Paul Feig steps away from broad comedy and onto the darker side with A Simple Favour. This pulpy thriller certainly has Feig’s fingerprints on it, but it’s easily his most expressive film in ages – maybe ever. Of course, the film invites comparisons with the David Fincher’s wonderful Gone Girl. But A Simple Favour is…
In 1986 comedian Rodney Dangerfield went Back to School for one of his better comedies. Thirty years later, comic Melissa McCarthy goes back to school for the flat and largely lifeless Life of the Party . This is the third collaboration between McCarthy and her writer/director husband Ben Falcone. It follows the awful Tammy; and…
Superbly written by Jane e Thompson, Fierce is a beautiful nuanced play that highlights gender disparity in sports. I was riveted throughout. Suzie Flack is better than other female AFL footballers. She doesn’t want to play in the women’s league. Rather, she’s intent on competing against men. And she gets her chance to do so,…
Anne Frank’s story is a tragic but inspiring one and it is played out in dramatic fashion on stage. As Jews, when her Dutch family was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust, she was gifted a diary, which she wrote in religiously. It contained her innermost thoughts about those she was with and…
Ice Cube (22 Jump Street) and Kevin Hart (Get Hard) are back for a second dose of lowbrow comedy. In the original, which came out in early 2014, fast-talking security guard Ben Barber (Hart), newly accepted into the police academy, joined James Payton (Cube) – a taciturn, quick-tempered Atlanta police detective – in patrolling the…
All-but a two hander, Cooped Up is an independent Australian movie about wrestling and infection starts out looking and feeling silly, but it undoubtedly grows on you. The stars of the piece are a buff young man who dreams of making it big in the US and an attractive doctor treating him for what could…
Picking up the story three years after the events in Moana (2016), Moana 2 reunites Moana (voice of Auli‘i Cravalho) with demi-god Maui (Dwayne Johnson) on a new adventure. The first film was about Moana finding her identity. This one is about discovering and uniting different tribes in the islands to ensure the future of…
Dreaming of an Italian getaway? Want to go to Naples in particular? Then you’ll want to catch Paolo Sorrentino’s gorgeous but enigmatic new film, Parthenope (pronounced Par-then-o-pay). This sweeping story about the city and its residents hits many of Sorrentino’s trademark beats. And while it can be puzzling at times, I found myself falling into…
What a top actor, Robert De Niro. Most of the films in which he played the lead, became film classics. Memorable roles that will still impress in decades to come. From Taxi Driver to Goodfellas. From The Deer Hunter to Casino. Unforgettable masterpieces. The only thing De Niro should have avoided in all these years…
Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby) makes his directorial debut, has written and stars in this thought-provoking psychological thriller. It asks the question, what if someone you wronged long ago re-emerged in your life through a chance encounter? Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) are a married couple whose lives are going pretty much as…
