An inane American action horror comedy, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse [note: that’s the title, punctuation error included – Ed.] focuses upon three teenagers’ attempts to hold at bay a horde of zombies who have all but taken over their small town. The trio – Ben, Carter and Augie (played respectively by Tye Sheridan,…
One of several recent movies that play on nostalgia, Allied is a kind of Casablanca-lite for the undemanding viewer. Of course, director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) is an old hand at this type of film, but no amount of direction could have saved this film from its clunky – and at times incomprehensible – script….
Have you ever faked it? In the intriguing psychological thriller Who You Think I Am, a middle-aged woman creates a fake Facebook profile to lure a much younger man. He’s on the hook, and she’s besotted, but the pair never meet. She is teacher Claire Millaud (Juliette Binoche), who assumes the name of Clara. She…
The moral dilemma. Juicy. Delicious. Ideal for the stage. It is at the heart of Only Child, a new play from Leah Annetta. Divorced, uptight Veronika (Sarah Hallam) runs a wedding planning business. She lives with her mother Barbara (Michele Stayner) and her high achieving, 18-year-old daughter Anika (Alessandra Alessio). Anika, in her final year…
Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge has never seen the likes of it. Take the classic tale A Christmas Carol and put a Jewish twist on it. That is what writer Elise Esther Hearst has done with Phillip Kavanagh … and they have absolutely nailed this world premiere. Oy Humbug! Channel Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) on the US TV series…
Much like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Australian director Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia concentrates on a relatively minor character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But unlike Stoppard’s absurdist play, this film is basically a re-telling of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective – with a few twists thrown in. McCarthy directs from Semi Chellas’ screenplay, adapting Lisa Klein’s…
Gritty, grungy and wickedly pleasurable, Patti Cake$ is a downbeat rags tale about a blue collar rap wannabe. Patricia Dombrowski, a.k.a. Patti Cake$, a.k.a. Killa P. (Australian newcomer Danielle Macdonald), has had it with life in her rundown New Jersey hometown. At 23 she is ready to hit the road and make a play for…
What does it take to push a disenchanted young man over to the dark side? That question is answered in all its destructive ugliness in the incendiary play Blackpill: Redux. It is a reworked expansion of a production that captured the imagination at Theatre Works’ more experimental venue, The Explosives Factory, last April. Eli (Oliver…
Three generations of women come together for a heartfelt story in Love and Other Battles by Tess Woods: Jess, the free-spirited hippie, her reserved daughter Jamie, and Jamie’s vulnerable teenage daughter, CJ. This is the blurb: Three generations of women. Three heartbreaking choices. One unforgettable story. 1969: Free-spirited hippie Jess James has no intention of…
Australian rural crime author Adrian Hyland brought character Jesse Redpath from the red outback of Northern Territory to a tinder-dry Victorian country town in Canticle Creek. There was a raging bushfire in the climax to Canticle Creek but when Hyland’s follow-up The Wiregrass opens, the weather could not be more different. Jesse finds herself working…
