While the idea of interpretation and interpreters as a way of exploring culture has had a successful run in science fiction (cf: China Meiville’s Embassytown and Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life) and fantasy (RF Kuang’s Babel) it is not one that has yet been overused in the crime genre. And with authors always…
As a life lesson, Toni Erdmann is a unique and quirky offering that continually surprises. It contains the mundane and the outrageous. The constant is humour – at times great dollops of it, interspersed with a gentler comic scene or two. German dad Winfried (Peter Simonischek) doesn’t see much of his hard-working corporate consultant daughter…
An erotic psychological drama starring Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson, A Bigger Splash is a loose remake of Jacques Deray’s seductive 1969 film called La Picerne, which starred Alain Delon. Director Luca Guadagnino (better known for the gorgeous and visually sumptuous I Am Love) and writer David Kajganich (the dire Nicole Kidman sci-fi…
Original homespun (literally) physical comedy, The Beaks: Stickybeak is a clever and creative look at everyday life in suburbia. It is the domain of four excellent exponents that turn the mundane into something special. I speak of Kimberley Twiner, Laura Trenerry, Patrick Dwyer and Jessie Ngaoi. They play a series of quick-change character roles that are repeated…
A harrowing and dramatic story based upon fact, Belinda Giblin gives the performance of her life in what could well be the role of her life. Blonde Poison is an award winning, singled handed play about beauty, treachery and the high price of survival. Stella Goldschlag (Giblin) was living illegally in war-torn Berlin when she…
If you’ve ever seen and enjoyed Baz Luhrmann’s kinetic Romeo + Juliet (1996), you’ll probably enjoy Die in a Gunfight. Like Luhrmann, director Collin Schiffli updates Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for a contemporary audience. Although the result is a mixed bag, Schiffli gets it mostly right. The film reminded me a lot of the recent…
In a cinema environment overcrowded with remakes, reboots, sequels and superhero movies, it’s a pleasant surprise to come across something that’s as unique and genuinely entertaining and as hard to define as Polite Society. This energetic and colourful hybrid of Bollywood films, fantasy, high school comedy, rom-com, martial arts drama and action-thriller has been compared…
Racism and lust are on the menu in the Malthouse Theatre’s production of Underground Railroad Game. The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early 19th Century. African-Americans used it to escape slavery in the South by travelling to free states and what’s now…
There is disconnect between three members of the one family, a husband, wife and daughter who live in regional Australia and are struggling. It is not as if they want it that way, but that is what they are living with. They speak about their thoughts and feelings. They dare to dream and live out…
Rouge your knees and dig your seamed stockings out, Chicago is back in town for an Australian tour. This revival of the Broadway classic features iconic Fosse choreography, slick costumes and a pared-back set that gives equal stage-space to a live 15-piece jazz orchestra playing Kander & Ebb’s memorable songs. To recap: In 1920s Chicago,…
