Just how bad was the global financial meltdown of 2008? Well … several top economists considered it to be the worst monetary crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now the lead-up to it is captured in gripping detail and sensational form in The Big Short, one of the films of the year. When…
Approximately twelve men have walked on the surface of the moon, but only one man has walked a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York. In 1974 Frenchman Phillippe Petit spent some 45 minutes 100 floors above the street, without a safety harness, enthralling New Yorkers who had gathered…
– Madame Web – Only in cinemas from 14 February 2024 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Sony Pictures. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE “Meanwhile, in another universe…” In a switch from the typical genre, Madame Web tells the standalone origin story of one of Marvel publishing’s most enigmatic…
If you miss Harry Potter and you are into the phantasmagorical stories created by J.K. Rowling, I dare say you will find plenty in which to immerse yourself in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the start of her latest fantasy series. The action takes place decades before the round-goggled wonder came to be…
I hope comic book fans find more to appreciate about James Gunn’s (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) take on The Suicide Squad than I did. I found it a garbled, at times incoherent, mess. The US government is secretly engaging the services of hardened criminals with “special skills” (read: killing). They go on perilous…
Melbourne has hosted the English-language debut of Madiba The Musical, after the show had previously opened in France, north Africa and the West Indies.It chronicles Nelson Mandela’s triumph-against-the-odds story. A forbidden love affair between a black man and a white woman provides a fictional parallel tale. The musical skips through much of Mandela’s historical backstory…
Two women of a certain age do what women of a certain age don’t usually do – and love it – in One and the Other. We’re talking about circus acts. The show has a decidedly feminist slant and before the final act rolled around the #metoo movement was at the forefront of my mind….
Both these films are in very limited release. 1945 On a summer day in 1945, an Orthodox Jewish man and his grown son return to a village in Hungary. The villagers are preparing for the wedding of the town clerk’s son. The townspeople expect the worst and behave accordingly. The town clerk fears the men…
– At Eternity’s Gate – Only in cinemas from 14 February 2019 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to Transmission Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Julian Schnabel’s luminous new film takes a fresh look at the last days of Vincent van Gogh, and in the process revives our sense of the…
Dread is palpable throughout Arthur Miller’s drama A View from the Bridge. The Melbourne Theatre Company’s version features seven actors and one old wooden chair but held me transfixed for two hours. The time is the 1950s; and the place an Italian-American neighbourhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The narrator is Alfieri (Marco…
