Book Club: The Next Chapter is a feel-good sequel to the 2018 film Book Club. It concerns the ongoing fate of the four women at the centre of the original as they undertake a special girls’ trip. Vivian (Jane Fonda), perpetually single, has just been asked for her hand in marriage by her long-term, suave…
A brilliant slice of musical theatre, Once has an inspiring, ear and eye pleasing balance of heart and humour. Based on the 2007 movie by John Carney, it concerns a struggling Irish musician on the verge of giving up and an effervescent Czech woman. The latter (Stefanie Caccamo) sees the guy (Toby Francis), guitar in hand, singing…
American writer Dennis Lehane burst onto the crime scene with his hard-hitting debut A Drink Before the War (1994), the first of his Kenzie and Gennaro novels. That series probably hit its apex with one of Lehane’s best-known books (thanks to the movie version), Gone Baby Gone. These books, along with the standalone Mystic River,…
Writer-director Elegance Bratton’s own story of overcoming fierce odds to become a US marine inspired his film The Inspection. We’re in New Jersey in 2005 and 25-year-old Ellis French (Jeremy Pope) leads a threadbare existence. Estranged from his mother, Inez (Gabrielle Union), he’s been on his own since the age of 16 and the one…
Four elderly women head off on a road trip to the 2017 Superbowl in Texas in support of their idol Tom Brady – the famed quarterback for the New England Patriots regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the NFL. Another of those films which delight in seeing older folk kick…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 5 May 2023. Over three decades ago, Peter One was a STAR – a country music star – in West Africa. With his singing partner Jess Sah Bi, Peter played in sold-out arenas. In 1985, Our Garden Needs Its…
A new Australian work, The Critical Marriage by Mark Andrew is the inside story of a relationship between a couple of intellectual heavyweights. The wife and narrator, Imogen, is an economist. She first set eyes upon her German husband Bernhard, an evolutionary psychologist, in an Oxford University lecture theatre. The sparks flew instantly and wedded bliss followed soon…
One of the hits of the 2022 Jewish International Film Festival was this quirky dramedy about a Holocaust survivor who comes to believe that his new next door neighbour is actually Adolf Hitler living incognito. Somewhere in South America in 1960. Grumpy and surly Malek Polsky (David Hayman) is a Holocaust survivor who lost his…
One of America’s most influential twentieth century plays A Streetcar Named Desire’ is now on at Sydney’s Genesian Theatre. Written in the 1940’s by Tennessee Williams, its content is as relevant today as it was then. Dramatic from start to finish, there is plenty to digest and take home from this finely crafted production. Over…
Absurdist and existential, Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days is a play strictly for selective tastes. That is not to overlook Judith Lucy’s stellar performance in it, rather it reflects my opinion that it will be admired by some and frustrate others. It is about the passing of time and the impact it has on us as we…
