If you’ve ever seen Karel Reisz’s superb The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981); or Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), you may find something familiar in Nicolas Bedos’ La Belle Époque. This brilliantly conceived drama of love and loss is inventive, poignant and compelling. Bedos is an actor who’s turned to directing. That…
Call it searching for creativity or a descent into madness. That is a matter of interpretation. Carpet and Sand is a fanciful re-telling of a trip that English theatre and film director Peter Brook took with a group of actors through the Sahara Desert in 1972. Among their number was Helen Mirren. According to the presentation in…
Vivarium is a descent into madness. It did my head in. Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots) are a happy couple. They’re considering buying a house together. One day they wander into a shop displaying cardboard models of the same perfectly manicured home. A strange real estate salesman – Martin (Jonathan Aris) – implores…
Jean Reno. The ever-calm actor is usually associated with roles such as a police detective, a gangster or an assassin. The quiet-looking Frenchman has a specific appearance that fits perfectly with such roles. Strange but true. I have only recently seen the film Léon: The Professional. Without a doubt the very best that Jean Reno…
It is hard to believe we are already up to Season Four of The Last Kingdom, which was an unexpected and scorching debut success for Netflix back in 2015. Tapping into perhaps a younger market than its genre contemporaries, The Last Kingdom was enthusiastically landed upon for its promise of deliciously nasty royal skulduggery and…
One of the hottest singers on the planet put on a concert for the ages at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium, as her soaring vocals and down to earth charm electrified the 95,000 plus that hung on her every word. The massive stage features a close up of her trademark lashes, before she appears. As she does,…
Former professional snowboarder Allie Reynolds wrote what she knew in her debut thriller Shiver. That book centred around the reunion of a group of old friends at an isolated ski resort when things start to go wrong. The world of professional snowboarding and the competitive nature of the characters comes very much into play in…
Damien Jurado has released 17 albums in 21 years – the man is prolific. With such a body of work to look back to, there are common sounds and themes that you notice throughout his work. That being said, it is impressive how the Seattle singer-songwriter goes in new directions with seeming effortlessness. His newest…
The starting point for the truly horrible Butt Boy is a guy in a bad marriage who enjoys inserting objects into his rear end. We’re in Florida. Chip Gutchel (Tyler Cornack) – a bored IT engineer in a dead-end job – has an awakening after a routine prostate exam. He really enjoys it. What begins…
If you’re the kind of person who finds shows like How I Met Your Mother or Hart of Dixie just too sickly-sweet, then You’re the Worst is for you. If those shows are like pink lemonade, this is a tequila slammer with extra lime – tart, sour and delicious. Our couple here consists of Jimmy…
