In May, Palace Cinemas will once again bring the best of American independent film to Australian screens with American Essentials. Twenty films will make their Australian premiere—many hot on the heels of their world premieres at A-list festivals around the world—as the three-week festival tours five cities, celebrating the latest indie treasures in narrative feature…
Talk about throwing the kitchen sink at a movie – it appears the filmmakers behind Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 have pulled together every cockamamie idea they could think of and left it there on screen for the world to see. The heart of the story is a familial relationship concerning a megalomaniacal father,…
From the outset we just know the contention in the action-crime thriller Free Fire is one set to explode and it will inevitably end badly. Suspicion, ego and, above all, greed stand in the way of a cadre of crims in Massachusetts in the late ‘70s. That they are on opposing sides is almost of…
If you ever wondered just how quirky and delusional (off the planet, in fact) billionaire recluse Howard Hughes was, after watching Rules Don’t Apply you will be in no two minds. Set in 1950s Hollywood, Rules Don’t Apply follows the burgeoning romance between aspiring actress Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) and her ambitious driver Frank Forbes…
Dour and affecting, The Innocents is a historical drama inspired by little known events that happened in Poland immediately after WWII. It concerns the story of nuns that were raped and thereby shamed by their so-called liberators, the Russians. Many of these God-fearing samaritans were knocked up as a result and they were instructed to…
Subtle is the key word in describing Things to Come; a sometimes tortuously slow-moving slice-of-life drama. Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) teaches philosophy at a college in Paris. She’s passionate about her work and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking to the next generation. Married with two grown up children, she devotes her spare time…
The word “embarrassment” is far too praiseworthy for Table 19, a decidedly unworthy cinematic offering. Just what were or weren’t the filmmakers thinking in compiling this mother-lode of tripe? Ex-maid of honour Eloise McGarry (Anna Kendrick) – having been relieved of her duties after being unceremoniously dumped by the best man via text – decided…
We’ve seen a number of films recently about elderly people behaving badly and refusing to go gently into that good night, although the nadir of this sub-genre would have to be last year’s awful Dirty Grandpa. We even had the British comedy Golden Years, in which an elderly couple, fed up with the way their…
A story within a story, set at the height of the Second World War, Their Finest has drama, pathos, humour and subtlety. With increasing numbers of men drafted to fight for their lives on the front line, bombs continued to drop relentlessly on London. Those left behind, made up predominantly of women, children and the…
After caning the majority of Australian releases recently, I am delighted to be able to sing the praises of the slow-burn thriller Berlin Syndrome. Unease permeates almost every scene. Clare (Teresa Palmer), a twenty-something Australian photojournalist, arrives in Germany on a sabbatical from work. She intends to photograph Soviet-designed architecture in the hope of publishing…
