If the recent See How They Run was a movie for theatre nerds, Amsterdam is a movie for history nerds. This hugely ambitious project from writer-director David O. Russell provided a potted but pointed history of the United States between 1917 and 1935. Along the way, he hits some of the more outrageous historical notes…
Up until now, award winning Australian author Chris Womersley’s novels have been stand-alones. And the same could be said about his latest novel The Diplomat. But it is a sequel of sorts – to his 2013 novel Cairo. Or if not a sequel then at least a companion piece or spiritual successor. And given it…
Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie) works hard – in a bar and at a mortuary – to keep her head above water and make something of herself. But, of course, the bills keep coming in. In 2004 it looked like the world was at her feet. That was when she won the title of Miss Juneteenth*…
British author Francis Spufford travels to America in 1922 for his latest novel, Cahokia Jazz, but it is not an America that readers will know. The alternative world of Cahokia Jazz is one in which smallpox did not decimate the indigenous population of the North America. As a result, when European settlers started to arrive…
“If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again…” The characters of Perpetual Wake churn out lie after lie when challenged, as effortlessly as they stomp and strut all over the stage, diving in and out of the present and of the fictional world of a novel that may or not be the next greatest…
It is quite possible that every generation needs its own version of High Fidelity to hit the screen. Very broadly based on the 1995 Nick Hornby novel of the same name, this new adaptation is also set in a record store, Championship Vinyl, chronicling the relationship heartbreaks of its young and determined owner, the adorable…
Symbolic contrasts abound within The Curators’ stylish production of Angela Betzien’s Children of the Black Skirt, starting from its initial folly of youthful frolic and then soon-after stark at-attention responses of children in-fear. This establishes both the aesthetic sophistication and the narrative premise of the now-iconic work which is set in an abandoned orphanage that…
This November, the 2023 Cunard British Film Festival (presented by Palace Cinemas) will bring the finest British filmmaking, production and acting to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra and Byron Bay. Many of Britain’s most enduring and well-known faces feature in this year’s stunning selection including Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Spall, Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter,…
A gay Sliding Doors with subtitles? End of the Century is essentially a two-handed drama which serves up a meditation on relationships, the choices we make, and the fallibility of memory. Ocho (Juan Barberini), a fortysomething Argentine poet from New York on holiday in Barcelona, meets Javi (Ramon Pujol), a Berlin-based producer of a children’s…
A turgid, moody snore fest is in store for those who venture out to see Angelina Jolie’s second film as a writer and third as director (fourth if you count the documentary A Place in Time). She also happens to star in it (and produces it) alongside her husband Brad Pitt, but even two actors…
