It’s been a long time since I have read George Johnston’s 1964 Miles Franklin Award-winning My Brother Jack. However, through the lens of undergraduate literary-study nostalgia, I still recognise the seminal Australian novel’s place as part of our country’s canon, despite its challenge to our comfortable assumptions of national character. Still, like many I imagine,…
Patrick is a British comedy celebrating our love of pets. It’s told through the eyes of a young woman whose life changes when she unexpectedly inherits her grandmother’s pampered pug. That woman is Sarah Francis (Beattie Edmonson). Her partner has just called it quits on their relationship. She’s about to start a new teaching job…
The subject matter of Pimped is tawdry; nasty in fact. This is a film that starts out without much promise, but gradually draws you into its deviant web. It’s a psycho-sexual thriller in which the protagonist is emblematic of the #MeToo era. Sarah Montrose (Ella Scott Lynch) is a conflicted, mysterious woman. I say that…
Eccentric Danish auteur Lars Von Trier makes controversial and deliberately confronting films. His latest is likely to be divisive as well. Despite the title, The House That Jack Built is not a family-friendly fairy tale. Rather this is Von Trier’s portrait of a sadistic serial killer. But the film isn’t as illuminating nor as insightful…
Dread is palpable throughout Arthur Miller’s drama A View from the Bridge. The Melbourne Theatre Company’s version features seven actors and one old wooden chair but held me transfixed for two hours. The time is the 1950s; and the place an Italian-American neighbourhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The narrator is Alfieri (Marco…
Freshly realized as a hot take on Perth’s monied-up western suburbs culture, The Real Housewives of Perth is based on the hit television show franchise that never failed to spill on the not-so-secret lives of rich ladies-who-lunch. (Though ‘lunch’ may be used here as a handy euphemism for selfies, shopping and next-level female power sledging)….
The events depicted in Hotel Mumbai are ghastly … made all the more so because the story is based on fact. I, like so many, recall the day it started and how horrific the reports and images were. For three days in 2008 — from 26 to 29 November — Mumbai was under siege. Arriving…
– Us – Only in cinemas from 28 March 2019 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to Universal Pictures Australia. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE After sending shockwaves across contemporary culture and setting a new standard for provocative, socially-conscious horror films with his directorial debut, Get Out, Academy Award®-winning visionary…
I loved the droll humour in the slow-moving Sometimes Always Never. The film features the supreme acting of Bill Nighy at his aloof best. The plot concerns a Scrabble-obsessed family and the impact the game has had on their lives. Nighy plays a Merseyside tailor, Alan, whose eldest son, Michael, stormed out of the house…
At 79 years old, Mavis Staples is an R&B institution who has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame, but she’s not sitting back on her laurels in a rocking chair at the living legends nursing home. She’s produced four fine studio album just in this…
