If I say “who you gonna call”; you say… “Ghostbusters”, right? And that kind of sums up where this franchise is at. It’s all about familiarity now. Originality and nuance have long since left the building as the producers look for ways to tap into nostalgia, while at the same time introducing a younger audience…
Liam Neeson’s new action thriller Ice Road is as a cross between reality series Ice Road Truckers and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s tense 1953 drama The Wages of Fear. If you’re not familiar, in The Wages of Fear, a group of men were hired to transport a shipment of volatile nitroglycerine through treacherous mountain passes and across…
With all the anti-Muslim bile being peddled at the moment, along comes Ali’s Wedding. This feel-good entertainment, based in fact, puts a smile on your dial. There’s something of The Castle’s sensibilities about this one. It’s funny and silly at the same time. Some of it seems incredibly far-fetched, but given what we are dealing with here, that…
A compelling and dramatic storyline and evocative score are matched by a series of stellar performances in MTC’s musical Kiss of the Spider Woman. The plot concerns the extraction of information through brutalisation and humiliation of prisoners held in an Argentine jail. More specifically, it involves the relationship between window dresser Molina (Ainsley Melham) and Marxist…
As a teenager I scoffed at elders who insisted that the generation gap was alive and well. They claimed we spoke a different sort of English to them, that the things we were obsessed with were unfathomable, the complications of our lives irrelevant, and the music sucked. Then I recently found myself saying the problem…
Growing old isn’t for sissies, they say. Netflix’s excellent series The Kominsky Method proves the axiom; but does it in a remarkably empathetic way. Television legend Chuck Lorre is behind the series. Apart from the behemoth that is The Big Bang Theory, Lorre produced series like Roseanne, Dharma & Greg and Two & a Half…
e-baby is a new Australian play by Jane Cafarella, for two women, seen first in Melbourne, last year. The play charts a surrogacy pregnancy. We first meet Catherine (Danielle Carter), a 46 year-old, ex-pat Australian, living the ‘dream’ as a high-flying lawyer based in London, with a practice in New York, who after trying with…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 4 June 2021. Chris Thile’s Laysongs is his first truly solo album: It’s just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on a set of nine new tracks, combining original songs with three wisely chosen covers that contextualize and banter…
What an amusing movie The Banker was. It’s the kind of movie you start watching and before you know it, the end credits roll across your screen. Even though the subject won’t get you very excited. The world of real estate and banking. A world populated with stiffs in perfectly fitting suits who prefer to…
This prequel to the charming and endearing Toy Story franchise didn’t quite give me the buzz that I was expecting. This is actually the second spinoff from Toy Story to feature Buzz Lightyear following 2000’s Buzz Lightyear of the Star Command. But this all seems like a cynical exercise to capitalise on the goodwill delivered…
