If you can imagine James Bond, mixed with Harry Potter and topped with Edge of Tomorrow, you might have some idea what Christopher Nolan’s new epic Tenet is all about. In terms of scope and ambition, this is one of Nolan’s grandest films. But the big ideas get lost in an overly complicated script and…
In good conscience, I can’t say I could recommend this play to … well, anyone. Within minutes, I was wishing I was anywhere else other than in Theatre Works watching Nihilistic Optimism On Trampolines. Seeing workers at a trampolining facility hooking up, bonding, squabbling and bored out of their tiny minds hardly seemed like the…
Relationship often start with sizzle and succumb to pressure and misalignment between parties. Lion Heart Dance Company has cleverly captured that with movement and song. Don’t Go is characterised by star turns from principals Jemma Craig and Andrew J Liu. They are dynamic leads. As the saying goes, the “lovers” are “all over each other” at…
Natasha Lester’s A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald was one of my favourite reads of 2016. Her commitment to writing inspires me, so I was more than a little keen to read her next novel, Her Mother’s Secret. Here’s the blurb: 1918, England. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora’s life. Rather than secretly making cosmetics…
As the adults in the Welsh village of Glyngolau dutifully either trudge and jog around the countryside in a community fun run, there is an explosion nearby. As all converge on the site of a construction project, the group begin frantically calling their family members to let them know what has occurred. The Accident details…
Terrence’s Malick’s The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but it drove me batty because I could not make head nor tail of it. So too David Lowery’s (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) A Ghost Story, which I only understood in the most rudimentary way. It concerns an official ghost. You know the ones,…
In this low key Danish/Italian co-production, shot largely in Italy, three women in their sixties rediscover love and the joy of life. The Food Club (aka Madklubben) is a gentle film about friendship, getting old, getting to rediscover yourself and the joys of life, sex and good food. Friends since adolescence, Marie, Vanya and Berling…
Girl kicks butt and sings a happy tune. That about sums up Disney’s latest foray into fantasy, this time into the Pacific Islands. Moana is an animated feature about an adventurous teenager who sails away from home on a daring mission to save her people. The title character is the 16-year-old daughter of the chief…
Just why the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose to only nominate Hidden Figures for three Oscars (Best Film, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) one can only speculate. For mine, it is one of the films of the year. Hidden Figures is inspirational, poignant, infuriating, witty and warm, an ode to…
A melancholic coming-of-age drama, there is much to enjoy from 20th Century Women. The film is set in Santa Barbara in the summer of 1979. Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening – The Kids Are All Right) is a determined single mother in her mid-50s, raising her adolescent son, Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann), at a time of cultural…
