Just why Deborah Conway and her husband Willy Zygier are cherished as Australian music royalty is evident when you see Songs from the Book of Life. It is an 80-minute narrative concert featuring a cavalcade of life experiences, as outlined by Conway, along with eight songs. She goes back to her childhood when her parents used…
The bawdy meets the bizarre in the Australian premiere of the tragicomic musical The Grinning Man, which is based on the 1869 Victor Hugo novel The Man Who Laughs. He is, of course, best known for Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. With music by Tim Phillips and Marc Teitler, lyrics by that pair, Carl Grose…
This new film from three time Oscar winning director Ang Lee is a bit of a disappointment given his impressive resume that includes Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the heartbreaking gay romance Brokeback Mountain, and the visually impressive Life of Pi. Based on the acclaimed 2012 novel written by Ben Fountain, and adapted by first time…
What a magnificent feel good show. Come From Away restores your faith in humanity. Moving, energetic and melodic, I defy anyone not to be in raptures … because it really is that good. The story is set in Newfoundland, an island off the northeast coast of Canada, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. For…
A violent buddy action-comedy with a fierce soundtrack, The Hitman’s Bodyguard plays on its irreverence. Nearly everybody notoriously lethal hit man Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) has ever met wants him dead. But that will only happen if Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) – the bodyguard recruited to protect him – doesn’t shoot him first … out of sheer…
Remember playing marbles? I didn’t play marbles a lot, but the boys at school did and I can still remember them bandying about terms like: steelies, clearies, cats eyes, and shooters. Reading The Marble Collector brought a rush of nostalgia for the days when kids played with things other than iPads, games consoles and phones….
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a tween horror set in small town America in 1968. It points back to a girl from the late 19th century who’s out for revenge. It all starts on Halloween night when Stella Nicholls (Zoe Margaret Colletti) isn’t keen to go trick-or-treating. Talked into doing so by…
The cringeworthy and unfunny comedy The Honeymoon is an Italian/British co-production and it’s received some of the worst reviews of the year. Adam (Pico Alexander) has been best friends with Bav (Asim Chaudhry) since they were children and they called themselves “the inseparables.” But as a teenager Adam moved to America with his family for…
Rob Reiner directs LBJ, a biopic on the emergence of Lyndon Baines Johnson (played by Woody Harrelson) following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The story pivots around the then-contentious bill for the Civil Rights Act. It deals with Johnson’s struggles to have the bill passed in the face of opposition from powerful Senator Richard…
Each year ends with a bang. You’ll have the end-of-year festivities and people party themselves into the New Year. But when it’s about movies, this one created an end-of-a-film-year-bang. Frankly, I didn’t expect too much of it. But maybe my prejudice about Sandra Bullock has something to do with that. I readily admit that I’m…
