What expectations do you have when you’re going to see a disaster movie such as San Andreas? Obviously you’re looking forward to see how a metropolis like San Francisco is reduced to an immense mess, strewn with rubble and twisted steel. Immense skyscrapers collapsing like a house of cards and tumbling down one after the…
There is school spirit and then there is a school’s spirit. An horror story set in a US high school, The Gallows started life as a promotional trailer from a couple of newcomers. Twenty years after an accident caused the death of the lead actor during a play, students at the same small town institution…
In this age of remakes, re-boots and re-imaginings, finding an original story on the big screen can be a hard ask. But if you find yourself craving something out-of-the-box; something that doesn’t feel like it’s been done a thousand times before, you should seek out Captain Fantastic. The writer and director of this road movie…
The sensitive fantasy-romance All of Us Strangers concerns two lost souls. Based on a novel by Taichi Yamada, the film is written and directed by Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete). It’s a reflective, slow-burning and mysterious work. One night a triggered fire alarm sees screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) evacuate his apartment building temporarily. Staring up,…
Irish lyricism, bluster and blarney combine in Wild Mountain Thyme. This romantic drama has the sole purpose of joining a lovelorn woman and her timid neighbour. Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) grew up initially doubting her purpose until her father told her she was the white swan, like in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (which is a recurring…
Toni Collette puts in a dominant performance in the dramatic thriller Hereditary. When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter Annie’s (Collette) life begins to unravel. Their relationship was always prickly, and they were estranged for an extended period. Now cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about the family’s ancestry will come to…
Battle of Waterloo, by Kylie Coolwell, is a new Australian play. This is the Indigenous play that I have been waiting for. Ms Coolwell has written a work from the heart of an urban Indigenous community, in the contemporary world of the housing commission buildings of Waterloo, not far from Redfern, set in the thrilling…
In Greek mythology, Clytemnestra was the twin sister of the woman said to be the most beautiful in the world, Helen of Troy. Their mother was Leda. Cygnets is a new take on sibling rivalry – the pain, the pleasure, the subterfuge. It shows the two girls had different experiences with their mother. It reveals jealousy and cruelty. An…
Are you an Agatha Christie fan? Does nothing get you going quite like a drawing room mystery? If you said yes, then Régis Roinsard’s stylish mystery The Translators (Les traducteurs) will be catnip for you. But Roinsard and his screenwriting collaborators Daniel Presley and Romain Compingt give the genre a modern sheen with a comprehensive…
As a director Ben Affleck so far has a perfect strike rate with his three previous efforts behind the camera. First up was the tough Boston noir Gone Baby Gone, which was adapted from the novel written by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), and starred younger brother Casey. Next up was The Town, a tough crime…
