If you thought abusive communications were a recent thing, think again. Humans have unfortunately been sending horrible correspondence to each other basically since writing began. In the late 19th Century, these nasty notes were given a name: poison pen letters. Now they’ve largely disappeared – thanks to the Internet – replaced by the equally nasty…
– Wicked Little Letters – Only in cinemas from 21 March 2024 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to StudioCanal. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE A 1920s English seaside town bears witness to a farcical and occasionally sinister scandal in this riotous mystery comedy. Based on a stranger than fiction…
Even though this is a work of fiction (termed “an act of female imagination”), the starting point for Women Talking was a recent real-life event in Bolivia. Between 2005 and 2009, more than 100 girls and women in a remote Mennonite colony discovered they had been raped in their sleep. A group of men from…
Men is the third feature film from Alex Garland, best known for Ex Machina and for writing the novel The Beach, which was the source of the Danny Boyle film starring Leonardo Di Caprio. This is a creepy and unsettling film that subverts many of the usual tropes of the horror genre and is more…
The Lost Daughter is a challenging work from writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal, who makes her feature debut behind the scenes. She adapts a book of the same name by Elena Ferrante (published in 2006) for the screen. The Lost Daughter concerns Leda (played by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in a younger iteration), an…
The Cuban Missile Crisis looms in the tense spy thriller The Courier. Based on fact, it tells the story of America’s most valuable source of information about Russia during this tumultuous period. With nuclear war a real possibility, a high stakes cat-and-mouse game plays out. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) is a high-ranking Russian official. But…
Misbehaviour – as its name suggests – mixes activism with fun. Director Phillipa Lowthorpe crafts a crowd-pleasing film that delivers a (perhaps surprisingly) nuanced message. This is actually second film this month to look at the “women’s liberation” movement (after the Australian doco Brazen Hussies). The two clearly share some DNA. Both, for example, explore…
– Misbehaviour – Only in cinemas from 26 November 2020 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to StudioCanal. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE In 1970, the Miss World competition took place in London, hosted by US comedy legend, Bob Hope. At the time, Miss World was the most-watched TV show…
Things no one will say about Charlie Kaufman’s new film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things: “Aww, that was sweet”; “What a cliched Hollywood ending”; “That movie made total sense”. Kaufman’s latest excursion into weirdness is almost Bergman-esque in its inscrutability. Indeed, it shares more than a little DNA with Bergman’s classic Persona (1966). But as…
Wild Rose asks whether personal ambition should take a back seat to more immediate responsibilities. This feel-good story about a country music singer in the making features a stellar performance by Jessie Buckley in the lead role. In her early twenties, Rose-Lynn (Buckley) – single and with two kids under 9 – has just spent…
