In his seventh year at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Michael Shafar is laid back and effortlessly funny. In short, the 33-year-old knows how to entertain a crowd, as howls of laughter ring out throughout his hour-long standup routine, where nothing is sacred. He is clever and ribald and risqué. Home base – formerly Melbourne – is…
Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Slow West is a quirky adventure set in Colorado in the second half of the 19th century. It tells the story of 16-year-old aristocrat Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who journeys from Scotland across the American Frontier in search of the woman…
Finally, a sequel I can get behind! Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact Pixar have taken nine years to come up with a sequel to 2015’s Inside Out, but they’ve delivered something pretty special with Inside Out 2. I think the main reason this film works is that it actually makes sense….
German author Dirk Kurbjuweit’s first novel to be translated into English was Fear, based on his own experience of being stalked. His most recent book in translation (translated by Imogen Taylor) is a very different beast. Based on the shocking true story of Fritz Haarmann, the Butcher of Hannover, The Missing is more a thinly…
Inanely silly, slapstick comedic and fun, it is hard to believe that Masterminds is based upon a true story and wasn’t simply a late night, tall-tale concoction. It follows the riotous misadventures of unlikely anti-hero David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis) as he pulls off one of the largest robberies in U.S. history. He is painted as…
Alaska is not really a hotbed for new music but it should never simply be dismissed based on its map coordinates. I say this because when you hear singer songwriter Evan Phillips fourth solo record, Silhouettes, you may think about putting on a big winter jacket just to get in the spirit but there will…
Woody Harrelson stars in the title role as Wilson, a lonely, eccentric misanthrope who reunites with his long estranged wife Pippi (Laura Dern). He gets a shot at happiness when he learns he has a teenage daughter, Claire (Isabella Amara), he’s never met. The script has been written by Daniel Clowes, based upon his graphic novel…
Smile is a genuinely scary and engaging psychological horror movie. It centres around a hard-working therapist in an emergency psychiatric unit, named Dr Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon). As Dr Cotter is about to leave the facility after a particularly long shift, a young graduate student Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) enters shaking and clearly traumatised. In…
