A riotously fun, thoroughly entertaining musical for our new, enlightened times, & Juliet picks up Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet where it ended and kicks it up a gear. It does so after the Bard himself (Rob Mills) is challenged by his wife Anne Hathaway (Amy Lehpamer), who has suffered as second fiddle to his writing for…
You’re in for a treat of subversive circus at its finest when you see Lexicon at a specially constructed tent in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens (opposite the Shrine of Remembrance). Twelve accomplished performers produce the unexpected … and I couldn’t be more pleased. This isn’t the stuff of tired circus acts that have been done…
The Night Before is not your typical feel good Christmas Eve fable. Rather this R-rated comedy is an anti-Christmas movie and with its anarchic streak of humour is more in the same tone as the black comedy Bad Santa. However, this is also this year’s Christmas turkey, and what an unappealing and tasteless serving it…
A slow-moving but compelling drama set in the land of Lawrence of Arabia, this film’s origins are in Bedouin tradition. Theeb is specifically about a boy who, in order to survive, must become a man and live up to the name his father gave him. The year is 1916. While war rages in the Ottoman…
Teenagers have it tough. Physical and emotional changes can wreak havoc. So imagine how much harder it would be if your parents decided these changes were just “wrong” and the only solution was isolation and religion. One teenager has to face just that dilemma in The Miseducation of Cameron Post. This beautiful and moving film…
Emily Bitto won the Stella Prize in 2015 for her first novel The Strays. Her second, Wild Abandon, was worth the wait. Wild Abandon is a kind of coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of two very different sides of America (the book itself is divided into two sections, each titled ‘America’), both seen slightly…
There have been a lot of romantic comedies hitting our screens of late, and unfortunately most of them are either too formulaic, mean spirited or too raunchy. Which is why Man Up proves to be a nice surprise as it brings a fresh new take on the tired formula. The lively, witty and fast paced…
There have been a few films exploring the lives of genius mathematicians – from the Oscar winning A Beautiful Mind, a biopic about bipolar mathematician John Nash and his inner turmoil, through to The Imitation Game, a drama about Alan Turing, who helped crack Germany’s unbreakable Enigma Code thus turning the tide of WWII. Turing…
Somewhere in cinema land there’s a space in between Ghost World, Superbad, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. In that space, you’ll find Booksmart. Actor Olivia Wilde turns her hand to directing in this very funny but sharply observed teen comedy. It’s also – completely unexpectedly, one of the more empathetic films of…
At a time when millions of people around the world are streaming e-sports content every day, it’s not hard to imagine a possible future with the blood-sport insanity of Jason Lei Howden’s Guns Akimbo. Nerdy video game developer Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) is a little too fond of stirring things up on the internet with his…
