Not to be confused with Barry Levinson’s 1994 erotic thriller of the same name, the provocative and intimate drama Disclosure looks at the darker side of suburban life in contemporary Australia. Two sets of parents gather together to discuss an incident involving their children, but things turn ugly as the impromptu meeting progresses. Natasha Bowman,…
Inspired by real events, Persian Lessons is the story of one man’s heart-wrenching struggle to survive the Holocaust. Gilles (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) is a Belgian Jew, captured in France in 1942 while trying to make his way to Switzerland. He’s is bundled into the back of a truck along with many others. They expect to…
Trent Dalton’s debut novel Boy Swallows Universe captured hearts and minds and became a bestseller. It must have been a daunting prospect for playwright Tim McGarry to adapt the sprawling saga of nearly 500 pages for the stage, but if any doubts existed that his beloved story could morph successfully into a performance piece, they…
If you’ve ever seen and enjoyed Baz Luhrmann’s kinetic Romeo + Juliet (1996), you’ll probably enjoy Die in a Gunfight. Like Luhrmann, director Collin Schiffli updates Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for a contemporary audience. Although the result is a mixed bag, Schiffli gets it mostly right. The film reminded me a lot of the recent…
For those unfamiliar with John Steinbeck’s classic 1937 novella Of Mice and Men, a strumming pre-show soundtrack accompanying the rustic bunkhouse staging (Bill Haycock, designer) plants Ad Astra audiences firmly in its Depression-era California setting. Lighting also warms us to the tender take at the heart of the story as we meet is main characters,…
If you combine Captain Hook with a swarm of bees you have an idea of the antagonists in the horror-thriller Candyman. This 2021 version is based on the 1992 film of the same name written by Bernard Rose, and the short story The Forbidden by Clive Barker. Jordan Peele (Get Out), Win Rosenfeld and Nia…
You don’t have to look hard to see the shadows looming over Lisa Joy’s Reminiscence. The film is essentially a re-working of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, with futuristic elements overlaying the noirish story. What Joy does with the tale is clever, but it never surpasses the original. Joy is better known as a screenwriter, notably for…
La Verónica centres on social media star and footballer’s wife Verónica (Mariana Di Girólamo). Her persistent efforts to procure a sponsorship deal could be derailed by re-surfaced murder charges concerning an infant. Director Leonardo Medel frames the entire film in medium close-up with Verónica’s face in the centre. This conceit hinges on the idea that…
Liam Neeson’s new action thriller Ice Road is as a cross between reality series Ice Road Truckers and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s tense 1953 drama The Wages of Fear. If you’re not familiar, in The Wages of Fear, a group of men were hired to transport a shipment of volatile nitroglycerine through treacherous mountain passes and across…
The slow-moving period piece Fanny Lye Deliver’d is a film mired in pain. The year is 1657. The place: Shropshire, in the West Midlands region of England. Fanny Lye (Maxine Peake) is a hard-working farmer’s wife, living a life of Puritan stricture. Her husband, John (Charles Dance), is a cruel former army captain returned from…
