The 2016 AICE Israeli Film Festival is currently in full swing in Sydney and Melbourne ( at the Ritz and Nova cinemas respectively). The event aims to present a diverse range of films from Israel in a variety of genres – including romantic comedies, a Holocaust mystery, a Bedouin family drama, a Polish/Israeli horror film…
Things no one will say about Charlie Kaufman’s new film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things: “Aww, that was sweet”; “What a cliched Hollywood ending”; “That movie made total sense”. Kaufman’s latest excursion into weirdness is almost Bergman-esque in its inscrutability. Indeed, it shares more than a little DNA with Bergman’s classic Persona (1966). But as…
It’s the time of year when serious Oscar contenders swamp our screens. But sometimes it’s good just to sit back, disengage your brain and indulge in something silly. For that, there’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. This is a faux-sequel to 1995’s Jumanji, a film perhaps nostalgically remembered as better than it actually was. The nostalgia…
Detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan return for a third time as the leads in Chris Hammer’s sixth book The Seven. Once again he delivers a multi-generational tale of crimes and misdemeanours in a very particular part of the Australian rural landscape. While Treasure and Dirt was set in the opal fields of Northern New…
Aimed at Gen Z, Zola has attitude but, arguably, few smarts. The premise is straightforward enough, namely how two twenty-something women fall out. Zola (Taylour Paige) works at a fast-food restaurant. She’s befriended by Stefani (Riley Keough) who she serves at the diner. Both are pole dancers and they have a night out in a…
White privilege receives a pummelling in the satire Admissions. It is 2015 and Sherri Rosen-Mason (Kat Stewart) is head of admissions at an exclusive US high school – Hillcrest in New Hampshire, New England. Over 15 years, Sherri has worked tirelessly to raise the percentage of coloured students at the school. She has succeeded in seeing that proportion…
Willy Wonka’s magic carpet ride hits town with its world of wonder and make-believe. Based on Roald Dahl’s children’s novel of the same name, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the story of a boy from an impoverished family who’s obsessed with sweets. He’s Charlie Bucket and he lives with his mother and four bed-ridden…
Having not seen the original Matrix trilogy, I was totally lost for most of this fourth instalment. I took a while to understand what was going on. But it basically boils down to a simple premise – Neo has to rescue Trinity and they face many obstacles. The action takes place two decades after The…
Ill-tempered, rude and crude, Billy Bob Thornton returns as anti-hero Willie Soke 13 years after he first donned the Christmas clobber in the independent black comedy Bad Santa for the sequel, predictably titled Bad Santa 2. Bad Santa was the story of a cynical thief who disguised himself as a department store Santa each winter…
Noni Hazlehurst (right) has been touring this one-woman masterpiece for more than two years now and everywhere she has packed the venues and earned wide acclaim. After watching her performance at the Cremorne there is no problem in understanding why. The whole package, from words and performance, to lighting, set and sound, was perfect theatre;…
