A while ago I skipped the movie Swiss Army Man because I didn’t feel like watching a movie about a farting corpse. Even though Daniel Radcliffe played this stiff character. I’m sure there was a deeper meaning behind the whole idea, but I still didn’t feel like it. When I started watching Shovel Buddies, without…
The ability to write, direct and act in your own play is no mean feat. Especially when it’s a world premiere! So, accolades to Megan Wilding for her creative, humorous and sometimes confronting storytelling in A Little Piece of Ash. It’s only when those closest to us are gone do we begin a new appreciation…
Things go bump in the night in the horror-thriller The Curse of the Weeping Woman. It’s the first feature film from director Michael Chaves. James Wan – one of the producers – made an art form out of exploiting the horror genre; specifically the Annabelle franchise. The Curse of the Weeping Woman references the spooky…
“One of the most internationally acclaimed films of the decade,” declares the advertising blurb. Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard that before, right? But in the case of Burning, the hype is real. This is absolutely one of the best films you’ll see this year. Asian cinema sometimes gets marginalised in our Hollywood-obsessed popular culture. But with…
The Trouble with You is an absurdist French comedy that’s both clever and silly. I didn’t know whether to delight in its eccentricities or howl at its stupidity, so I flipped from one to the other and back again. Let’s be clear on one thing – the plot is ridiculous. Detective Yvonne Santi (Adèle Haenel)…
California has gone to pot and Sister Kate is front and centre of the crusade in Breaking Habits. She calls herself a nun, but she created her own ministry after her husband blindsided her. Let’s just say life hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for this former corporate high achiever. As this doco written and directed…
Given the current state of popular country music, it should surprise us that what gets labeled Outlaw Country, or Americana, or alt/country these days often has a strong bias toward the traditional and an authentic old school ethic of keeping it real, even as it expands the genre with rock and other influences. Steve Earle,…
Oscar winning filmmaker Hal Ashby was something of an uncompromising maverick who preferred to work outside the studio system because he believed they valued commerce over art. “Studios are the enemy of the artist,” his friend and mentor Norman Jewison told him rather frankly. Ashby won an Oscar for his work on editing Jewison’s In…
Writer and director Jonah Hill pulls no punches in Mid90s; a coming of age story about a 13-year-old skateboard enthusiast. Hill himself grew up skateboarding in LA in the mid ‘90s, but he maintains the movie is not autobiographical, even though some of the imagery in the film is just as it was back in…
A psychological suspense novel with touches of paranormal, Tess is a beautifully balanced, chilling, claustrophobic and clever novel. Set in small town New Zealand, at the turn of the millennium, Tess is, as the blurb puts it “a gothic love story about the ties that bind and tear a family apart.” It’s also a story…
