The complexities of music, human relationships and health all get a working over in Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations, featuring Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn. In the early 19th Century, Anton Diabelli (Francis Greenslade) is a Viennese music publisher who composes a simple waltz and then invites that city’s leading composers to construct a single variation on…
Set in the English coastal town of Margate during the turbulent early 1980s, Empire of Light is a sensitive romantic drama. Hilary (Olivia Colman) is manager of the local cinema, the Empire, situated across from the beach. She gets along well with her fellow workers, who include projectionist Norman (Toby Jones) and the diplomatic Neil…
“It took five years for the film to get made,” says writer/director Brendan Cowell when talking about his feature film directorial debut Ruben Guthrie, which hits local cinemas on July 16. Brendan Cowell is a familiar face through his work on stage, on television with appearances in Love Your Way and through his film work,…
Oh, Canada is a confessional … a reckoning for a dying man. Writer and director Paul Schrader collaborated with actor Richard Gere 45 years ago on American Gigolo and it has taken them this long to reunite. Gere plays feted Canadian documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife at the end of his life, while Jacob Elordi is…
Artificial intelligence is in the spotlight in the sensitive science fiction drama After Yang. Yang (Justin H. Min) is a highly evolved bot bought as a culturally appropriate big brother for young Chinese adoptee Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). Mika is daughter to Jake (Colin Farrell), who runs a tea shop, and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), a…
It’s a story as old as time – a rising star burns bright but is cut down before achieving greatness. But Gary Hart’s fall – at least as depicted in Jason Reitman’s compelling The Front Runner – is more spectacular than most. Reitman has always been an astute observer of human nature. From his exploration…
St. Vincent’s eponymous 4th solo album, released in 2014, was easily her most accessible, while also delivering some pretty amazing songs packaged with electro-pop polish, and marked by her unique guitar playing. And it paid off big, landing her on dozens of “best of year” lists and winning that year’s Grammy for Best Alternative Album,…
Here we go again… More than ten years later and Mamma Mia! the Musical is still delighting fans. Despite the fact that many audiences members were born well after ABBA’s heyday, the pop anthems interwoven with a sweet story of love and family still generate smiles, whoops and applause after every performance. If you’re not…
The curious case of Otto Bloom? The rather quirky The Death and Life of Otto Bloom, which opened the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2016, seems like a local variation on David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the story of a man living his life in reverse. But unlike F Scott Fitzgerald’s creation,…
Can we escape a tortured past? That question is at the heart of the new drama Lyceum Highway, written by KV Adams and debuting at Meat Market Stables. The story starts with Maggie (Laura Iris Hill) wrapping herself in a brightly coloured crocheted blanket, admitting that she needs help. A blackness is overwhelming and consuming…
