Rarely does a production come along that deserves the tag of ‘landmark’. In The Dismissal, now on at the Seymour Centre in Sydney, a new standard of Australian devised and created theatre has arrived. Put simply, it’s non-stop enjoyment! Politics may not be everyone’s cup of tea. And the events of 11 November 1975 still…
Post 9-11 it’s hard to think that there hasn’t been speculation about the next shock and awe campaign. I bet nobody thought there’d be an Australian, rough and tumble ex-commercial pilot, come spy at the centre of it all. The theory that Michael McGuire proposes in his thriller Flight Risk is, however, just believable enough…
Edward Ashton burst onto the science fiction scene with his ‘cloning meets first contact meets colonisation’ tale Mickey 7 (now the long-delayed movie Mickey 17 directed by Bong Joon Ho and starring Robert Pattinson). Mickey 7 was followed up by a less successful sequel Antimatter Blues. For his third book, Ashton does something different although…
The latest film from Brandon Cronenberg (son of legendary Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg) is a hybrid mix of sci-fi, horror and trenchant social commentary. He takes on class, wealth, privilege, artistic conceits, power, western decadence, guilt and the breakdown of civilization. It comes across like a fevered, darker and more transgressive variation on the recent…
Stuart Turton’s follow up to his mind bending science fiction crime genre mashing award winner The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle feels like another genre mash. The Devil and the Dark Water, set in the 17th Century on board an Indiaman headed from Batavia to Amsterdam, trucks not only in murders to be solved but…
French auteur Claire Denis (White Material) often explores fragile relationships in her films, looking at the tension between her characters and the corrosive effects of the lack of trust. Her latest film Both Sides of the Blade (known as Fire in some territories) explores a romantic triangle that spirals out of control and the emotional…
In Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, Sam (Colin Firth) is a classical pianist, and his partner Tusker (Stanley Tucci) is a writer. Now middle-aged, the couple have been together for decades. They know how to press each other’s buttons, but are still very much in love. One day they decide to dust off the old camper van…
It was Napoleon who, two hundred years ago, called China a sleeping giant and warned of the consequences when she awoke. Since the fall of communism after the death of Chairman Mao, China has emerged as an economic superpower and its influence and wealth is somehow seen by America as both a challenge and a…
If you want to see basically every space-movie trope collected in one neat package, Neil Burger’s highly derivative Voyagers could be it. This outwardly beautiful but shallow film tries hard, but ultimately falls short. The obvious starting point – as it often tends to be – is Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey. From…
Anger was my overwhelming emotion while watching this passionate, moving documentary about the barbaric Japanese practice of slaying defenceless whales in Antarctica. Four vessels of the marine wildlife conservation organisation Sea Shepherd set out on their ninth campaign to police the waters of the Antarctic. The location is the world’s only international whale sanctuary, where…
