The European co-production Corage is an unconventional biopic looking at the (largely fictional) last year in the life of Empress Elizabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps). Elizabeth is married to Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister), but she feels like she is merely an appendage. Given no real power, her duties are considered merely ceremonial. It is…
Isabelle Huppert shines in the lead role of Elle, a sordid, twisted tale of lust and brutality. Michèle (Huppert) seems indestructible. Head of a leading video game company, she brings the same ruthless attitude to her love life as to business. Being attacked in her home by an unknown assailant changes Michèle’s life forever. She…
The late, great Aretha Franklin was affectionately known as “the Queen of Soul”. She was one of the biggest selling female artists an topped the charts with a string of number one hits like “Respect”, “Think”, and “Spanish Harlem”. But in 1972 she took the radical step of returning to her roots and recorded an…
When the most advanced “toy” in history goes rogue, lives are at stake in Gerard Johnstone’s engaging horror sci-fi thriller M3gan. Nine-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw) is on a trip to the snow with her parents when she is in a car accident that leaves her bloodied and claims their lives. That leaves her in the…
From the folk tales of One Thousand and One Nights, to highest grossing film of 1992, Aladdin, the story of the genie in a lamp is familiar. Now director George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) provides a new take on the tale with Three Thousand Years of Longing. Dr Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is a…
A modern take on Frankenstein in the age of artificial intelligence, the man behind the vision of Ex Machina is Alex Garland, who wrote 28 Days Later and Sunshine. This time he is both writer and director. Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a mid-twenties coder at the world’s largest Internet company. He wins a competition to…
To the outside world she has the perfect life. She is CEO of her own company that is going places. She has a doting theatre director husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas) and two daughters, Isabel (Esther McGregor) and Nora (Vaughan Reilly). But she has a metaphorical itch that has long needed scratching. And in the most…
There’s a fine line with fantasy that can, and often does, cross the line of credibility. A Wrinkle in Time absolutely smashes it. Meg Murry (Storm Reid) is a typical middle-school student. Struggling with issues of self-worth, she just wants to fit in. The daughter of two world-renowned physicists, she’s intelligent and uniquely gifted. So is her…
At 80 pages, Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada (translated by David Boyd) is more a novella than a novel. But Oyamada manages to pack a punch into this brevity. The three connected stories that make up the novel explore issues of parenthood and responsibility from a Japanese perspective. In the first part of…
Those with long memories might recall the consternation back in the early 2000s when storied horror director Sam Raimi – of Evil Dead fame – was tapped to direct Marvel’s Spider-Man (2002). Of course, it all turned out fine. After three Spider-Man movies, Raimi returned in a more limited way to his horror roots. Now…
