– Russian Resurrection Film Festival – Only in cinemas in November 2019 We have 5 double in-season passes. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* From big-budget action blockbusters, to razor sharp female-led comedy and edge-of-your seat thrillers, the Russian Resurrection Film Festival is proud to be returning down-under in 2019, bringing with it a smorgasbord of…
American remakes of European movies perhaps don’t have the best track record. But Bart Freundlich’s After the Wedding – a re-working of Susanne Bier’s 2006 Danish film of the same title* – mostly succeeds thanks to some clever writing, sharp direction and fine acting. The action is transplanted from Copenhagen to New York; but the…
We’ve all heard the adage “family first”, but this is ridiculous! Every time a person marries into this wealthy and secretive family … at midnight they have to play a game. That is a time-honoured tradition that can’t be broken. You see, this clan made its money off the back of board games. The new…
As a filmmaking culture, Australia has a lot of people with great ideas. But small budgets and stingy government funding mean sometimes those ideas aren’t fully realised. And sadly, Promised is one of those. Writer-director Nick Condi’s somewhat unconventional family drama is apparently based on a true story, but its heart gets lost in a…
While the recent Yesterday concentrated on the music of The Beatles; Blinded by the Light, focuses on a young man heavily influenced by The Boss, Bruce Springsteen. This one is inspired by fact, which isn’t the case with the other. Set in 1987, during the austere days of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, Blinded by the Light…
Three rich, rounded and nuanced performances bring to life a beautiful elegy about love, loss and yearning. The trio of women – in their 20s, 40s and 60s – live in Shetland (an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland). The youngest is Sylvia (Liza Meagher), who married her childhood sweetheart Paul in what was…
A mixture of performance art and theatre, unHOWsed is a laudable and creative look at homelessness from the perspective of eight mature-age women (aged 50 plus to 77) who have been there. It’s a piece open to interpretation, in which a great deal isn’t spelt out. Instead, it is left to the audience to fill…
The new season of The Purge has discarded the ‘endless night’ approach of season one and instead dips into the murk that is the aftermath of the Purge night events. It’s now all about dealing with what you did, what you may have seen and what you may have experienced during the twelve hours of…
Questions of morality and decency are at the heart of an outstanding comedic drama concerning the interactions of two night security guards and two police officers in New York. Jeff (Charles Grounds) was booted out of the navy after three years for dope smoking, something his father – who was a naval hero – was…
With Scrublands we had the bush, with Silver we have the sea. It will be interesting to see if Hammer’s next book is set in a grotty city capital, just to complete the trifecta of the Australian way of living. Silver is set in a coastal town that is struggling to stay relevant and facing…
