The Dancer is an unusual story about achievement, heartbreak and pain. This period film concerns a dancer who rewrote the rule book. Born in the American Midwest, nothing in her background destined farm girl Loïe Fuller (Soko) to become the toast of Europe’s Belle Epoque cabarets. But – hidden behind metres of silk, her arms…
In 1973, former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs played women’s champion Billie Jean King in a spectacular tennis match – dubbed the Battle of the Sexes – at the Houston Astrodome. Riggs was also a serial tennis hustler, gambling addict and sexist braggart. It proved a landmark that ultimately had repercussions for the status of women’s tennis and…
Director Kriv Stenders (Red Dog, etc) seems like he is trying to set up a series of films centred around significant national holidays. In 2007, he gave us the powerful but bleak, grim drama Boxing Day which told the story of one man’s desperate struggle to try and reconcile his estranged family on this one…
Discomfort underpins Beatriz at Dinner, a fable about power, privilege and responsibility. At an elegant dinner party in a swanky hilltop home, conversation between a soft spoken holistic healer and a hard-nosed businessman and tycoon explodes into a bitter clash of cultures. Beatriz (Salma Hayek), a self-effacing and spiritual immigrant from Mexico, has spent her adult…
Exploitation and heartache are at the centre of Indivisible, a gritty story about attractive, singing 18-year-old conjoined twins. Connected at the hip, Daisy (Marianna Fontana) and Viola (Angela Fontana) are gifted. They have beautiful voices and often sing at local weddings, family functions and communions. Their father, a seedy, small-time businessman, has turned them into an…
In The Belko Experiment, the Belko of the title is a US non-profit organisation based in Bogota in Colombia. It works to facilitate American businesses wanting to operate in South America. One day though an unusually high level of security appears around the high-rise office building. As the employees go about their business, a wall…
Guess it wasn’t that simple to do this. Making a film that focuses solely on an American marine named Mike (Armie Hammer) who stepped on a landmine and who doesn’t dare to take any further steps. For 90 minutes, there’s nothing else to see than this soldier who has to wait 52 hours for a…
Unlike boxing, NFL football, horse racing, car racing, or even surfing, golf is not the most cinematic of sports and holds little appeal for adrenaline junkies. However, we have had a few films set against the backdrop of the sport, including the Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore, Tin Cup starring Kevin Costner, and Robert Redford’s…
We know that writer and director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) likes pushing the envelope, but with Mother! he goes way beyond the pale. Jennifer Lawrence plays a young woman deeply in love with a significantly older man, her husband Javier Bardem, a poet with a severe case of writer’s block. He once wrote a best…
Gritty, grungy and wickedly pleasurable, Patti Cake$ is a downbeat rags tale about a blue collar rap wannabe. Patricia Dombrowski, a.k.a. Patti Cake$, a.k.a. Killa P. (Australian newcomer Danielle Macdonald), has had it with life in her rundown New Jersey hometown. At 23 she is ready to hit the road and make a play for…
