A ponderous ode to sad sacks the world over, The Lovers really doesn’t start to resonate at all until nearly four-fifths of it is done and dusted. By that stage you are utterly convinced that watching grass grow is a whole lot more interesting. The Lovers concerns a middle-aged husband and wife, each embroiled in…
Neil Jordan was a big name in the 1990s. Movies like The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire made him a household name. Since then his output has been a little patchy, but now he’s back with Greta, a film with a crafty premise and a great cast. The problem is that Jordan’s direction…
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…
Sweden is more than idyllic red cottages and affordable housing in flat packages. Today it is also a country with a big youth unemployment problem. It is so massive, in fact, that hundreds of thousands of young Swedes see no option other than to move across the border to Norway. They hope to find work…
Margaret Hickey hit the Australian crime fiction scene with Cutter’s End, the first of a (so far) three book series featuring South Australian detective Mark Ariti (also Stone Town and Broken Bay). In her latest book, The Creeper, Hickey is giving both Ariti and South Australia a rest as she moves the action to the…
Something is not quite right with talented artist Rosalind (Olga Kurylenko) in Paula van der Oest’s The Bay of Silence. One minute the mother of young twin daughters is exuberant and full of life. The next, she’s sullen and suspicious. She sleepwalks and claws at the walls. Then she meets and falls for Will (Claes…
I’ve now seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream countless times, including at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (#sogood), because despite its comic complications, it is an easy story to follow and thoroughly enjoy. Though things may not quite be as they seem, Shakespeare’s play about true love’s lack of smooth course, is quite simple in…
Based on the hoary chestnut of opposites attracting, Long Shot is a far-fetched comedy that, by and large, works. I dare say it will appeal to many fans of the two leads, Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, because a) they’re in it and b) it is so unlikely a tale, born of the #MeToo generation….
English author Aldous Huxley wrote about a brave new world in a dystopian novel first published in 1932. I wonder what he would have thought of the world of artificial intelligence circa 2020 (well we are almost there). Let me put it this way, we have a long way to go before robots or artificially…
Geelong-born, Melbourne-based former street artist Rone (birth name Tyrone Wright) has crafted a remarkable time capsule three years in the making. It is set in the long-abandoned third floor wing of iconic, heritage-listed Flinders Street Station. Time is a nostalgic love letter to mid 19th century working class life in one of the world’s great cities. It is…
