Safely ensconced here in the Southern Hemisphere, few Australians have first-hand experience of America’s sometimes-toxic racial politics. In general, we experience it from afar, via either the news or some other media (like the recent film Get Out). Our national experience, while arguably no better than the USA’s, is however markedly different. So the Netflix…
Accompanied by a lone cellist (Thomas Veitch) and dressed in period costume, Michael Veitch weaves a deeply personal and tragic tale with aplomb. It is one he wrote with Peter Houghton. In August 1852, Michael’s great great grandfather, James William Henry Veitch, was the surgeon on board the emigrant clipper Ticonderoga when it sailed from Liverpool…
Bigger than Ben Hur when it comes to tricks on a grand scale, three of the original four magicians return for a second installment of hijinks and thrills. That about sums up Now You See Me 2, with Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco joined by Lizzy Caplan (who replaces Isla Fisher) to form…
With ‘gaslighting’ being the word of the year in 2022 and mentioned across social media and in real life countless times, it won’t be a surprise to contemporary audiences what the essence of this play is about. It’s interesting to note that Patrick Hamilton wrote the original back in 1938 when its revelations about a…
Epic in scope and set against the backdrop of the Cold War, Never Look Away spans some thirty years of German history and dramatic social change. It is loosely based on the life of renowned German artist Gerard Richter, widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary artists. The film opens in Dresden in…
Annabelle Comes Home is the third film featuring the sinister doll from the Conjuring universe. Gary Dauberman, the screenwriter of the Annabelle films, makes his directorial debut. Determined to keep Annabelle from wreaking more havoc, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) drive the possessed doll to the locked artifacts room in…
Look, we all know what I’m going to say here, so let’s just get straight to it. The Logan McRae series is the bees knees of Scottish police procedurals. The plots are intricate, often confrontational (as is very much the case with this one) and the characters are brilliant. Grumpy, put upon McRae (is that…
Even though this is a work of fiction (termed “an act of female imagination”), the starting point for Women Talking was a recent real-life event in Bolivia. Between 2005 and 2009, more than 100 girls and women in a remote Mennonite colony discovered they had been raped in their sleep. A group of men from…
An indigenous lad (Aswan Reid) reshapes the lives of those living at a remote monastery in 1940s Australia in Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy. The outback facility serves as a mission for Aboriginal children. It’s run by a feisty, renegade nun, Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett). At the time only men could operate missions. But the…
Forty years on, the winner of 11 Tony Awards remains so much rambunctious fun. This all-new Australian production stars five-time Helpmann Award winner Paul Capsis in the lead role of Albin. By his side is renowned singer and actor Michael Cormick (Beauty and The Beast, The Phantom of The Opera) as husband Georges. Georges and the flamboyant,…
