A family is traumatised by the tragic death of a child in Vaughn Stein’s Every Breath You Take. Philip (Casey Affleck) is a psychiatrist and lecturer, his wife Grace (Michelle Monaghan) a real estate agent. They have a young son, Evan (Brenden Sunderland) and he has a senior school age daughter, Lucy (India Eisley) –…
Four disparate individuals enter a twilight zone. No, that’s not the starting point for a gag. In fact, far from it. Rather, it is the beginning of what could turn out to be a long journey back. Each of the quartet – strangers to one another – has attempted to take their own life by different methods…
Like the recent Judy (about the tragic Judy Garland), The United States vs Billie Holiday is a biopic featuring a talented but self-destructive singer who shone briefly and died too early. This film follows many of the familiar tropes of this rich sub-genre. The product of a turbulent childhood Billie Holiday was a jazz singer…
Brutality, cynicism and tongue-in-cheek humour mark Mortal Kombat – a video game franchise turned big screen fight night. The story thread begins with an ancient fight to the death. It is 1617 in Japan. A warrior and father of two carries a tattoo of a dragon. He confronts an opponent who can literally freeze people…
Polish author Kaja Malanowska wrote her third novel Fog (translated by Bill Johnson) as an experiment in attracting a broader readership through the crime genre. Her previous two novels, the autobiographical Drobne szaleństwa dnia codziennego (Small Madnesses of Everyday Life) in 2010, and Patrz na mnie, Klaro! (Look at Me, Klara!) in 2012 were literary…
In Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, Sam (Colin Firth) is a classical pianist, and his partner Tusker (Stanley Tucci) is a writer. Now middle-aged, the couple have been together for decades. They know how to press each other’s buttons, but are still very much in love. One day they decide to dust off the old camper van…
Raja (Mariya Belkin) and Victor Frankel (Vladimir Friedman), a couple in their 60s, were the unsung heroes of Russian cinema. For several decades they had dubbed Hollywood epics into Russian for cinema audiences. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the couple left Russia and migrated to Israel. But like thousands of…
Power and control shift constantly in the drama The Cane, which is set in England. On the verge of retirement after 45 years in the job, Edward (Dion Mills) is a deputy school head. It is Sunday and his wife, Maureen (Caroline Lee) – who also used to be a teacher – has been busily preparing for his…
Circa Contemporary Circus has teamed with Aardman Studio to bring to life Shaun, the sheep who has been creating mischief and much mirth with his animal friends since 2007. I haven’t watched the original television series, but I have seen the two Shaun the Sheep movies – the first of which was released in 2015 and…
A whodunnit like you have never seen. That is the domain of three hapless private investigators out to solve a murder mystery. Film noir blended with slapstick, burlesque and circus, Dumtectives is highly creative, very clever, decidedly funny and deliciously rude. Much is performed with a minimum of dialogue, save for a few well worded musical numbers,…
