The Lost Daughter is a challenging work from writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal, who makes her feature debut behind the scenes. She adapts a book of the same name by Elena Ferrante (published in 2006) for the screen. The Lost Daughter concerns Leda (played by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in a younger iteration), an…
I thoroughly enjoyed Winnie-the-Pooh as a child, and the movie behind the creation of the characters is equally satisfying. Goodbye Christopher Robin provides a rare glimpse into the relationship between beloved children’s author Alan Alexander Milne (played here by Domhnall Gleeson) and his son Christopher Robin (Will Tilston). After returning from the First World War, Milne was left…
What a legacy the Swedish pop group ABBA has left the world! That was my overwhelming sentiment while watching the fun of Mamma Mia! unfold at Capitol Theatre in Sydney. It’s a heartwarming romp that gets better until the final three crowd-pleasing numbers. The whole audience is on its feet clapping its hands and dancing to…
It’s been a boom time for new films from some of cinema’s great stylists. In the past 12 months, we’ve had new movies from the likes of Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese. Now we have a new release from Sofia Coppola in Priscilla; a layered, impressionistic portrait of the relationship between Priscilla Presley…
Absurdist but with heart, Louis Nowra’s Cosi is fun to watch but appears to have aged. The setting is the Vietnam War era – 1971 to be specific – and the location is a mental institution. So, yes there’s a little bit of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest about it. A young man, Lewis…
Multi-award winning Australian crime writer Candice Fox returns her fiction to Australia for the first time in a few years with the high octane thriller High Wire. High Wire is a little bit Jack Reacher and a little bit Mad Max but all Fox who once again takes some familiar tropes and twists, embellishes them…
It is a cliché to say politics is a dirty game. Suffice to say, The Long Game takes that truism and overlays it with the glass ceiling. Just what do women do or need to do to get to the top and what have men done since time immemorial and gotten away with? I am…
The new season of The Purge has discarded the ‘endless night’ approach of season one and instead dips into the murk that is the aftermath of the Purge night events. It’s now all about dealing with what you did, what you may have seen and what you may have experienced during the twelve hours of…
Recently busted back down to the rank of Constable, Mick Goodenough is the newest cop in town. Once a detective always a detective though, and it’s impossible for the experienced investigator not to speak up when it appears that his new colleagues are ignoring the sinister signs of an escalating killer. The Night Whistler takes…
Ira Sachs is better known for his queer themed films like Keep the Lights On and the wonderful Love is Strange, starring Alfred Molina and John Lithgow. His latest film is a subtle, accessible, enjoyable and charming New York set coming of age story exploring the blossoming friendship between two thirteen year old boys from…
