Succinctly put, intriguing. “What if I said I am not what you think you see? I am the wolf.” These are among the first words spoken in this remarkable drama by South Korean playwright Hansol Jung. She was inspired to write Wolf Play after reading a news article about Facebook and Yahoo groups used by some parents…
Director Perry Lang offers a polished but polarizing work in An Interview with God. This Bible-bashing drama promised much, but ultimately delivered little. Covering the war in Afghanistan provided journalist Paul Asher (Brendon Thwaites) with some of the best stories of his young career. But that endeavor ended up costing him so much more than he…
Four actors … who break the fourth wall, track down a Melbourne man from a seven-minute rant obtained by a transcription service and give a potted history of the internet. That, in a nutshell, is the subject matter of the cleverly orchestrated play that puts the fear of God into you. In fact, humour and paranoia are…
Growing old isn’t for sissies, they say. Netflix’s excellent series The Kominsky Method proves the axiom; but does it in a remarkably empathetic way. Television legend Chuck Lorre is behind the series. Apart from the behemoth that is The Big Bang Theory, Lorre produced series like Roseanne, Dharma & Greg and Two & a Half…
The charming if rough-edged coming-of-age drama Scrapper taps into that unique British genre – the kitchen sink drama. Twelve-year-old Georgie (newcomer Lola Campbell) lives all alone in her apartment on a council housing estate outside London following the recent death of her mother. Self-reliant and resourceful, she pretends to social services that she is living…
Disney’s latest animated offering, Ralph Breaks the Internet, just lifted the roof on what’s possible. It’s not only extremely clever, but funny and engaging for the whole family. Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by Jon C. Reilly) and Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) have been best friends since their previous misadventures (six years ago in Wreck-It Ralph), hanging…
The charming Last Film Show centres around Samay (Bhavin Rabari), a cheeky and intelligent 9-year-old boy who lives in a remote, impoverished region of northern India. His father makes chai for the passengers of the trains that stop briefly at the local railway station. But after a visit to a cinema in a nearby town…
Carla Simón’s autobiographical feature debut, Summer 1993, is an evocative depiction of family lost and found. In (predictably) the summer of 1993, following the death of her parents, six-year old Frida (Laia Artigas) leaves bustling Barcelona for the Catalan provinces to live with her aunt (Bruna Cusí) and uncle (David Verdaguer). Country life is a…
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…
The latest installment in the Disney Villains spin-offs is a reprise of Maleficent – a twisted view of the Sleeping Beauty fable. Picking up where the original left off, Aurora (Elle Fanning) has been crowned Queen of the Moors and is living in the idyllic woods with her godmother Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), sidekick Diaval (Sam…
