Dr John Everyman (Dennis Coard) is a retired and much-loved GP who lost his wife Sophia, when she was just 59. She was taken 13 years ago and he hasn’t been able to fill that void. To this day he rages at God for the “theft” of his beloved wife (he calls it “an act of divine…
Marvel Studios’ latest superhero flick, Black Panther, tells the tale of T’Challa, an African prince who takes on the mantle of king and the centuries’ old legacy that comes with it. Crossing racial and cultural lines, the groundbreaking Black Panther character is another creation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He made his first appearance in the…
You can see the raw emotion; feel it; you can almost taste it in the reflective and haunting drama Leave No Trace. Some films mark the breakthrough role for an actor. I’m thinking, for instance, of Winter’s Bone for Jennifer Lawrence.That’s the case here for New Zealander Thomasin McKenzie, who is stupendous as a dutiful…
Cartoonist, painter, philosopher: Michael Leunig has plied his trade for decades. He’s become a one-man industry, churning out his offbeat, but highly familiar drawings, artwork and original poetry. Of course, over the distance, he has been interviewed by superior minds like Andrew Denton and Virginia Trioli. Snippets from these interviews are included in this documentary….
An attractive and engaging feminist film that allows us – the audience – to really care for the characters, La Belle Saison (which translates as Summertime) is also a period piece. The year in 1971. Delphine (Izia Higelin), the daughter of hard-working farmers, moves to Paris to break free of the shackles of her parents…
In Ti West’s prequel to X (2022), Pearl (Mia Goth) is a star in the making – at least in her own head. It’s 1918, and the combination of WWI and the Spanish flu has many on tenterhooks. Pearl’s husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) – a good man – is off fighting. She lives on a…
If you like a bit of weirdness in your reading, a bit of fable for fun, look no further than Undermajordomo Minor. It caught me by surprise, in a good way. Here’s the blurb: Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, he…
Sisters tearing strips off each other in the wake of their father’s death as Hurricane Sandy* rips apart large swathes of the United States. That is what confronts patrons attending the emotion-charged drama, The Violet Sisters. The women, Sam (Jennifer Monk), now aged 35 and 30-year-old Pam (Leticia Monaghan), haven’t seen each other for eight…
Noel Coward, at the age of 25, wrote and starred in The Vortex, opening in December in 1924, which settled into a long London run. Sheridan Morley tells us in his biography of Noel Coward, A Talent to Amuse: On the principle that success breeds other successes, once The Vortex was an established hit both…
The church, religion and medical science have a lot to answer for in The Wonder. This is acclaimed director Sebastián Lelio’s first feature since Gloria Bell (2018). In 1862, nurse Lib Wright (Florence Pugh) travels from England to small-town Ireland to watch an 11-year-old girl Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy). The reason soon becomes clear….
