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Madame Web – movie review

Imagine if you had the ability to see into the future and change the outcome. That idea is at the centre of Marvel’s latest superhero movie, which the studio would like to turn into a franchise. Brought up in foster homes, Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic. All she knows is that her mother…

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Fallen Leaves – movie review

The latest film from Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki is Fallen Leaves, a deceptively simple and quirky rom-com about two-star crossed lovers in Helsinki. Two lonely down-on-their-luck, working class people meet at a karaoke bar. But they find the path to making a connection and maybe finding happiness is not smooth sailing. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is…

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Force of Nature: The Dry 2 – movie review

Non-indigenous Australians have often had a rather fraught relationship with the landscape of this continent. On one hand, its “boundless plains” offered a sense of opportunity; a chance to control the environment. But the land is also sometimes perceived as a wild place that can never be controlled. This led to a pervading sense of…

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Candide (Victorian Opera) – operetta review

Exactly what is the best of all possible worlds? You may well ask that question before, during and after watching the delicious Broadway operetta Candide. The focus is on the hapless titular character (Lyndon Watts), who is schooled by the ever-optimistic Doctor Pangloss (Eddie Perfect). Perfect, who doubles as the philosopher Voltaire, narrates the musical mayhem that ensues…

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Blue Skies (TC Boyle)

American author TC Boyle has always been interested in the environment and its fragility those who seek to understand and protect it. From his 2000 novel A Friend of the Earth through to 2011’s When the Killing’s Done and 2016’s The Terranauts. Boyle’s latest novel Blue Skies also considers our relationship with the natural world,…

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