time was a land in chaos, divided by years…
This comprehensive documentary about the rise and fall of the iconic and flamboyant fashion designer, simply known as Halston, is a tale of fashion, fame and hubris. Roy Halston Frowick was born in Iowa in the Depression era, but made his reputation in New York in the 70s. He started his career as a milliner….
It’s nearly forty years since Sylvester Stallone first shed blood as Rambo, the former Vietnam veteran and special services soldier who ran afoul of a redneck sheriff in the 1982 film First Blood. The character of Rambo was created by author David Morrell in the 1972 novel of the same name. The novel also explored…
Good Boys is Superbad with 11 year-olds. The film follows the misadventures of Max (fresh-faced Jacob Tremblay), a sixth-grader on the cusp of adolescence. He’s best friends with Thor (Brady Noon) and Lucas (Keith L Williams), who refer to themselves as “the beanbag boys” because they like sitting in bean bags. Max has been invited…
The late, great Aretha Franklin was affectionately known as “the Queen of Soul”. She was one of the biggest selling female artists an topped the charts with a string of number one hits like “Respect”, “Think”, and “Spanish Harlem”. But in 1972 she took the radical step of returning to her roots and recorded an…
The sophomore feature from Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), The Nightingale offers up horrors of a different kind. Set in Tasmania in 1825, the film is a bloody, brutal and unflinching tale of revenge that also addresses the savage history of colonial Australia, the systemic abuse and mistreatment of women and the indigenous population. It makes…
One of Bryan Brown’s early films was 1980’s Palm Beach, a low budget surfing movie set on the idyllic beaches of northern NSW. Nearly forty years on Brown returns to that eponymous location for this drama about a gathering that can be called The Big Chill – Australian Style. Secrets and lies, personal failings, regrets…
Jackie Chan is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. He’s known for his energetic and carefully choreographed fight scenes and for doing his own, often dangerous, stunts. But Hollywood hasn’t quite known how to handle him properly. Chan has found himself stuck in a number of formulaic lightweight action comedies like the…
This is the third feature length documentary from Oscar winning director Asif Kapadia, who previously gave us the superb, well-researched and insightful documentaries Amy (2015), about the late singer Amy Winehouse, and Senna (2010), about the late Formula 1 race driver Ayrton Senna, which were two of the finest documentaries of the past decade. For…
Ever since Jaws made us afraid to go into the water we’ve had any number of monster films featuring a variety of killer creatures, from sharks to killer whales to grizzly bears to rats, spiders, snakes, piranhas, and even crocodiles that all played on our fears of nature and predators. In 1980 we even had…
