Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is fanciful fun for the whole family. This lightweight fare will put a smile on the faces of littlies, their parents and grandparents. It’s a live action/CGI musical comedy – a bit of colour, song and silliness to soften even the hardest of hearts. Hector P. Valenti (Javier Bardem) is a wannabe…
Sassy and darkly humourous, the stage musical Chicago circa 2019/2020 remains a sordid tale of corruption, given new life by headliners Natalie Bassingthwaite, Alinta Chidzey, Casey Donovan and Jason Donovan. With lyrics by Fred Ebb, music by John Kander and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse, the time frame is jazz-age Chicago. The musical is…
Pushing the boundaries and then some is a bizarre piece of theatre conceived and performed by Carly Sheppard in the guise of a character known as Chase. It is a persona she has worked with for a decade. The 70-minute production has anything but a straightforward narrative arc. Chase is a larger-than-life character who wants to make…
It’s a week of limited cinema releases, and they couldn’t be more different. In contrast to the thoughtful Nine Days, Gunpowder Milkshake lets you leave your brain at the door. This colourful adult fairytale from writer-director Navot Papushado is a rollercoaster ride. It’s shamelessly entertaining in that brutal way favoured by the likes of Quentin…
Inferno is the third film adapted from the series of novels written by Dan Brown featuring the religious symbologist Robert Langdon (played by Tom Hanks). A symbologist is the type of arcane profession that only exists within the cloistered world of academia or the pages of thriller novels. Although the second novel in the series,…
A love story against a backdrop of civil war, Skies of Lebanon has a decided artistic and poetic bent. It is the 1950s and despite not speaking a word of Arabic, Alice (Alba Rohrwacher) leaves her straitlaced existence in Switzerland for a nannying job in Beirut. In a café she meets and falls for a…
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is a showcase of all that is great about musical theatre. The music is outstanding – hit after glorious hit – with superb voices to match. The story is beautifully crafted, with plenty of humour, heart and pathos. The staging is colourful, the set changes frequent and seamless, and the pacing…
I love a good psychological suspense novel, especially edge-of-the-seat stories. Bone By Bone by Sanjida Kay hooked me so deeply, I read it in one sitting. Here’s the blurb: Laura is making a fresh start. Newly divorced and relocated to Bristol, she is carving a new life for her and her nine-year-old daughter, Autumn. But things aren’t going…
We seem to have been getting more European – specifically French – films in Australian cinemas recently. That might be a hangover from Hollywood’s troubles over the past year or two, but it provides an opportunity for more diverse offerings. And few films could be further from a Hollywood blockbuster than Catherine Breillat’s enigmatic Last…
