In Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, Fern (Frances McDormand) is a loner. The highly capable 61-year-old has little to her name. She’s averse to traditional societal norms. Now she leads a frugal, nomadic life with memories of the past with her now-departed husband. Fern has always been a free spirit. But she settled in a nondescript house…
– West of Sunshine – Only in cinemas from 23 August 2018 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Exile Entertainment. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE WEST OF SUNSHINE tells the story of Jim (Damian Hill), trapped in a perpetual cycle of gambling and debt, as he desperately attempts to…
A family movie about the impact of war on children, The Railway Children Return is a sequel 52 years in the making. It’s 1944 and a new wave of German bombing has British families on edge. Parents scramble to get their children onto steam trains bound for the country to families who will care for…
Down an Alley Filled with Cats is an Australian play written in 1987, by Warwick Moss. It is a two handed small-time conman comedy-thriller. Timothy Timmony, a Polish refugee second-hand book seller matches wits with a petty Aussie ‘crook’, Simon Matthews, in search of a 12th Century Sung Dynasty vase treasure (The Maltese Falcon?!) worth…
In Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, Sam (Colin Firth) is a classical pianist, and his partner Tusker (Stanley Tucci) is a writer. Now middle-aged, the couple have been together for decades. They know how to press each other’s buttons, but are still very much in love. One day they decide to dust off the old camper van…
Well, that was a year! With everything that went on in 2020, movies proved both a comfort and a hope for better times. The big story of the year was the rise of streaming as a genuine alternative to (and in some cases, a replacement for) traditional cinemas. Those changes played out elsewhere, and we…
Can somebody really be so selfless? The documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbour? explores a remarkable figure I had previously heard nothing about. Fred Rogers led a singular life. He was a puppeteer, minister, musician and educator. He was also a father, husband and neighbour. The gently-spoken, cardigan-wearing minister dominated children’s television in the United…
Next to Normal begins with a familiar modern family scene; suburban mother Diana Goodman (Carly Skelton) waits up late for her son Gabe (Christopher Batkin) and attempts to comfort her academically-anxious daughter, Natalie (Hannah Kassulke). Soon husband Dan (Adam Bartlett) rises to help prepare the family for “Just Another Day”. Yet their lives are anything…
After a somewhat bizarre and hardly convincing opening, set in the dark past, we get the back-story of how five troubled teens from the small US town in California became Power Rangers. Although hardly ground breaking, that component was quite involving as, arguably, were the moments they respectively found out they had super powers. Beyond…
Closing the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival was the poignant, bittersweet observational documentary The Coming Back Out Ball Movie. In October 2017 the Coming Back Out Ball was held in Melbourne Town Hall to celebrate the elders within the LGBTI community who had paved the way for today’s generation of out and proud queer youth….
