Okay, this is a tough one. Shirley is out-there cinema for the dedicated cinephile. If you like a nice logical, linear plot with likeable characters, well, I’m afraid this isn’t for you. Director Jennifer Decker crafts an imagined portrait of the acclaimed writer Shirley Jackson that bathes in both the American Gothic that Jackson championed,…
A sensitive drama with a mystery at its core, the Israeli feature The Kind Words combines humour and pathos. At age 35, Dorona’s (Rotem Zissman-Cohen) life seems to have hit a dead-end. She can’t have children, she’s abandoned attempts at adoption and she seems intent on pushing her loving husband, Ricky, as far away as…
It’s one of history’s great rivalries. The intriguing story of Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary Stuart certainly has all the elements of a great movie – war, intrigue, family ties and treachery. But while Josie Rourke’s feminist retelling of the tale in Mary Queen of Scots hits the high points, it strays from the…
Extremely contrived, but feel good entertainment, The Confirmation is a story about a divorced man, an alcoholic carpenter, who is struggling to get by and his intelligent and perceptive young son. Clive Owen plays the down-on-his luck Walt, whose God-fearing ex-wife Maria Bello has remarried. She and her new husband Matthew Modine head off to…
Dry Land has much to say about abortion, female friendships and being a teenager, but it takes a long time to say it. It is the brainchild of American playwright Ruby Rae Spiegel. In 2014, Dry Land – her first full length play – premiered Off-Broadway. Spiegel was 21 years old and still a playwriting student at Yale…
In a rare occurrence, the cast of The Curator’s Australian premiere production of The Revolutionists receives audience applause before any members have even spoken a word. It comes, appropriately, in recognition of the show’s bold beginning, which sees its four characters bursting down a fashion runway. While our eyes follow them, another appears in waiting….
Killing Ground is part of a long tradition of Australian cinema, which delves into our sense of unease in our own backyard. When young urbanites Ian (Ian Meadows) and Sam (Tiarnie Coupland) go camping, they arrive at their isolated destination to discover a tent already set up, but no sign of its owners. With the other campers at…
Midsommar is one of the most bizarre and perverse movies I’ve seen. The second feature film from writer and director Ari Aster (Hereditary), is a journey into the heart of darkness – a hallucinatory and disquieting fairy tale. During a getaway with academic mates to a bucolic Swedish village, American couple Dani (Florence Pugh) and…
Mad. In a good way. That’s how I’d describe Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All by Jonas Jonasson, author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden. Here’s the blurb: It’s never too late to start again. And again. It’s always awkward…
