If 2020 was a shock to the movie-going system, 2021 was – in many ways – worse. Lockdowns, delays and uncertainty cruelled both the Australian and international film industries. Many studios deferred their biggest releases, hoping for smoother sailing ahead. As a result, it was no coincidence that the two biggest films at the box…
Last week we brought you a potted preview of this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. Now with the festival well and truly underway, our intrepid and bleary-eyed reviewer Greg King sorts through some of the highlights and not-so-high-lights of this year’s event. Force of Destiny Paul Cox is a perennial favourite of the Melbourne International…
A decade into their relationship with Bloodshot Records, Ha Ha Tonka release their 5th album of rootsy Mid-American college rock and Ozark mountain music. Formed in West Plains, Missouri, way at the bottom of the state almost to Arkansas, named for a state park in the Ozarks, bar-tested in the college town of Springfield, Ha…
Fans of Americana with a long enough memory, will remember The Jayhawks as one of the best bands of the mid-90’s, when albums like Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow the Green Grass thrived critically and commercially thanks to the strong songwriting and harmony vocals of Gary Louris and Mark Olson. “Blue” is perhaps the best…
Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie) works hard – in a bar and at a mortuary – to keep her head above water and make something of herself. But, of course, the bills keep coming in. In 2004 it looked like the world was at her feet. That was when she won the title of Miss Juneteenth*…
Life throws up real challenges for the 17-year-old daughter of a split home in the UK who aspires to run her own florist business. The one person play by Emma Dennis Edwards, inspired by the true story of Tottenham community leader Gina Moffatt, is unflinching. It doesn’t hold back. In patterned jeans and striking green…
Scott Hicks, the director and writer of the Academy Award winning movie Shine, had never heard of ‘Guadagnini’ before. I, too, wasn’t familiar with the term until I saw this movie, his latest as both director and cinematographer – a documentary. Hicks found out about Guadagnini in a conversation he had two years ago with…
I’m a sucker for twisty thrillers, and You Sent Me a Letter by Lucy Dawson proved to be exactly that. Here’s the blurb: At 2 a.m. on the morning of her fortieth birthday, Sophie wakes in the darkness of her bedroom – and finds a stranger watching her from the foot of her bed. The intruder…
Non-indigenous Australians have often had a rather fraught relationship with the landscape of this continent. On one hand, its “boundless plains” offered a sense of opportunity; a chance to control the environment. But the land is also sometimes perceived as a wild place that can never be controlled. This led to a pervading sense of…
– Submergence – Only in cinemas from 16 August 2018 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to The Backlot Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE From legendary director Wim Wenders and starring Alicia Vikander and James McAvoy, this is the story of two people who meet by chance at a…
