Every year when I get my hands on the Melbourne International Film Festival program and start selecting my films, the first strand I pore through is Night Shift, which contains some bizarre horror and cinematic oddities. And the offbeat Late Night With the Devil (MIFF ’23) offers a fresh take on the tired found-footage genre….
In the context of Alice Rohrwacher’s film La Chimera, the Chimera of the title is something people search for but never manage to find. The fictional story features a band of Tombaroli, Italian grave robbers, looking for archaeological wonders. Their lucky charm is an eccentric British archaeologist, Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who finds things others can’t,…
Writer and director Ava DuVernay has chosen an artistic interpretation of the work of Isabel Wilkerson in Origin. The film was inspired by Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. At the start of the film, Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) doesn’t know it, but she’s about to lose the two most important people in her…
Four actors … who break the fourth wall, track down a Melbourne man from a seven-minute rant obtained by a transcription service and give a potted history of the internet. That, in a nutshell, is the subject matter of the cleverly orchestrated play that puts the fear of God into you. In fact, humour and paranoia are…
Tigers Blood is the latest album from the talented singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield, known by her stage name Waxahatchee. Having begun her career over a decade ago, Crutchfield has garnered critical acclaim with six albums under her belt. Crutchfield’s path as an artist has seen her evolve from indie lo-fi folk to the lush alt-country we…
Writer and director Alex Garland (Ex Machina) is a master filmmaker who steps it up a notch with the blockbuster Civil War. In the film, America is at war with itself. The President (Nick Offerman) has declared he is on the verge of victory, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Looking to take…
A corpse dressed to the nines being carted around the French Riviera in a wheelchair. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty in this farcical musical comedy that reminded me of the 1989 movie Weekend at Bernie’s, that became a cult classic. It is the second time the slapstick Lucky Stiff has played in Prahran in a little…
Patrick Marber’s searing psychological dramedy Closer is La Boite’s first offering for 2024. Directed by CEO and Artistic Director Courtney Stewart, the play packs a hefty punch. Larry and Alice both work in the skin trade: Larry is a dermatologist and Alice is a stripper. Larry is a ‘clinical observer of the human carnival’ and…
Off-the-wall … wacky and wild, this whodunnit is so much fun. Hark back to the middle of last century. Corpus Delicti! concerns a filthy rich divorced man who is about to turn 40. John Brady (Chris Saxton) has bought himself a private tropical island – Werewolf Island – on which he has built a mansion. He has inherited a…
The speculative fiction genre got a bit of a kick in the teeth back in 2000 with the release of China Miéville’s Perdito Street Station and Jeff Vandemeer’s City of Saints and Sinners. With these came the advent of what has become known as ‘New Weird’. One source in 2023, defined New Weird novels as…
