Loosely inspired by Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen, this melodrama updates the timeless story to a more contemporary setting along the US/Mexican border. The film centres around Carmen (Melissa Barrera) who is on the run from a ruthless Mexican cartel that killed her mother. While attempting to cross the border into the US Carmen is caught…
In 1962 French filmmaker and auteur Francois Truffaut flew to Hollywood and sat down with legendary director Alfred Hitchcock, the “master of suspense”, for a series of extensive interviews. A former film critic for the influential French journal Cahiers du Cinema, Truffaut had just begun to make his mark as a director himself with his…
– Youth – Only in cinemas from 26 December 2015 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to StudioCanal. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Fred (Michael Caine) and Mick (Harvey Keitel), two old friends, are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Fred, a composer…
Blasted is a remarkably insightful and deeply traumatising work from British playwright Sarah Kane, first performed in 1995. Ian (David Woods) is a broken, middle-aged journalist. He’s brought a much younger woman, Cate (Eloise Mignon) – who he’s known for some time – to an upmarket hotel room. But when she resists his advances, he…
Sharp Pins is the solo project of Kai Slater, best known as the frontman of the art-punk band Lifeguard. Slater started Sharp Pins to explore a new musical direction, different from Lifeguard’s intense, noisier style. Blending sounds and aesthetics from 1960s and 1970s rock with modern indie-pop sensibilities, this is an under-the-radar project with maximum…
Although I’ve seen a considerable number of episodes of the television series Star Trek at a young age, I’ve never felt like a real Trekkie. It fascinated me, but not to such an extent that I’d greet everyone in my daily life using a Vulcan salute. When the next generation Star Trek episodes started (with…
Regular readers will know how I long to visit Italy one day. For now, I have to content myself by travelling vicariously through books like Only in Naples by Katherine Wilson. Here’s the blurb: Katherine is fresh out of college when she arrives in Naples to intern at the US Consulate. There she meets handsome,…
Eleanor’s Secret by Caroline Beecham is part mystery, part love story, and proved just right for a couple nights’ winter reading. Here’s the blurb: London, 1942 When art school graduate, Eleanor Roy, is recruited by the War Artists Advisory Committee, she comes one step closer to realising her dream of becoming one of the few…
Growing old isn’t for sissies, they say. Netflix’s excellent series The Kominsky Method proves the axiom; but does it in a remarkably empathetic way. Television legend Chuck Lorre is behind the series. Apart from the behemoth that is The Big Bang Theory, Lorre produced series like Roseanne, Dharma & Greg and Two & a Half…
Rear Window meets The Girl on the Train in thriller The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn. A chilling psychological thriller about an agoraphobic woman convinced she’s seen a crime take place, the twisty-turny story brims with red herrings and doubts as it draws readers to a disturbing conclusion. Here’s the blurb: What did she see? It’s been ten…
