Showmanship, humour, pathos, anger, overt messaging and song are part of this well-meaning but noticeably stretched offering. At its core is a gay man, Cole (Stephen Loftus), now comfortable in his own skin, although it wasn’t always that way. He talks about his school years and coming out to his parents. And then, after Cole references a mentor…
Jonathan Larson wrote the smash hit Broadway musical Rent. How he got there involved pain and persistence. That’s the subject of tick, tick … Boom! Living in New York, Jon (Hugh Sheridan) dreams of being a Broadway musical writer. His creativity is recognised by his close and loyal friends, but he is on the cusp of 30…
What’s Love Got To Do With It? is an unfortunate title considering the other film of the same name documents Tina Turner’s relationship with her horribly abusive husband. Nevertheless, it’s apt for this rom-com with its focus on the pros and cons of arranged marriages – or in this case assisted marriage. Zoe (Lily James)…
Filmmaker Guy Ritchie gathers together most of his usual band of players for Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. And this action-packed but cliched globe-trotting spy movie ticks all the right boxes for the genre. When a mysterious device (the film’s MacGuffin) is stolen from a secret laboratory MI6 needs to act quickly to recover it…
Terry Pratchett was a prolific writer, and still commands a massive fan base. You could think of him as a kind of Roald Dahl or J. K. Rowling with a more surreal edge. His audiences tend to be more Monty Python than Harry Potter. But in the animated romp The Amazing Maurice, co-directors Toby Genkel…
Nonsense, fiddle-faddle and poppycock is the essence of Lewis Carroll’s timeless classic Alice in Wonderland. Now writer and director Penny Farrow has sourced characters, dialogue and poems from several sources to bring the adventure to life. These include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking-Glass, The Hunting of Snark and Rhyme? And Reason? (a collection of…
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is an extraordinary, original work by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Nick Paley that has Best Animated Feature written all over it. It’s a delightful tale, beautifully told. Marcel (the voice of Jenny Slate) is a one-inch-high shell from a large community of shells. Now only he and his grandmother Connie…
Sixty-five minutes of glorious mayhem. That is what you get with this extraordinarily detailed production. It is set against the sprawling layout of a full house – broken into five rooms – a major video screen as a backdrop and two smaller TVs, stage left and right. The cast does a mighty job with the material, which…
A musical for the littlies – I speak of preschoolers and primary school age children – Madagascar The Musical is based on the successful animated motion picture. It is colourful and fun, and involves live action and puppetry. The premise is that Marty the zebra was born in captivity in New York’s Central Park Zoo. Although he…
After two years of disruption, movie-going in Australia pretty much got back to normal in 2022. After a slow start, loosening of COVID-related restrictions saw audiences coming back to the big screen. Box office receipts were up according to BoxOfficeMojo, though the increase over the pretty miserable 2021 figures was perhaps smaller than studios and…
