Whether it has become an annual pilgrimage or if you are seeing it for the first time, The Old Vic’s A Christmas Carol is an outstanding, heartfelt production. Each year, the starring role goes to a different actor. Now it is Erik Thompson who plays Ebenezer Scrooge with distinction. In the first Australian showing two…
Hugh Grant was once the affable if slightly awkward star of romantic comedies like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. But since Guy Ritchie cast him against type in a couple of his gritty thrillers, Grant has carved out a niche for himself in playing villainous types. He was great as the main…
Featuring Sacred Harp, otherwise known as shape-note or fasola, singing, The Hall is a moving and superbly executed offering. It involves a community choir delivering a capella in four-part harmony. The story concerns three members of a family. Tup (Natasha Herbert) has been diagnosed with Stage 4 frontotemporal dementia. She is incontinent and prone to…
“This is the way the world ends; this is the way the world ends.” The final line in August: Osage County, taken from a poem by T S Eliot, is an apt conclusion to this damning portrayal of American culture and history. Considered one of the great 21st Century American plays, August: Osage County bares…
– Kraven The Hunter – Only in cinemas from 12 December 2024 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Sony Pictures. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Kraven the Hunter is the action-packed, standalone story of how one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a…
Nearly 25 years after Gladiator, Ridley Scott has gone back to the well… and this time there are sharks in the Colosseum. In Gladiator II, Russell Crowe, who played Maximus in the original, is only seen in a couple of quick throwback scenes. But even with the focus squarely on his son, Lucius (Paul Mescal),…
There’s Always Tomorrow is a bittersweet story about a family of six. The film is set in Rome in the mid-1940s, after the Liberation. But the war has left misery in its aftermath. The primary focus is on wife, Delia (played by Paola Cortellesi, who has co-written and directs the film). She and her family…
I am faced with a predicament that I can’t say I have confronted too many times after a few decades of reviewing. I have just seen a compelling piece of theatre, which I am about to highly recommend, but I will resist going into detail about the plot. I choose not to do so because…
The supremely talented Washington family come together to keep the legacy of the late August Wilson alive with The Piano Lesson. And in the process, they’ve created one of the most extraordinary films of the year. The Piano Lesson is the third in patriarch Denzel Washington’s ambitious ongoing project to produce films of all Wilson’s…
I must confess that I haven’t seen the first two films in the Terrifier series. But I was drawn to check out the third film in the slasher franchise out of curiosity due to news reports from the US about people fainting, vomiting and fleeing from the cinema due to the intense level of graphic…
