It’s taken the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble until its 20th birthday year to finally mount a full production of arguably Shakespeare’s best-known play – Romeo & Juliet – and the outcome is most definitely worth the wait. Some would say that it’s hard to put a new twist on the oft-performed play, however the window dressing…
– Die in a Gunfight – Only in cinemas from 16 September 2021 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Rialto Distribution. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE In New York City, a young guy falls for the daughter of his father’s nemesis. A visually stunning movie with an exciting mix…
If you combine Captain Hook with a swarm of bees you have an idea of the antagonists in the horror-thriller Candyman. This 2021 version is based on the 1992 film of the same name written by Bernard Rose, and the short story The Forbidden by Clive Barker. Jordan Peele (Get Out), Win Rosenfeld and Nia…
In 2019, Ajay Chowdhury won the inaugural Harvill Secker/Bloody Scotland award aimed at discovering new crime writers from underrepresented communities. The Waiter, which appears at first to be two crime novels for the price of one, is Chowdhury’s debut crime novel (he had previously published a children’s book). And along the way it tips its…
The “wrong man” trope has a long cinematic history. It provided the basis for at least three Alfred Hitchcock classics – The 39 Steps, North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much. But it probably found its most intriguing form in the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, like The Conversation. Now director Ferdinando…
You don’t have to look hard to see the shadows looming over Lisa Joy’s Reminiscence. The film is essentially a re-working of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, with futuristic elements overlaying the noirish story. What Joy does with the tale is clever, but it never surpasses the original. Joy is better known as a screenwriter, notably for…
Natsuko Imamura’s novel The Woman in the Purple Skirt (translated from the Japanese by Lucy North), is a short, disquieting novel of obsession and loneliness. While the story is ostensibly about the eponymous woman, who never otherwise has a name, it is narrated by another woman who calls herself “the woman in the yellow cardigan”….
La Verónica centres on social media star and footballer’s wife Verónica (Mariana Di Girólamo). Her persistent efforts to procure a sponsorship deal could be derailed by re-surfaced murder charges concerning an infant. Director Leonardo Medel frames the entire film in medium close-up with Verónica’s face in the centre. This conceit hinges on the idea that…
Try as I really wanted to like Free Guy, I simply couldn’t … because it is one very silly movie. Two game developers – Millie (Jodie Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery) – invent a video game, but their boss, Antwan (Taika Waititi), steals the idea and exploits it to makes some serious coin. The basis of…
Liam Neeson’s new action thriller Ice Road is as a cross between reality series Ice Road Truckers and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s tense 1953 drama The Wages of Fear. If you’re not familiar, in The Wages of Fear, a group of men were hired to transport a shipment of volatile nitroglycerine through treacherous mountain passes and across…
