A sweeping period drama, Jeanne du Barry covers the rise and fall of the eponymous mistress to a former French king. The real Jeanne du Barry was born Jeanne Bécu in 1743; the illegitimate daughter of a monk and a cook, brought up by her mother. In the film, Jeanne’s (Maïwenn) road to the king’s…
Keith (Kevin Hofbauer) is a single, black, gay mortgage broker and caretaker of a young foster daughter. Ryan (Darcy Kent) is an undereducated, recently divorced, white, factory worker with a daughter the same age as Keith’s. The two young’uns attend the same day care centre in Twin Falls in Idaho. Ryan is desperate to buy a parcel…
Multi-award winning Australian crime fiction author Candice Fox returns with another incendiary, page turning stand alone thriller with a killer hook and great central characters in Devil’s Kitchen. Staying in America (where she’s set her last few books), the novel focusses on a crew of firefighters who use their position and their skills to carry…
The First Omen is a prequel to the classic horror film franchise that began with Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976), starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. That film introduced audiences to Damien, the Antichrist. Director Arkasha Stevenson’s prequel opens in 1971, five years before the events of The Omen. A young American woman, Margaret Daino…
Wim Wenders’ (Paris, Texas) new film Perfect Days is a gently paced minimalist drama from the revered German filmmaker. Set in Japan, it reveals his great appreciation for Japan, its culture and traditions. A German/Japanese co-production Perfect Days was nominated for an Oscar, becoming the first Japanese-language film not directed by a Japanese filmmaker to…
Every year when I get my hands on the Melbourne International Film Festival program and start selecting my films, the first strand I pore through is Night Shift, which contains some bizarre horror and cinematic oddities. And the offbeat Late Night With the Devil (MIFF ’23) offers a fresh take on the tired found-footage genre….
In the context of Alice Rohrwacher’s film La Chimera, the Chimera of the title is something people search for but never manage to find. The fictional story features a band of Tombaroli, Italian grave robbers, looking for archaeological wonders. Their lucky charm is an eccentric British archaeologist, Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who finds things others can’t,…
Writer and director Ava DuVernay has chosen an artistic interpretation of the work of Isabel Wilkerson in Origin. The film was inspired by Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. At the start of the film, Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) doesn’t know it, but she’s about to lose the two most important people in her…
Four actors … who break the fourth wall, track down a Melbourne man from a seven-minute rant obtained by a transcription service and give a potted history of the internet. That, in a nutshell, is the subject matter of the cleverly orchestrated play that puts the fear of God into you. In fact, humour and paranoia are…
Writer and director Alex Garland (Ex Machina) is a master filmmaker who steps it up a notch with the blockbuster Civil War. In the film, America is at war with itself. The President (Nick Offerman) has declared he is on the verge of victory, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Looking to take…
