It has the look and feel of a silly student production. It marks the first fully written play and directorial debut of Oscar O’Brien. The concept – pinch the brilliance of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton and make it about ants. I kid you not. And the vast majority of the protagonists in the work…
Hard to believe Brad Bird’s groundbreaking The Incredibles came out 14 years ago. He already had a solid reputation from his beloved The Iron Giant, but The Incredibles shot him to another level. Now Bird and an expanded team are back with Incredibles 2 – and they’ve done it again. The Incredibles 2 picks up – literally – where The Incredibles…
I’m in awe of what Academy Award winner (for his short Harvie Krumpet) Adam Elliot can do with adult stop-motion animation. His storytelling is quirky and accessible, as shown in his second feature (after Mary and Max), Memoir of a Snail. This is a heartfelt story drawn from personal experiences. It follows a loner named…
The Winter’s Tale: a fitting production to put on in this mild weather, it would seem. This is one work by Shakespeare I hadn’t seen before and am now quite happy to add it to my memory’s library. The play was performed by the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble and directed by Michelle Miall. This tight knit…
Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) is back with a breathtakingly beautiful film about childhood, loss and memory. Petite Maman (which translates to Little Mummy) focuses on an eight-year-old girl’s relationship with her mother. Nelly (Josephine Sanz) has just lost her grandmother. She and her mum Marion (Nina Meurisse) and father (Stéphanie Varupenne)…
The astounding Romanian documentary Collective exposes corruption on a scale I haven’t seen. The immorality reaches into the highest echelons of the health system, killing patients who would otherwise survive. This happened recently – in October 2015 to be more precise – and it took an investigative reporter, Catalin Tolontan, and two of his colleagues,…
Etta James’ sassy soul anthem Tell Mama may reassure listeners to ‘tell mamma about it’, but when Vika Bull begins Act One of the smash hit show At Last: The Etta James Story with the funky, high-spirited number, it is the audience who has desire to hear more. Bull’s love for James is clear and…
Midway is a gripping, visually spectacular – if, at times, melodramatic – recreation of events leading up to the pivotal Battle of Midway that turned the tide against the Japanese in World War II. The film, based on real-life events, tells the story of the leaders and soldiers who used their instincts, fortitude and bravery…
Robin Williams was and remains for me a legendary actor. When I was young I watched Mork and Mindy and was always looking forward to witness the hyperkinetic way of acting that this star in the making showed on the screen. When I heard the news about his death, I was speechless. The days after…
After 16 years, Todd Field makes a long-awaited return to the director’s chair with Tár. Having made two under-appreciated gems of the early 2000s with In the Bedroom (2001) and Little Children (2006), he hurtles back into the cultural conversation with this challenging but dazzling film. Tár is set in the rarefied world of Western…
