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The Hate U Give – movie review

In The Hate U Give, 16 year-old Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is caught between two worlds. She lives with her African-American family in the ironically named Garden Heights, an impoverished black neighbourhood in Georgia; but she attends Wilmington Prep, a prestigious primarily white school in a more affluent neighbourhood. At school, Starr carefully protects her…

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Mandy – streaming review

In Rambo II and Cobra, George Pan Cosmatos directed two Sylvester Stallone films which could hardly be more 80s; these movies stand as two of the more memorable examples from that decade’s glut of violent action cinema. Cosmatos died in 2005, but with Mandy his son Panos revisits the era of his father’s greatest successes…

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Sydney) – musical review

In the growing genre of family-friendly musical theatre, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a deliciously addictive treat. Combining good old-fashioned storytelling from the masterful Roald Dahl, with modern theatrical technology, toe-tapping songs and a script bursting with witticisms, this show is a recipe for fun. The story stays faithful to the renowned novel, which…

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The Mule – movie review

Not to be confused with the 2014 Australian comedy of the same name, The Mule is the latest from prolific filmmaker Clint Eastwood. The Mule tells the semi-fictional account of a 90-year old man who ran drugs for a powerful Mexican cartel. The film was inspired by the New York Times article “The Sinaloa Cartel’s…

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Green Book – movie review

A filmography featuring Dumb and Dumber To and Shallow Hal doesn’t exactly scream Oscar. Yet director Peter Farrelly finds himself as an Oscar frontrunner for his crowd-pleasing film Green Book. This conventional take on race relations in the American South of the 1960s seems to be carefully designed to push the right buttons. Of all…

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