One of the world’s most inventive filmmakers produces one of the year’s most inventive films in The Shape of Water. This vivid fantasy from Guillermo del Toro is both a loving homage to cinema and an engrossing tale in its own right. From his first feature, Cronos, del Toro has been fascinated by monsters of one…
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” (part of the final movement of his Symphony No. 9) is a thorough examination of the emotion of joy as being heavenly in origin and available to mankind through a loving God. In A Clockwork Orange, however, it represents a thematic extension of 15-year-old protagonist Alex’s psychological conditioning. As the vicious…
A moral conundrum and the consequences choice are at the heart of The Commuter. This is the fourth collaboration between director Jaume Collet-Serra and Liam Neeson (after Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night). Neeson plays Michael MacCauley, a 60-year-old middle manager at a faceless insurance company. Like so many hard-working family men, he’s at financial breaking point. His son…
The Wizard of Oz is a classic Hollywood film of 1939, based on a book by L. Frank Baum. Everybody must have seen it. I saw it at the cinema (in Bondi Junction) as a child and never got over the Flying Monkeys – they terrified me – and the ‘creepy’ munchkins. Of course, then…
The Glass Castle is the film version of a true story that will baffle you. A film that balances between a romanticised comedy and a serious drama. It’s like an adventurous road-movie in which an apparently normal family travel around as nomads. But “apparently normal” is an understatement, because they lead a rather unusual life….
On John Marsden, by Alice Pung is the second book in Black Inc.’s Writers on Writers series, published in association with La Trobe University Press. In the series, prominent writers share their intimate reflections on the work of Australian authors who have inspired them. In doing so, they begin new conversations about writing and culture,…
I love streaming. It offers so many choices for you to enjoy at your leisure. I also hate streaming. I mean, it offers you just so many choices to enjoy at your leisure. The convenience is great, but the deluge of shows and movies means things – great things – can slip right by you….
Jimi Bani is an actor/artist of big heart and attractive personality exuding a charisma that is all enveloping. His welcome and invitation to hear his story, My Name is Jimi, is irresistible . Jimi was born on a remote island: Mabuiag (Jervis Island) in the western part of Torres Strait to the north of the…
Steven Spielberg’s latest drama, The Post, looks at the Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers. These leaked documents showed the full extent of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War over four decades. They also revealed how successive administrations had lied to the public and covered up the truth. This is a tense thriller about government…
Darkest Hour is a kind of backgrounder on Winston Churchill’s “never surrender” speech. It also touches on the flotilla dispatched to fetch the British troops from the beach at Dunkirk (as to which, see Dunkirk). But this showy biopic has too much emphasis on levity. Joe Wright (Atonement) directs from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten (The…
