Whit Stillman (The Last Days of Disco) directs his own adaptation of an unfinished Jane Austen novella, titled Lady Susan, in Love & Friendship; a period comedy about matchmaking and heartbreak. Set in the opulent drawing rooms of eighteenth-century English society, Love & Friendship focuses on the delicious scheming and manipulations of a beautiful widow,…
Kids may find more than adults in the far-fetched children’s fantasy Four Kids and It. Thirteen year-old Ros (Teddie Malleson-Allen) is a bookworm, with aspirations of becoming a writer. But she’s yet to find her own voice. She, and her younger brother, Robbie (Billy Jenkins), are good kids – being brought up by their British…
The patience of Job would be a great asset when setting out to watch this slow moving martial arts film with a young female protagonist. Set in 9th century China (towards the end of the Tang Dynasty), Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi), a general’s daughter, is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the art…
What happens if a woman who’s been married for 30 years suddenly confronts her man with the thought she could be into women? That happens not once but twice to two different 50-something couples in Thomas Ian Doyle’s latest incendiary work, Pins and Needles. Clearly the spark in these relationships when they formed is no…
An unrecognisable Nicolas Cage features in the decidedly creepy crime-horror-thriller Longlegs. A figure sits in a car looking at a little girl in a small house. She comes out to see who it is. Suddenly he confronts her. At first, we only see him from the nose down and says: “There she is, the almost…
‘Single Asian Female’… it’s a clever play-on-movie-title precis for dating profile purposes. Zoe (Michelle Law) however, is so much more than just this descriptor… classical musician, sister and daughter. Like many, her fractured family oscillates between being a constant of disorder and an annoying inconvenience… and this is even without her knowledge of her mother’s…
Jasper Jones isn’t your typical drama. It’s presented by Queensland Theatre as a restaging of the Melbourne Theatre Company production and based on the smash hit novel by Craig Silvey. This rollercoaster of a plot – which brings to life the stories of a sleepy 1960’s town, Corrigin – packs a veritable punch. While I…
From the award-winning team behind the acclaimed documentary Senna comes this moving portrait of singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse (14th September 1983 – 23rd July 2011). A pop star with soul, Winehouse’s rare musical ability made her a star while her chaotic personal life stole headlines. With rare interviews and never-before-seen archival footage, Amy takes us behind…
History was made – not by grandstanding or with vitriol … all but in a matter of fact manner, without too much fuss or bother. In this regard, Loving is different to most other equal rights movies, which play on showcase trials, eloquent speeches and virulent campaigning. It is a slow burn film from acclaimed…
Paul Auster is one of the great American novelists. His previous novel 4321 (2017) was a magnum opus that traced four alternative lives of its main character. But it was a bit of an outlier compared to his many much shorter novels, such as Leviathan and Mr Veritgo, that deeply investigated the lives of their…
