A geriatric Mean Girls? The likeable romantic comedy Queen Bees is set in a retirement home is a moderately entertaining crowd-pleaser that will appeal to older audiences. Helen (played by Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn) is an independent 80 something widow living alone in the house that she and her husband built. But she is becoming…
– Europa! Europa! Film Festival – Sydney and Melbourne 4 – 27 February 2022 We have 2 double passes to a session at the Festival (excluding Opening Night) Note: tickets are digital *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Festival website HERE From international film festival favourites to star-studded blockbusters and subversive works helmed by Europe’s most…
Paul Howarth’s debut Only Killers and Thieves was a confronting Australian-western that had at its centre the massacre of an Aboriginal community in late 19th Century Queensland. The book focussed on two teenagers, Tommy and Billy McBride, brought into this violent world following the deaths of their parents and sister and realising too late that…
When vastly different publishing firms merge, sparks fly between two key employees. Insults fly. It’s six-shooters at 20 paces in the romantic comedy The Hating Game. The pair – Lucy Hutton (Lucy Hale) and Joshua Templeman (Austin Stowell) – sit opposite one another. He’s neat, cold and ambitious. She’s a people-pleaser. He calls her “shortcake”…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 28 January 2022. Piece of Me is the sophomore full length offering from Lady Wray. This is something of a homecoming for Nicole. Where her 2016 solo debut Queen Alone leaned more towards Soul and R&B with tinges of…
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a cheesy melodrama that plots the rise and fall of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. Jim (Andrew Garfield), with the help of loyal supporter Tammy (Jessica Chastain), created a 24/7 TV Ministry that was beamed to 20 million people in 56 countries. Jim also siphoned huge monetary pledges…
While The Wombats, who got their start in Liverpool, have absorbed British pop and indie rock influences from across the last 5 or 6 decades, the trio’s brand of clever power-pop suggests a cosmic connection to acts as diverse at Big Star, Material Issue, and The Fountains of Wayne, with hints of the dark humor…
Director Pedro Almodóvar and actor Penélope Cruz are a match made in heaven. The pair have been mainstays of Spanish cinema for decades, and their collaborations stretch back to Live Flesh (1997). Along the way, they’ve given audiences classics like All About My Mother (1999), Volver (2006) and Broken Embraces (2009). The latest Almodóvar film…
Nobel Prize winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has long been interested in Latin American politics and history. His 1969 novel Conversations in the Cathedral explored the dictatorship in Peru in the 1950s and his 2000 novel The Feast of the Goat is about the assassination of Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo. Which brings us all…
A survival story, Gold is set in an inhospitable desert in a not-too-distant dystopian future. This dark and visceral tale of greed, obsession, murder and madness comes from Anthony Hayes, an actor who has experience in directing films with dramas such as Ten Empty to his credit. Hayes co-wrote the sparse and stripped back script…
