“I’m ashamed to say I knew nothing about him. I’d never heard of him,” confesses filmmaker Gillian Armstrong when talking about Orry-Kelly the Oscar winning costume designer who is the subject of her latest documentary film Women He’s Undressed. Kelly was born in the NSW town of Kiama in 1897, and made his reputation as…
The main event which steers the story in The Lovely Bones is horrific and spine-chilling. And yet, it is not a tale of fear. Quite the opposite. Hope, peace and solace are recurring themes. While not uplifting, the play provides an understanding of human failings and frailties. The Lovely Bones centres around 14-year-old Susie Salmon…
– A Dog’s Purpose – Only in cinemas from 4 May 2017 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to eOne Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Based on the beloved, bestselling novel by W. Bruce Cameron and from director Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules & The 100-Foot Journey), A…
Turning Agatha Christie murder mysteries into popular cinema is proving quite lucrative. So it’s not surprising that for the third time Kenneth Branagh has teamed with writer Michael Green to adapt Christie’s late (1969) novel Hallowe’en Party for A Haunting in Venice. The unsettling supernatural thriller follows the success of Murder on the Orient Express…
Soaring vocals and a bravura performance by Soprano Helena Dix are among the many highlights of Lucrezia Borgia, in which subterfuge and skulduggery abound. The melodramatic opera by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti hasn’t been performed in Melbourne for more than 30 years. Director Gary Abrahams has chosen to set the story in a world of power,…
Good Boys is Superbad with 11 year-olds. The film follows the misadventures of Max (fresh-faced Jacob Tremblay), a sixth-grader on the cusp of adolescence. He’s best friends with Thor (Brady Noon) and Lucas (Keith L Williams), who refer to themselves as “the beanbag boys” because they like sitting in bean bags. Max has been invited…
A playdate is shanghaied by a mysterious green presence in a beaut show for preschoolers, featuring many Disney Jr. favourites. Colour, music and movement make perfect bedfellows and so it is in this finely choreographed production. The enticing video backdrops are forever changing to match the storyline. In a five-minute warmup from energetic host DJ,…
This is the third feature length documentary from Oscar winning director Asif Kapadia, who previously gave us the superb, well-researched and insightful documentaries Amy (2015), about the late singer Amy Winehouse, and Senna (2010), about the late Formula 1 race driver Ayrton Senna, which were two of the finest documentaries of the past decade. For…
What makes life meaningful? Why do we do what we do? These large existential questions are dealt with humorously and poignantly in Jean Tong’s Do Not Pass Go. Flux (Ella Prince) walks into a new job needing the money for surgery, as they are not comfortable in their own skin. There they meet the strait-laced,…
Veronica Lando’s first novel The Whispering won the 2021 Banjo Prize for best unpublished manuscript. That book, set in the rainforests of Far North Queensland involved a man returning to a small rural town, and being caught up in a mystery involving two deaths seventeen years apart. Her follow up, The Drowning Girls, feels cut…
