The insidious nature of grooming and the environment in which it needs to support its secretive and incremental processes is a topic rarely encountered in fiction. A common crime, yet rarely recognized as such by the victim or those who may witness its purposeful impact. Dark Vanessa is a fictional account of the circumstances in…
I Shot the Devil by Ruth McIver was the winner of the 2018 Richelle Prize for emerging writers. Entrants must submit the first three chapters of their work and a synopsis of the rest. While the prologue of this book is a little disjointed and confusing, just the first chapter has enough style and hooks…
In Ti West’s prequel to X (2022), Pearl (Mia Goth) is a star in the making – at least in her own head. It’s 1918, and the combination of WWI and the Spanish flu has many on tenterhooks. Pearl’s husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) – a good man – is off fighting. She lives on a…
Quiet intelligence, heartache and heartbreak are at the centre of the finely constructed contemporary drama, Manchester by the Sea. A restrained but compelling performance from Casey Affleck (Triple 9) and magnificent cinematography (the director of photography is Jody Lee Lipes) are its hallmarks. Manchester by the Sea tells the story of the Chandler family, a…
The House with A Clock in its Walls presents as a magic-carpet ride that goes from charming silly to just plain silly. Ten-year-old Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) moves in with his Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) after being orphaned. He discovers a hidden world of mystery in the curious mansion filled with clocks that is his new…
What eventually anchors the travellers of the world, or returns the travellers to their origins, is family. Kokomo is an assured debut novel that has much to say about how a chance connection can alter a person forever in ways that may not ever be noticed by anyone else. Mina’s life is just about to…
This queen of the desert is not a bus named Priscilla. Rather she is a modern thinking, fiercely independent, headstrong and intelligent British woman named Gertrude Bell who is apparently right up there with the famed T E Lawrence as an important figure in contemporary Arab history. An explorer, writer, archaeologist and traveller, she had…
A troubled man tries to get home for his mother’s funeral, but events conspire to delay his journey. The third feature film from Ari Aster (Hereditary) is a completely bonkers, surreal and bloated pitch-black absurdist comedy. Beau Is Afraid isn’t so much your typical horror film but rather more of a disturbing Kafkaesque nightmare full…
I loathed the past couple of films from revered auteur Terrence Malick, particularly his To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, with their frustratingly obtuse, indulgent and abstract experimental nature, existential meditations, impressionistic and unconventional approach to narrative, the mumbled and at times inaudible dialogue often delivered as internal monologues, the non-linear structure and fractured…
Ever since Taken (2008) reinvented Irish actor Liam Neeson as the premier action hero of cinema, he’s been churning out a succession of formulaic action films of varied quality for over a decade. And while they may have been lucrative and kept him in steady work, he has become pigeonholed and not given roles that…
