Twist is contemporary take on Charles Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist. Dickens’ tale followed a poor orphan boy lured into life of crime under the control of the elderly rogue Fagin. Twist updates the setting from the grim and bleak streets of Victorian era London to the sleek glass and concrete structures of modern-day London. In…
It might just be me, but I feel like I’ve seen a lot of films lately about overcoming past trauma. Noted actor Robyn Wright makes her directorial debut in Land, another entry in that canon. She demonstrates a strong aptitude for visual storytelling. But her distinctive style can’t hide the thinness of the script. As…
Passion, intellectual rigour and the Holocaust collide in Joanna Murray-Smith’s intense, high verbiage, sexually charged drama Berlin. Australian Tom (Michael Wahr) 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, hole in the wall bar, where he meets and is immediately drawn…
Set on the eve of WWII, Six Minutes to Midnight is a moderately engaging spy thriller. The film is set mainly in the Augusta-Victoria College, situated in a sprawling old mansion in Bexhill On Sea, near Brighton. It’s an upmarket British finishing school for the daughters and goddaughters of high-ranking Nazis. The girls are learning…
A family is traumatised by the tragic death of a child in Vaughn Stein’s Every Breath You Take. Philip (Casey Affleck) is a psychiatrist and lecturer, his wife Grace (Michelle Monaghan) a real estate agent. They have a young son, Evan (Brenden Sunderland) and he has a senior school age daughter, Lucy (India Eisley) –…
Four disparate individuals enter a twilight zone. No, that’s not the starting point for a gag. In fact, far from it. Rather, it is the beginning of what could turn out to be a long journey back. Each of the quartet – strangers to one another – has attempted to take their own life by different methods…
Like the recent Judy (about the tragic Judy Garland), The United States vs Billie Holiday is a biopic featuring a talented but self-destructive singer who shone briefly and died too early. This film follows many of the familiar tropes of this rich sub-genre. The product of a turbulent childhood Billie Holiday was a jazz singer…
Brutality, cynicism and tongue-in-cheek humour mark Mortal Kombat – a video game franchise turned big screen fight night. The story thread begins with an ancient fight to the death. It is 1617 in Japan. A warrior and father of two carries a tattoo of a dragon. He confronts an opponent who can literally freeze people…
In Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, Sam (Colin Firth) is a classical pianist, and his partner Tusker (Stanley Tucci) is a writer. Now middle-aged, the couple have been together for decades. They know how to press each other’s buttons, but are still very much in love. One day they decide to dust off the old camper van…
Power and control shift constantly in the drama The Cane, which is set in England. On the verge of retirement after 45 years in the job, Edward (Dion Mills) is a deputy school head. It is Sunday and his wife, Maureen (Caroline Lee) – who also used to be a teacher – has been busily preparing for his…
