Take an intergalactic blue hedgehog. Add a small-town sheriff and a never-ending battle with a maniacal villain. Then stir liberally and, believe it or not, you have the makings of a fun, if totally far-fetched, family film. With no expectations entering the cinema, I emerged thinking the filmmakers had thrown a little magic dust at…
If you crossed the 1990 comedy Home Alone with 2008’s thriller The Strangers, you’d have the makings of Better Watch Out, a rather surprising hybrid film. Better still, Home Alone meets Freddy Krueger at Christmas and a ho, ho, ho to you all. The film is set in a quiet American suburb on a snowy evening…
Under the pseudonym Dr Seuss, Theodore Geisel wrote over 40 books. He’s one of the best-selling authors of children’s books ever. Many of them have provided material for the screen. But live action versions of Seuss’s tales are a bit of a mess, as demonstrated by the awful 2003 film The Cat in the Hat…
A brass band is the connection between two fascinating and compelling unrelated personal stories that are part of a double bill known as Stardust + The Mission. First up is the tale of Victorian trumpeter and bandleader Col Brain, as told by his grandson Joel Carnegie. Joel, who was only two when Col died, chanced upon a…
– Churchill – Only in cinemas from 8 June 2017 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Transmission Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE CHURCHILL follows Britain’s iconic Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the days before the infamous D-Day landings in June 1944. As allied forces stand on the south…
While it mightn’t be 28 Days Later, Cargo is an Australian zombie film with bite. It’s a survival story with a difference. Andy (Martin Freeman) and Kay (Suzie Porter) are holed up on a houseboat with their one-year-old daughter Rosie, but are fast running out of food. Something is keeping Andy from going ashore. All…
The spy thriller Kompromat is a harrowing tale. Mathieu Roussel (Gilles Lellouche) has accepted a role as the director of French language institute Alliance Francaise in Russia. With his wife Alice (Elisa Lasowski) and their young daughter Rose (Olivia Malahieude), Mathieu has move from France to take up his new role. A caring and considerate…
The first book of Spanish author Juan Gómez-Jurado’s crime thriller trilogy, Red Queen (translated by Nick Caistor) demonstrates (if it needed demonstrating again) that English-speaking authors do not have a lock on any genre. That said, while absolutely referencing American serial killer and terrorist thrillers, the book series it seems to draw on most also…
Based on a true story, Firebird is a heartbreaking queer romance is set on an air base in Soviet controlled Estonia in the late 70s. It centres around a young soldier who embarks on a clandestine romance with a handsome fighter pilot. The film is based on the 1996 memoir written by Russian actor Segei…
Death becomes her. That’s a rather facetious reference to what kicks off the key character’s journey in this dramatic sci-fi horror – a re-imagining of the 1990 film of the same name. Five medical students are obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond the confines of life. They decide to undertake a daring and…
