Assigning human characteristics to animals invariably makes for cute viewing and that’s the case in the The Secret Life of Pets 2. This film follows the success of the original (2016) in which terrier Max (the voice of Patton Oswalt) had to learn to share his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper) with a new dog, a…
Undoubtedly one of the finest contemporary musicals and one I never tire of seeing because of its brilliant songs, narrative arc and passionate portrayals, Jersey Boys is back to delight anew. I first saw it at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne in 2009 and then again in 2013. Clint Eastwood directed an on-screen version. Now,…
In New York, a crotchety, chain-smoking Chinese-American grandmother gets lucky after leaving a casino … and then all hell breaks loose. Sasie Sealy’s black comedy, Lucky Grandma, places granny in the middle of a turf war between rival gangs. It all starts when Lei Lei the Fortune Teller (Wai Ching Ho) tells Grandma (Tsai Chin)…
Based on a memoir by the late Timothy Conigrave, playwright Tommy Murphy has given us an up close and personal look at a 15-year gay relationship. It starts in the teen years and works its way through to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Tim (Gene Efron) has his eyes on the school football captain…
Updating classic fairytales is nothing new (see: Shrek). And, of course, the musical has been around for as long as movies have had sound. So combining an updated take on Cinderella with a pop-laden musical would seem to be a guaranteed winner. But somehow director Kay Cannon (Blockers) and her team have created a by-the-numbers…
The faster the dancing the greater the audience excitement at seeing some of the world’s best dancers gyrate and strut their stuff in Burn the Floor, as passionate as they can be about their craft. They are hot, hot, hot! – finely tuned torsos so in sync that their spectacular routines are made to look…
Irish lyricism, bluster and blarney combine in Wild Mountain Thyme. This romantic drama has the sole purpose of joining a lovelorn woman and her timid neighbour. Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) grew up initially doubting her purpose until her father told her she was the white swan, like in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (which is a recurring…
A super clown act and an extraordinarily nimble pole dancer are among the highlights of the burlesque-style Cabaret de Paris. It showcases bejewelled dancers in skimpy and elegant attire, headlined by a former star of Paris’s Moulin Rouge, Marissa Burgess. Best known as the spiritual birthplace of the modern can-can, Moulin Rouge has been a drawcard…
Coming-of-age stories about the unconventional but uplifting friendship between children and animals have been a staple of cinema for years. Henry Safran’s 1976 film of Storm Boy was a heartfelt classic from the period of the re-emergence of the Australian film industry and it touched a generation of filmgoers. Adapted from Colin Thiele’s beloved 1964…
Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s latest novel The Wolf Hunt (translated by Sondra Silverston) was first published in Hebrew with the name Relocation. And while the new title has some resonance with the plot, the original name cuts deeper to the concerns that Gundar-Goshen is trying to explore. That is, the split and tension in the…
