You know how siblings can be. When one gets to do something, the other just has to do it too. So when Joel Coen stepped out of the Coen Brothers cocoon in 2021 to direct the brooding, highly stylised The Tragedy of Macbeth, it was only a matter of time before younger brother Ethan Coen…
Non-indigenous Australians have often had a rather fraught relationship with the landscape of this continent. On one hand, its “boundless plains” offered a sense of opportunity; a chance to control the environment. But the land is also sometimes perceived as a wild place that can never be controlled. This led to a pervading sense of…
– The Rooster – Only in cinemas from 22 February 2024 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to Bonsai Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Written and directed by award-winning actor Mark Leonard Winter, who makes his feature filmmaking debut with THE ROOSTER. Produced by Logie-nominated actor Geraldine Hakewill (Wanted,…
Japanese novelist Kotaro Isaka hit on a great formula with his last book, Bullet Train. That was a fast paced, violent and weird battle between a group of idiosyncratic assassins on a train. Bullet Train was influenced by more than a little manga, plenty of early Tarantino and a whole lot of swagger. And while…
Australian rural crime author Adrian Hyland brought character Jesse Redpath from the red outback of Northern Territory to a tinder-dry Victorian country town in Canticle Creek. There was a raging bushfire in the climax to Canticle Creek but when Hyland’s follow-up The Wiregrass opens, the weather could not be more different. Jesse finds herself working…
Robert Goodman For more of Robert’s reviews, visit his blog Pile By the Bed Robert GoodmanRobert Goodman is a book reviewer, former Ned Kelly Awards judge and institutionalised public servant based in Sydney. This and over 450 more book reviews can be found on his website Pile By the Bed. pilebythebed.com/
After the success of his comic golden age of crime thriller Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone and the continuing resurgence of golden age crime narratives (including Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot movies and the Knives Out series) it is no surprise that Benjamin Stevenson has returned to the well for Everyone on this Train…
After a three-year break, David Fincher is back with a very un-Fincher-like film with The Killer. This finely crafted film sees the director subverting just about every convention of the hitman sub-genre in a way I found both inventive and a little perplexing at the same time. Fincher is of course known for the directorial…
Martin Scorsese’s new film Killers of the Flower Moon is a Western crime drama set in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Based on fact, it looks at the serial murder of native Americans living on oil-rich land. After arriving home from WWI, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), moves in with his wealthy cattle rancher uncle, William King…
Detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan return for a third time as the leads in Chris Hammer’s sixth book The Seven. Once again he delivers a multi-generational tale of crimes and misdemeanours in a very particular part of the Australian rural landscape. While Treasure and Dirt was set in the opal fields of Northern New…
