I wonder if the central figure in Ghosthunter manipulated the director to give the best possible account of himself? The man is Jason King, a security guard. He’s also a part-time ghost hunter, a service for which he only receives petrol money. King had an onerous upbringing, in which abuse was commonplace. He comes across…
Along with Roger Donaldson’s 1977 political thriller Sleeping Dogs (which introduced us to Sam Neill), Geoff Murphy’s fast paced 1981 road movie Goodbye Pork Pie was one of the seminal films in putting New Zealand on the map and establishing the country’s modern film industry. Up until then the bulk of New Zealand productions were…
I’m a sucker for a good thriller, one full of false leads and an intricate plot that keeps me turning pages. So, is that what I got from Find Me by J.S. Monroe? Rosa committed suicide five years ago. But is she really gone? Because her boyfriend gets a cryptic email – apparently from Rosa….
Do you want to see a damning indictment of and expose on Scientology, the work of L. Ron Hubbard and the church’s Chairman of the Board, David Miscavige? Then here you have it. Following Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, his investigation into sex abuse in the Catholic church, Academy Award-winning director…
Lovers of classical ballet and dancing have been well served recently with a number of documentaries about famous choreographers and dancers, and there is the wonderful animated film Ballerina due to hit cinemas shortly. In the meantime we have this documentary about Ukraine-born ballet dancer Sergei Polunin, a prodigiously talented dancer who was at one…
Since premiering in 1995, Nick Enright’s Blackrock has found a place in both the Australian drama canon and on high school drama syllabuses nationwide. And, 20 years after its first presentation of the play, La Boite Theatre Company’s 2017 production shows just how sadly still relevant its social themes of mateship, misogyny and violence are….
Inspired by the tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen in 1837, director Rob Marshall’s (Mary Poppins Returns) take on The Little Mermaid is the story of an outsider who is embraced. Set in the 1830s in and around the waters of a fictitious Caribbean Island, Ariel (Halle Bailey) is a spirited mermaid with…
We have all had to wait a long time, but surprise, surprise, a new play from William Shakespeare is being performed at Sydney’s Genesian Theatre. A manuscript from the greatest English playwright of all time has been unearthed from a carpark in Leicester and acts as a prequel to many of his famous lifetime literary works….
In many countries, homelessness is a big problem. But the scale of the issue hasn’t led to a lot of films exploring it. Emilio Estevez – making his first feature since 2010 – tries to redress the imbalance at least a little with The Public. This ambitious and rather surprising film deftly delves into the…
On an Egyptian paddle steamer in the 1950s, heiress Kay Mostyn boards with her new husband Simon. Stalked by Simon’s ex-fiancée, and joined by a colourful cast of other passengers with dark motives, their honeymoon quickly becomes a nightmare, in this gripping murder mystery play from the Genesian Theatre Company. Death on the Nile is…
