King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are back with their new long-player, Nonagon Infinity. After the acid-flecked cosmic jazz of Quarters and the hazy, pastoral, acoustic bliss of Paper Mache Dream Balloon, Nonagon Infinity sees the Gizzard once again dive head-long into the gonzo freak-beat frenzy that mark both their debut I’m In Your Mind Fuzz,…
Almost wordless, Robot Dreams is an unexpected delight. This quite charming animated film that captures the spirit of those silent films of yesteryear. It becomes a touching ode to friendship, connection, the pain of loss, and the need to move on in life. It’s not surprising that the film was nominated for an Oscar. The…
Maturity is a weird thing because not only does it seem to happen overnight but you can typically identify the very “moment” it takes place. You can recognize it in your friends, in your own kids, your favorite athlete, actor and author and usually in your favorite artist. For the lighthearted and laid back indie…
This contemporary retelling of Gustav Flaubert’s 1856 tragic tale Madame Bovary is something of a dull affair despite its lashings of sex, infidelity and comedy. The film is based on the popular graphic novel written in 1999 by Posy Simmonds, who previously wrote Tamara Drewe, which was filmed starring Gemma Arterton. Arterton appears here again…
The artistic links between France and Japan run (perhaps surprisingly) deep. The French Impressionists were obsessed with Japanese woodblock prints, for example. In the 1950s, while French filmmakers and audiences embraced Japanese cinema, with Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Gate of Hell (1954) featured at the Cannes Film Festival; while Alain Resnais’ seminal…
As a life lesson, Toni Erdmann is a unique and quirky offering that continually surprises. It contains the mundane and the outrageous. The constant is humour – at times great dollops of it, interspersed with a gentler comic scene or two. German dad Winfried (Peter Simonischek) doesn’t see much of his hard-working corporate consultant daughter…
Debauched aliens targeting a burlesque beauty. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty, as you will see if you venture into The MC Showroom to see They Came From Uranus. This is burlesque with a decided difference, insofar as it is adult puppetry in the form of a sci-fi cabaret. The staging is salacious and the costuming is nothing…
I can’t go past a good domestic thriller and when The Wife by Alafair Burke turned up in my mailbox, I read every chance I had over the next two days. It’s like the married version of a whodunit with an underlying back beat of “Stand By Your Man” and I lapped it up from start to finish. It’s…
Hero or villain? Murderer? Campaigner for a democratic Russia? These are just some of the triggers in Citizen K, a fascinating documentary about Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He was once Russia’s richest man (head of the oil giant Yukos) but now lives in exile In London. As you can imagine, Russian president Vladimir Putin features prominently. This…
Melbourne writer Melissa Reeves has adapted Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play, An Enemy of the People. It has been transposed and adapted to contemporary Australian times: 2018. It is a very faithful set of adjustments and is essentially true to Ibsen’s content and spirit – both his politics and his humour. The original play concerns two…
