Victorian-era detective fiction gets turned on its head in Nexflix’s charming Enola Holmes. Based on the YA novels of Nancy Springer, this engaging – if a bit muddled – film sees the legendary Sherlock Holmes sidelined in favour of his precocious little sister. Throw in more than a liberal dose of danger, a foppish love…
Jake Johnson (Jurassic World) basically single-handedly carries Ride the Eagle, a quirky comedic drama born of a dysfunctional relationship. In his early 40s, Leif (Johnson) lives in a small hut in the mountains. He’s the enthusiastic bongo player for a band, whose other members are 20 years younger. Beyond that, his greatest love is his…
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…
Adoration for ABBA in Australia shows no signs of abating if the crowd at The ABBA Show at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne is anything to go by. The audience (of a certain age) turned back the clock as they danced, swung their arms in the air and frequently cat-called “Ya” as a group of two Brits…
Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of Japan’s greatest living filmmakers. You could mount a case he’s the greatest living Japanese filmmaker if you exclude animation (and thus, Hayao Miyazaki). In 2013, he took home the Special Jury Prize from the same event for Like Father, Like Son. In 2018, he won the Palme d’Or at Cannes…
Ben Affleck isn’t exactly one of my favorite actors. Not that he’s such a terrible actor, but he’s such a smooth guy who manages to play in some outstanding movies every time. Movies that didn’t leave an everlasting impression on me anyway. In retrospect, it’s really a giant list I’ve seen him in, such as…
Andrew Bird’s long solo career has established him as a dependable singer-songwriter who consistently releases high-quality, idiosyncratic chamber-pop and indie folk-rock. It can be easy to forget, though, that he got his start in the mid-90s as a member of swing-revival act Squirrel Nut Zippers, and his early albums with solo project Bowl of Fire…
A slow-moving British adult drama about a couple in the twilight of their lives, 45 Years features outstanding performances from Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. Married for 45 years, without children, Kate Mercer (Rampling) and husband Geoff (Courtenay) are poised to celebrate their wedding anniversary with a party in a week’s time. They couldn’t do…
On finishing Susannah Wise’s standalone post-apocalyptic debut The Fragile Earth, some readers may have wondered where she would go next. It’s hard to imagine anyone predicting the antic, comedic, sometimes surreal ghost story with multiversal elements that is her follow up – Okay Then That’s Great. When the book opens, Marnie has once again seen…
The Cuban Missile Crisis looms in the tense spy thriller The Courier. Based on fact, it tells the story of America’s most valuable source of information about Russia during this tumultuous period. With nuclear war a real possibility, a high stakes cat-and-mouse game plays out. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) is a high-ranking Russian official. But…
