The low budget indie crime drama Good Time is the latest film from the Safdie brothers (Benny and Joshua). Their films, like Daddy Longlegs, often explore the struggles of losers who live on the edges of society. This is a gritty and downbeat black comedy and heist drama with plenty of energy. Connie Nikas (played…
Life is complicated. A young man growing up in New York who has fallen for an attractive young lady, who happens to be his best friend. You might think you’ve heard it all before, but you haven’t. Unless you’ve seen the trailer for The Only Living Boy in New York – which I sincerely wish…
Boise, Idaho. Storm clouds have rolled in, causing all flights to be cancelled. Ben (Idris Elba) is a neurosurgeon trying to get a flight to Denver. He needs to catch a connecting flight to New York, where he’s scheduled to perform life-saving surgery on a ten-year old boy. Alex (Kate Winslet) is a photojournalist who…
Fifty-eight people died and more than 520 were injured in the Las Vegas slaughter. Joanna Murray-Smith wrote her powerful and affecting one-man play American Song long before that tragedy unfolded. Unfortunately mass shootings in the land of the free have become all too common. American Song was commissioned in the US and first produced there last year…
I loathed the past couple of films from revered auteur Terrence Malick, particularly his To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, with their frustratingly obtuse, indulgent and abstract experimental nature, existential meditations, impressionistic and unconventional approach to narrative, the mumbled and at times inaudible dialogue often delivered as internal monologues, the non-linear structure and fractured…
I want to do something different with Blade Runner 2049. Rather than discuss the plot, the acting, and the score (which are all excellent by the way), I want to take a step back a bit. Blade Runner (1982) wasn’t the first dystopian sci-fi movie (or even the first noir sci-fi), it was a groundbreaking…
If there’s one thing Hollywood loves to celebrate, it’s the artistic process. Doing that is fairly easy with things like theatre (see: Birdman) or movies themselves. Painting however is a rather different proposition. Since it’s a largely internal process, it doesn’t really lend itself to the visual medium. That hasn’t stopped actor-turned-director Stanley Tucci from…
Luke Rogers, director of the new Australian play In Real Life, began a collaboration with writer Julian Larnach almost three years ago. In the program notes, Mr Rogers uses a quote from Sherry Turkle, a Professor of Science and Technology: ‘Technology doesn’t just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we…
Death becomes her. That’s a rather facetious reference to what kicks off the key character’s journey in this dramatic sci-fi horror – a re-imagining of the 1990 film of the same name. Five medical students are obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond the confines of life. They decide to undertake a daring and…
Heal the Living is a French art house drama with decidedly European sensibilities dealing with the touchy subject of organ donation. It is actually three stories in one, based on a novel by Maylis de Kerangal. Three young surfers leave before dawn on a pilgrimage to the raging sea. They are on their way back home when…
