Risque business? Unfunny business? Long gone are the days when Vince Vaughn used to make energetic and enjoyable comedies. But recently the aggressive motor mouthed comic actor has recently made a number of largely unfunny, mediocre and embarrassingly dull comedies of late, with films like The Dilemma, Fred Claus, The Watch and Delivery Man to…
Sometimes we forget how we used to get the news. Before social media and before the internet. Even before television and cinema newsreels. There were…newspapers! And the holy grail for a journalist was for their story to dominate the front page. Now playing at the New Theatre, The Front Page is a fast-paced: story. Written…
A cavalcade of colour, movement and sound, EONARIUM Enlightenment is a sensory sensation with huge emotional resonance. Upstairs at the Immigration Museum is the perfect venue to immerse yourself in this spirited showcase that dazzles and delights. Antonio Vivaldi’s Baroque era masterpiece The Four Seasons provides the ultimate sound bed for an extraordinary half hour…
If you like your movies slow cooked, then The Souvenir may be one to consider. Not a lot happens and even when it does it takes its sweet time to get there. It took me the best part of a half hour or more to get into the picture. The Souvenir is set in the…
Make a wish and have it instantly granted – if only it were that easy. While the enticing idea forms the basis of the Disney animated feature Wish, things of course aren’t quite that straightforward. Magnifico (the voice of Chris Pine) has studied the magic of the world, and soon becomes a mighty sorcerer and…
Michael Robotham’s latest thriller, Close Your Eyes, is a brilliant nail biter that’s up there with the best in the contemporary field. Robotham has established himself as one of Australia’s top crime writers, and with this new release, he’s not jumping down from that pedestal any time soon. Set in the UK, the story begins when a mother…
Australia’s most prolific playwright has come out of retirement and has his finger on the pulse, addressing the cost-of-living crisis. The title of his play refers to the haves and have nots in society. When David Williamson was a boy in the 1950s, the difference in salary between a worker and a managing director rarely exceeded fivefold. Now…
Simon Kinberg is a hugely experienced screenwriter. He provided the scripts for Mr & Mrs Smith, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr version) and four movies in the X-Men series. So he knows his way around an action movie. After making his directorial debut with the flop X-Men: Dark Phoenix, he returns to the director’s chair…
The best storytelling comes from showing not telling… that is using action (or lack of, as the case may be) to reveal the emotions intended to be interpreted by the audience. Awareness of this is at the core of Hannah Belanszky’s mainstage debut work Don’t Ask What the Bird Look Like from its very outset…
The final film from director Roger Michell (whose drama The Duke is currently screening in cinemas), Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s) is a documentary about Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning British monarch. The documentary has been released to coincide with her platinum jubilee. While this may not be the definitive portrait of Queen Elizabeth…
