Everything Korean seems to be raging right now – from Squid Game to K-Pop to Korean fried chicken and beer. But these things did not just appear overnight, And much like all of those examples, Korean crime fiction has been bubbling along in the background just waiting for the West to discover it. And there…
The Oscar-winning writer of the powerful film Juno, Diablo Cody, has crafted another beauty, this time the storyline behind the stellar musical Jagged Little Pill. The result, a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Like Juno, Jagged Little Pill is a comedic drama, with inclusion at its core. And who can go past the acerbic tongue…
It’s astonishing to think that Bob Dylan unwittingly worked on creating the music and lyrics for Girl from the North Country for more than four decades. For most of his career this vibrant and touching musical lay hidden within his many albums. Finally, in 2013, the creative genius of writer/director Conor McPherson imagined the plot,…
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…
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…
A pushy tennis dad or a man on a mission? Or both? You can be the judge with Reinaldo Marcus Green’s biopic King Richard. The film follows Richard Williams’ (Will Smith) journey to bring child tennis prodigies Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena Williams (Demi Singleton) to the world stage. The focus of the film is Richard’s…
The rush to write apocalyptic narratives doesn’t seem to be slowing. Inga Simpson channels her experiences in the recent Australian bushfires and a dash of pandemic and wraps them up into something worse in her latest book The Last Woman in the World. Just the title is enough of a tip off that things are…
What a woman! As the saying goes, they broke the mould when they created her, as shown in Matthew Walker’s documentary I’m Wanita. The Wanita of the title likes to be known as Australia’s queen of honky-tonk. In her late 40s, she’s autistic, a binge drinker, a smoker and a prostitute of 18 years who…
Zodiac mythology binds together 12 acts that are a fusion of circus, burlesque and dance in Oracle. It is the work of the team behind the award-winning Matador. Pulsating, toe-tapping, beats are the order of the day, along with a cavalcade of colourful and risqué costuming and athletic and acrobatic feats on and above the stage. Among…
A washed-up porn actor falls on hard times in Sean Baker’s new film, Red Rocket. It is 2016. Mikey (Simon Rex) turns up unannounced (and broke) at the dilapidated Texas home of his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mother Lil (Brenda Deiss). They want nothing to do with him. But he inveigles himself…
