Joanna Murray-Smith’s remarkable insight, attention to detail and writing prowess are front and centre in a captivating production of Berlin at The MC Showroom. Australian Tom (Lachlan Hamill) has just landed in the German capital, keen to get to know the real city, not the tourist offering. He’s directed to a small watering hole, where he meets…
Nominated for eight Oscars, David Lynch’s 1980 dramatic biographical film The Elephant Man – featuring Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft and John Gielgud – remains seared into my consciousness. Now a clever and creative group of writers and composers (Marc Lucchesi, Sarah Nandagopan and Jayan Nandagopan) has taken the story’s essence, twisted it and turned…
A donkey embarks on an existential journey and witnesses the best and worst of humanity in the latest quirky film from revered Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (Essential Killing). Both visually and thematically it is an ugly film. A mob of soccer hooligans almost beat Eo to death mistaking it for the mascot for the opposition…
In director by Richard Eyre’s Allelujah, the Bethlehem is a small geriatric hospital in Yorkshire and its various wards are named after celebrities who have donated money. But the hospital is now being threatened with closure due to budget cuts by the Minister of Health as the politician wants to focus the health system on…
It’s been fifty years since the horror classic The Exorcist hit screens and scared the bejesus out of audiences. Since then there have been many other films that have delved into the demonic possession genre. The Pope’s Exorcist is the latest in a long line of such films and it ticks off all the usual…
Having closely watched all 75 minutes of Pear-Shaped, I remain utterly confused about what I just saw. It is a semi-autobiographical work (it contains both real and imagined experiences), written by Miranda Middleton and Ziggy Resnick, starring the latter and Luisa Scrofani. It concerns an eating disorder overlaid with Alice in Wonderland. What the? From what I…
Rolling Thunder Vietnam is a deeply emotional, richly rewarding musical and narrative experience that takes you to the heart of the highly divisive Vietnam War. Featuring 20 of the most affecting songs of the era, Rolling Thunder Vietnam prizes open the hopes and fears of the young soldiers who went into battle. It also looks at the…
Basketball is huge in America; and Air Jordan shoes are now synonymous with it. Of course, that wasn’t always the case. Director and actor Ben Affleck’s (Argo) new film AIR tells the story of how the greatest basketball player of all time, the shoe and the Nike company came together. So this is one of…
Brilliantly performed by Justine Clarke who, as the 27th Australian Prime Minister, displays determination, indignance and frustration, I would suggest one’s political predilection will have a fair say in how Joanna Murray-Smith’s words go down. As the writer, the latter has combined fact and fiction. She has taken incendiary language from shock jocks, political opponents and…
We’re among African Americans in a working-class suburb in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Although affable when it suits him, Troy Maxon (Bert Labonte) can be a hard man to stomach. A garbage collector, he has a “my way or the highway approach” and sometimes the choices he makes are decidedly ordinary. His upbringing was far from desirable….
