To the outside world she has the perfect life. She is CEO of her own company that is going places. She has a doting theatre director husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas) and two daughters, Isabel (Esther McGregor) and Nora (Vaughan Reilly). But she has a metaphorical itch that has long needed scratching. And in the most…
People and cultures collide in David Leitch’s literally fast-paced action thriller, Bullet Train. Leitch (Deadpool 2) uses his stylised but often profuse violence to great effect in this rollicking tale of intersecting characters and agendas. And while the film is hardly cerebral, I found myself swept along by it. Screenwriter Zak Olkewicz adapts Kôtarô Isaka’s…
A crucible is a vessel in which substances are heated to high temperatures; when impure elements are melted away, only the pure parts remain. Metaphorically speaking, it therefore represents the perfect titular description for American playwright Arthur Miller’s award-winning classic The Crucible, a play which was itself written as an extended metaphor of the hysteria…
Got a bit of free time and don’t want to get in too deep with your Netflix and chill? We have the series for you. I am Not Okay With This is a fresh teen drama that delivers a little extra on top of your classic high school revenge story. Don’t worry if you have…
Quentin Tarantino has an army of loyal fans – and maybe just as many detractors. He’s controversial and outspoken, but you can’t ignore him. So a new movie from the auteur is always going to spark interest. But will audiences embrace his sprawling movie-land epic Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood? The answer is: it…
Extremely contrived, but feel good entertainment, The Confirmation is a story about a divorced man, an alcoholic carpenter, who is struggling to get by and his intelligent and perceptive young son. Clive Owen plays the down-on-his luck Walt, whose God-fearing ex-wife Maria Bello has remarried. She and her new husband Matthew Modine head off to…
I pulled Disclaimer by Renee Knight from my to-review shelf, thinking it would be a good book to take on a five-hour flight to Sydney. I was wrong. I finished the book before I even left the house. It was that hard to put down. Here’s the blurb: What if you realized the book you were reading…
A road movie, but then on foot. A Walk in the Woods features two old-timers puffing like a steam locomotive while walking the Appalachian trail, a trip of approximately 3500 km in the USA. It’s a trip even young people fail to finish. But these two stubborn 70-year-olds won’t give in easily and are motivated to…
Quirky, comedic and endearing are three words to describe this charming independent film starring Jemaine Clement, from Flight of the Conchords. Clement plays Will Henry, a 40-year-old graphic novelist (he draws cartoons), a teacher at a school of visual arts and the father of twins. At the girls’ fifth birthday party, his seemingly picture-perfect Brooklyn…
Rebecca F Kuang is better known as fantasy author RF Kuang, responsible for the Asian-inspired Poppy Wars series and the alternate history Babel. Her latest novel, Yellowface is something else entirely – a takedown of the modern publishing industry and a scathing critique of social media as a mode of criticism review and attack. It…
