– Freeheld – Only in cinemas from 5 November 2015 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to eOne Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Based on an inspiring true story, Freeheld stars Julianne Moore and Ellen Page as a couple who, in their darkest hour, take on the biggest…
The early-20th Century struggle for women’s suffrage in Britain is given earnest, if somewhat pedestrian, treatment by director Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) in Suffragette. The film ticks a lot of boxes, but never quite elevates itself beyond many other solid British period dramas. The film’s release hasn’t been particularly well-timed. With the aftermath of the…
If you thought abusive communications were a recent thing, think again. Humans have unfortunately been sending horrible correspondence to each other basically since writing began. In the late 19th Century, these nasty notes were given a name: poison pen letters. Now they’ve largely disappeared – thanks to the Internet – replaced by the equally nasty…
What if the cartoon world turned into real life? Well, that’s what happens in Carlos Saldanha’s family-friendly fantasy Harold and the Purple Crayon. Harold (Zachary Levi) is the manifestation of the vivid imagination of writer Crockett Johnson. He’s a character in a book, who along with his buddies, Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya…
François Ozon is one of France’s leading filmmakers. His movies typically involve characters caught up in circumstances beyond their control, and often feature a clever twist (see, for example, his early Swimming Pool; or his more recent In the House). In By the Grace of God, Ozon strays from his usual style and into an…
Liam Gallagher’s third individual release, C’mon You Know, is easily his best solo record to date. The album is straight out of the Brit rock playbook and brings plenty of big anthems, sing along choruses, guitar rock and contains songs that are easily ready for the big stage. The other major difference that you will…
I think it was Billy Connolly, most likely during one of his numerous appearances on Parky, who I once heard use the phrase ‘shortbread tin view of Scotland’. In essence, the views of Scotland on shortbread tins were idealised and far from the reality of current day Scotland. Even today, if you find an image…
France’s nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars, Mustang is, not surprisingly, a riveting drama about five beautiful Turkish girls whose lives are turned to hell by age-old practices. It is the start of the summer. In a remote village in the north of Turkey, Lale and her four older sisters come…
Caribbean novelist Kevin Jared Hosein’s third novel Hungry Ghosts is set in Trinidad “sometime in the 1940s”. It follows a disparate group of connected characters who are united only in tragedy, as inter-generational traumas, illicit desire and class divides come into play. The book opens with four boys making a blood oath. Two of these,…
Inga Vesper’s debut novel The Long, Long Afternoon was a crime novel set in a perfect Los Angeles suburb in the 1950s. Vesper used that scenario to get beneath the façade of the perfect housewife and community of the time to reveal the racism, infidelity and drug use that sat beneath the surface. Her second…
