It’s hard to believe it’s been 17 years since Angelina Jolie made the role of Lara Croft her own in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Jolie was in her mid-twenties at that time. Now we see generational change, with 29-year-old Alicia Vikander stepping into the role. In Tomb Raider – an origin story – Lara is the fiercely independent…
An inane American action horror comedy, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse [note: that’s the title, punctuation error included – Ed.] focuses upon three teenagers’ attempts to hold at bay a horde of zombies who have all but taken over their small town. The trio – Ben, Carter and Augie (played respectively by Tye Sheridan,…
Masterful and highly imaginative comes this trans-formative piece of theatre making. From the get go, I was intrigued and stimulated. Entering the theatre space felt like stepping onto the set of a high budget science fiction movie. It was visually arresting. Eerie, otherworldly music was playing. Tinged in green was shiny black scaffolding that constituted…
Set in the aftermath of WWII, Phoenix is a slow burn noir-like psychological thriller about identity, survival, obsesion and betrayal. It bears some similarity to the Hitchcock classic Vertigo as well as Brian De Palma’s Obsession. Disfigured Jewish concentration camp survivor Nelly Lanz (Nina Hoss, recently seen in A Most Wanted Man) has undergone plastic…
Friends and family gather for a weekend in the countryside in Michael Mayer’s version of Chekhov’s The Seagull. While everyone is caught up in passionately loving someone who loves somebody else, a tragicomedy unfolds about the eternal desire to live a purposeful life. Sorin (Brian Dennehy), a retired government employee, and his sister Irina (Annette…
Filled with humour, horror and bite, Brothers’ Nest stars the Jacobsen brothers, Clayton and Shane. Clayton also directs the film, as he did with Kenny, which really launched Shane’s career. With their mother (Lynette Curran) dying of cancer, two brothers – Terry (Shane) and Jeff (Clayton) – go to extreme lengths to protect their inheritance…
Maze Runner: The Death Cure concludes the generic dystopian saga based on the popular series of novels written by James Dashner. And unlike a couple of other YA adaptations, at least here the producers resisted the temptation to split the final film into two parts. We were first introduced to a group of heroes, known as…
Early on in Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Miss Marx, the writer-director makes it clear she considers her subject to be a kind of punk rock icon. Pity then that her film largely shuns that angle and instead meanders into becoming another tepid costume drama. The film ostensibly features a fiery feminist icon, but it plays out as…
The Hunger Games franchise has so far grossed more than US$2.2 billion at the global box office. It is based upon the runaway success of the novel trilogy by Suzanne Collins, which was released between 2008 and 2010. Mockingjay Part 2 is the fourth and final movie in the series (the first came out in…
Without doubt Kinky Boots is the best new musical in years. It has everything: a great story line, wonderful characters, and toe-tapping music that moves the plot along. It’s such a joyful and refreshing spectacle to watch. I loved every damn minute of the two hours of music, dance, and drama. On top of all…
