The last time Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu took to the big screen, he carried the awards season with him as his wildly inventive Birdman swept all before it. Now he’s back with a more subdued but just as intriguing film in The Revenant. Where Birdman was style and movement, The Revenant is stillness and contemplation. And…
It is suspected that viewers of The Witcher will fall into two camps – fantasy readers/gamers, and Henry Cavill fans. You’re in for a sizeable treat if you happen to be both of these things. Sure, last Friday night you may have been one of those people who trudged off to see the latest Star…
The Coen brothers are steeped in the lore of Westerns. Even leaving aside their direct remake of True Grit, many of their films – I’m thinking Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn’t There and No Country for Old Men – tap into the tropes of the genre. So it makes a lot of sense that…
The title Murder Party has both sinister and fun overtones. In reality, what you get with this movie is a highly orchestrated game, in which death is the central component. Fear of being knocked off drives the action. Jeanne Chardon-Spitzer (Alice Pol) is a highly stressed, 35-year-old architect. While successful, she frets about each potential…
With strong autobiographical elements, this classic American play, which premiered in Chicago in 1944, is a piece of memory theatre. We are in St Louis in 1937 and Tom Wingfield (Tim Draxl) is both narrator and a central character. He is giving us his own nostalgic, emotional and subjective recollections of what went down. Inspired…
All-but a two hander, Cooped Up is an independent Australian movie about wrestling and infection starts out looking and feeling silly, but it undoubtedly grows on you. The stars of the piece are a buff young man who dreams of making it big in the US and an attractive doctor treating him for what could…
The Disney Theatrical Productions arm of the Disney Company have brought to Sydney a spectacle of old fashioned musical theatre in a contemporary (new fashioned) post-modern, popular culture version of a tale of Middle Eastern origin, Aladdin. Disney had made an animated version of the tale in 1992, and it became a most successful member…
Set in New York City in 1980, Armageddon Time is a coming-of-age story highlighting African-American and Jewish experiences. And it’s the vehicle to propel two bright young actors onto the world stage. Fourteen year-old Banks Repeta plays sixth-grader Paul Graff, a boy from a middle class Jewish family. Jaylin Webb, 16, portrays Johnny Davis, a…
When The Little Red Theatre Company first bought Lady Beatle to La Boite, the show soon became one of my favourites of 2017. And from the moment Naomi Price bursts forth with “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” it’s clear the tradition will continue with its return to Brisbane. Her appropriate dress of military-style jacket,…
The French tend to make fine films about food, family and fashion. While Haute Couture is set against the backdrop of the high-end fashion industry it primarily deals with complex mother/daughter relationships and class issues in contemporary France. Ester (Cesar winning actress Nathalie Baye) is the head seamstress at Dior Avenue Montaigne workshop in Paris,…
