Trap is the latest film from M Night Shyamalan and, like so much of his oeuvre, it’s driven by an intriguing premise. But as with so many of his previous films it begins to lose momentum and credibility, especially during the unnecessarily drawn out third act. The film opens with Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett), a…
Lily Bloom’s father has just died. Her mother Jenny wants her to eulogise him at his funeral, but she can’t. Why not? That introduction sets in motion a chain of events that will see the sins of the father visited on the child. As a teenager, Lily struck up a loving relationship with a fellow…
The moral dilemma. Juicy. Delicious. Ideal for the stage. It is at the heart of Only Child, a new play from Leah Annetta. Divorced, uptight Veronika (Sarah Hallam) runs a wedding planning business. She lives with her mother Barbara (Michele Stayner) and her high achieving, 18-year-old daughter Anika (Alessandra Alessio). Anika, in her final year…
Patricia Font’s Spanish/Catalan-language film The Teacher Who Promised the Sea is based on fact, and shines a light on the horrors of the murderous Franco regime. The film uses a highly personal 2010 search to tell its story. Ariadna (Laia Costa) is a single mother whose grandfather is dying man. She begins desperately looking for…
Star crossed lovers all right, but this isn’t the Montagues and the Capulets. In fact, far from it … and neither are we in historic Verona. Romeo & Julie is set in contemporary Splott, a district south of Cardiff and concerns two decidedly different 18 year olds. Romy is a single father and school dropout…
– Sleeping Dogs – Only in cinemas from 1 August 2024 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to Rialto Distribution. *Note: tickets are digital *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE In this gripping crime thriller, Russell Crowe stars as Roy Freeman, an ex-homicide detective with a fractured memory, forced to revisit…
Anyone afraid of snakes and creepy crawlies should probably look away now. In the vein of Arachnophobia and Eight Legged Freaks and their ilk comes yet another horror film featuring a nasty and lethal spider. Sting is the work of writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner, who specialises in low budget horror films like 2014’s Wyrmwood: Road of…
An unrecognisable Nicolas Cage features in the decidedly creepy crime-horror-thriller Longlegs. A figure sits in a car looking at a little girl in a small house. She comes out to see who it is. Suddenly he confronts her. At first, we only see him from the nose down and says: “There she is, the almost…
Sex, religion and violence are again the key driving forces behind the dramatic action in this final instalment in Ti West’s trilogy of horror films starring Mia Goth. The series began with X, in which a group of amateur filmmakers headed to a remote ranch in Texas to shoot a pornographic movie but became caught…
Yorgos Lanthimos can be polarising. Even among his own fan-base, his films can be divisive. Recently, something of a split has emerged between fans of his “old stuff” (like Dogtooth and The Lobster) and those of his “new stuff” (The Favourite and Poor Things). I’m a bit on the fence here, because I’m certainly a…
