Food, sex and art are three of the key ingredients in Flux Gourmet. This is the latest bizarre cinematic concoction from British director Peter Strickland, who’s based in Hungary. This black comedy is an absurdist satire of the contemporary art world with its provocateurs, sycophantic backers and receptive audiences and the creative process itself. Over…
The Arab Film Festival offers a selection of some of the best contemporary cinema from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The Festival commences screenings from July 21 in Sydney. The opening night attraction is the romantic comedy Halal Love. We spoke to festival director Fadia Abboud about this year’s lineup of films. Last year the…
While watching Apollo 11, I felt immense pride in what Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and the entire NASA team managed to achieve 50 years ago – on 20 July 1969. The never-before-seen footage lifts the lid on exactly what happened from the final hours before take-off until the three astronauts returned safely to…
Going Down gives cultural identity a good old-fashioned pounding. A stellar lead performance provides the highlight of this 90-minute play (no interval). Hmong-Australian playwright Michele Lee (winner of the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Rice) provides the source material. Going Down is one for the “me” generation; the hedonists who would rebel against their past. The…
Set in Paris in the lead up to the French national day, Bastille Day is an action-thriller featuring British actor Idris Elba (Pacific Rim) as a rogue CIA agent. He plays Sean Briar, the agent tasked with trying to come to terms with what at first appearances could be a terrorist attack. An explosion kills…
Scream (2022-style) is a slasher movie that deals with other slasher movies and fans of slasher movies. Being familiar with the series that dates back to 1996 would undoubtedly aid understanding, but it’s not mandatory. I, for instance, hadn’t seen the four Scream films before this one and yet followed the story line. Ghostface is…
With a highly-demanding, entirely sung bed, Falsettos is hard work. The show was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, for its original Broadway production in 1992 and claimed two (for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score). The story centres around a dysfunctional Jewish family. Marvin married Trina and they had…
Directed by Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines) and starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, The Light Between Oceans is a beautiful looking, heartbreaking story about love and sacrifice. It is based upon the bestselling Australian book by M.L. Stedman, her first novel. Stedman’s novel became somewhat of a literary sensation upon its publication…
Writer John Hughes kicked off National Lampoon’s Vacation series with Chevy Chase playing the bumbling Clark Griswold and Beverly D’Angelo his ever-patient wife Ellen in 1983. Then they turned out European Vacation two years later and Christmas Vacation in 1989. Now, those hideous adventures at America’s favourite family fun park, Walley World, come back to…
British author Francis Spufford travels to America in 1922 for his latest novel, Cahokia Jazz, but it is not an America that readers will know. The alternative world of Cahokia Jazz is one in which smallpox did not decimate the indigenous population of the North America. As a result, when European settlers started to arrive…
