Navigating a romantic entanglement can be difficult enough. But when it comes to two – at the same time – it is in a league of its own, especially when the blokes attracted to the “catch” are best mates. Daphne (Shailene Woodley) opts out of a long-term relationship, quits her job and moves in with…
What do you do when you’ve got two great stories, but only one movie? Mash them together of course. And while this can be fraught, director Tom Harper (Wild Rose) masters the technique in The Aeronauts. Working from a script by Jack Thorne, he deftly melds two real-life stories into one cohesive narrative. The first…
Pain informed the work of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954), who’s best known for her self-portraits. For her, life was always precarious, but it was only after a tragic accident that the idea of becoming an artist crystalised. The art-house documentary Frida: Viva La Vida gives us rare insight into Kahlo’s tumultuous life,…
I don’t have a thing for wine. Never had. Even an excellent wine, recommended by connoisseurs, won’t appeal to me. I never liked the taste of it. Why the hell would I watch a movie that focuses on the world of wines? Well, it’s just a coincidence. I discovered Uncorked while browsing Netflix and thought…
The starting point for the truly horrible Butt Boy is a guy in a bad marriage who enjoys inserting objects into his rear end. We’re in Florida. Chip Gutchel (Tyler Cornack) – a bored IT engineer in a dead-end job – has an awakening after a routine prostate exam. He really enjoys it. What begins…
We find suggestions of child abuse abhorrent; but it wasn’t always so. Traditional fairy tales (like those of the Brothers Grimm) often include elements of adults being unspeakably cruel – or worse – to children. Indeed, in more recent times, writers like Roald Dahl haven’t shied away from including childhood hardship in their fiction. Netflix’s…
Netflix has a whole host of films with interesting premises and solid performers that well suit the streaming platforms rather than the big screen. The Titan is one of these. Perfectly entertaining for a cold night in, but you’d be a bit peeved if you’d ponied up to watch this low key film at the…
A photographer who suffers from PTSD befriends a hardworking Sudanese man with a secret traumatic past. Hearts and Bones is a heavy-hitting drama with a feel-good ending, but more of that later. Daniel Fisher (Hugo Weaving) is an acclaimed war photographer. His work means he leaves his long-term partner, Josie Avril (Haley McElhinney), a ballet…
In Midnight Family, the audience become front seat passengers riding along with the Ochoa family in Mexico City after dark. Underground private ambulances compete for patients, beg for money and pay police bribes. The government operates fewer than 45 emergency ambulances in Mexico City for a population of nine million. The documentary explores urgent questions…
Chris Hemsworth throws off Thor’s cape to become a different kind of super-hero (or perhaps anti-hero) in Extraction. This by-the-numbers actioner is about a straightforward as you can get. But Sam Hargrave’s kinetic direction and a script from Hemsworth’s old pals, the Russo brothers, propel it along at breakneck speed. So what it lacks in…
