French cinema icon Isabelle Huppert displays her comedic side in Jean-Paul Salomé’s crime caper The Godmother (La Daronne). The film starts out as a conventional crime drama with the cops looking to intercept a shipment of drugs, but ends up in some pretty wild territory. Huppert plays Patience Portefeux*, a translator with the Paris police….
Circus arts performed in a most unlikely setting. Statera puts the supermarket or grocery store front and centre. It is imaginative, clever, funny and upbeat. It enables four performers – Karina Schiller, Aleshanee Kelso, Dylan Singh and Tomas Correia – to showcase their considerable skills. Above all, balance is required, not to overlook dexterity and strength. Tumbles, jumps and acrobatics…
A 16-year-old by the name of Levi Presley plunges to his death after leaping off the ledge of a tall casino hotel in Las Vegas, so an American voiceover tells us. That may appear to be the start of a horror story, but while the act and its repercussions most certainly are, The Lifespan of a…
The Man in the Hat sounds like something from the pen of Dr Seuss. Rather this is a quirky and offbeat Tati-esque comedy about an unnamed man (played by Irish actor Ciaran Hinds) driving through the French countryside in his little Fiat 500. He drives through backroads and byways and small villages, and interacts with…
Meet Carol and Daryl Pitts, aka Stephanie Marion Wood and Brendy Ford. They are a pair of wellness gurus who ply their craft each Wednesday afternoon at the Shady Pines Nursing Home for the elderly and infirm. The senior citizens are in for a real treat as Carol and Daryl – lovers of life and each other…
Think back. You’re 14 and nothing in this world (and I do mean nothing) means more to you than your total infatuation with your teen idol. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You daydream of him having eyes only for you. You have to find a way. Whatever it takes. That is the starting point for the wickedly…
Four disparate individuals enter a twilight zone. No, that’s not the starting point for a gag. In fact, far from it. Rather, it is the beginning of what could turn out to be a long journey back. Each of the quartet – strangers to one another – has attempted to take their own life by different methods…
Raja (Mariya Belkin) and Victor Frankel (Vladimir Friedman), a couple in their 60s, were the unsung heroes of Russian cinema. For several decades they had dubbed Hollywood epics into Russian for cinema audiences. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the couple left Russia and migrated to Israel. But like thousands of…
Circa Contemporary Circus has teamed with Aardman Studio to bring to life Shaun, the sheep who has been creating mischief and much mirth with his animal friends since 2007. I haven’t watched the original television series, but I have seen the two Shaun the Sheep movies – the first of which was released in 2015 and…
A whodunnit like you have never seen. That is the domain of three hapless private investigators out to solve a murder mystery. Film noir blended with slapstick, burlesque and circus, Dumtectives is highly creative, very clever, decidedly funny and deliciously rude. Much is performed with a minimum of dialogue, save for a few well worded musical numbers,…
