“Rock stars don’t ever die,” sings Sting in “50,000,” a song from his first album of original pop/rock material in 13 years. “They only fade away,” he concludes, no doubt a twist on Neil Young’s lyric that “it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” In Sting’s song, reportedly written shortly after Prince’s death,…
Powerful vocals, a strong musical score and a deteriorating relationship are the hallmarks of The Last Five Years, written and composed by American Jason Robert Brown, starring Verity Hunt-Ballard (Sweet Charity) and Josh Piterman (West Side Story). It is the story of two twenty-somethings – he Jewish and she not – who fall in and…
Plenty of frantic running and chasing and shooting, taking out nondescript bit part actors, a climactic hand to hand combat scene and a humungous car chase are what this fifth Jason Bourne movie are all about. I say the fifth and that is correct, but it is only the fourth starring Matt Damon because he…
Speed-the-Plow, by David Mamet was written in 1988 and starred Madonna in its first outing. It concerns two lowly-runged ‘goers’ in the Hollywood hierarchy trying to get further up the ladder with the power to ‘green light’ the production of films. Charlie Fox (Lachy Hulme) brings to his ambitious friend/ally, the corporation favoured Bobby Gould…
Happiness is the name of the game for two inpatients at a progressive psychiatric institution, both of whom are trying to attain it in Like Crazy. Beatrice speaks at a thousand miles an hour and is easily worked up. She is a self-styled billionaire countess who likes to believe she is on intimate terms with…
Stunning, finely rendered and detailed animation in the Japanese anime style is the hallmark of Your Name, a youth fantasy written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, who also wrote a novel of the same name. It concerns a mysterious connection between two pupils – strangers – living different lives in disparate parts of Japan. Mitsuha…
Who would have thought that the formation of McDonald’s would make for such an eye-catching yarn? As told in The Founder, it is a forceful drama that tells the true story of how Ray Kroc, a salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Impressed…
Based on fact comes The Fencer, a story about a man trying to escape his past. Fleeing from Stalin’s secret police in the early 1950s, an ambitious young fencer finds himself teaching small town children in a godforsaken Estonian coastal village. Endel Nelis (Mart Avandi) arrives in Haapsalu having fled from Leningrad. His riding instructions…
This new film from three time Oscar winning director Ang Lee is a bit of a disappointment given his impressive resume that includes Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the heartbreaking gay romance Brokeback Mountain, and the visually impressive Life of Pi. Based on the acclaimed 2012 novel written by Ben Fountain, and adapted by first time…
Ill-tempered, rude and crude, Billy Bob Thornton returns as anti-hero Willie Soke 13 years after he first donned the Christmas clobber in the independent black comedy Bad Santa for the sequel, predictably titled Bad Santa 2. Bad Santa was the story of a cynical thief who disguised himself as a department store Santa each winter…
