A near death experience is revealed as an adventure story in MTC’s comedic drama Touching the Void, which kicks off its 2022 season. The vehicle is the wake in a Scottish pub for climber Joe (Joe Klocek). It is being orchestrated by his potty-mouthed sister Sarah (Lucy Durack). Attending are the two members of Joe’s party on the…
The latest film from Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki is Fallen Leaves, a deceptively simple and quirky rom-com about two-star crossed lovers in Helsinki. Two lonely down-on-their-luck, working class people meet at a karaoke bar. But they find the path to making a connection and maybe finding happiness is not smooth sailing. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is…
There is school spirit and then there is a school’s spirit. An horror story set in a US high school, The Gallows started life as a promotional trailer from a couple of newcomers. Twenty years after an accident caused the death of the lead actor during a play, students at the same small town institution…
Based on an epic book series by Stephen King, The Dark Tower lacks the gravitas I would have expected. The last gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), has been locked in an eternal battle with Walter O’Dim, also known as the man in black (Matthew McConaughey). Deschain is determined to prevent O’Dim from toppling the Dark…
For too long, stories of rebellious youth have tended to focus on boys in popular media. The troubled teenager, always misunderstood by parents and police, provides plenty of dramatic material for a good story. In Girls In Boys’ Cars, a female version of angst during those all too important adolescent years gets a thorough airing….
Next to Normal is one of the finest and most profound musicals to hit the stage. It is not for naught that it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, collecting – among others – the gong for Best Original Score. Diana Goodman (Queenie van de Zandt) is a wife…
The deeply personal coming-of-age tale Armageddon Time is loosely based on director James Gray’s own childhood experiences. And while the film explores many themes that have been typical of his canon, this one builds a strong emotional response from the audience. Gray’s counterpart here is Paul Graf (newcomer Banks Repeta) an eleven-year-old who is just…
Extremely contrived, but feel good entertainment, The Confirmation is a story about a divorced man, an alcoholic carpenter, who is struggling to get by and his intelligent and perceptive young son. Clive Owen plays the down-on-his luck Walt, whose God-fearing ex-wife Maria Bello has remarried. She and her new husband Matthew Modine head off to…
Rainbow’s End is a play by Jane Harrison, author of Stolen (1998). Both of these plays have become part of the school HSC syllabus. Rainbow’s End, written in 2005, is an evocation of the lives of three generations of First Nation’s women: the Yorta Yorta nation, in the 1950’s, in the northern Victoria region of…
I love the cover of this book … and inside does not disappoint. Crush, an anthology from MidnightSun Publishing, is a clever and diverse collection of stories showing people falling in love or lust, that pushes the romance genre out of the meet-cute, happy-ending boundaries. Simone Corletto, Amy T. Matthews, Jess M. Miller and Lynette…
