Hustlers is a comedic drama about savvy strip club employees who turn the tables on their Wall Street clients. At the start of 2007, Destiny (Constance Wu) is struggling to make ends meet. She needs to provide for herself and her beloved grandmother, who brought her up. But it’s not easy: the managers, DJs and…
Acclaimed director Ang Lee employs cutting edge technology in the big-budget actioner, Gemini Man. But it seems his shiny new toys might have distracted the director from some more prosaic concerns – like a credible story. The tech is pretty impressive. Lee uses what’s known as HFR 3D. The process combines 3D techniques with a…
Shakespeare-like high drama melds with anthropological study in Birds of Passage. Directors Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Embrace of the Serpent) skillfully examine how modern issues affect the lives of an isolated clan of indigenous people in remote northern Colombia. The results are shocking yet sadly familiar. The people in question are the Wayuu. They…
In 2009, Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his remarkable performance as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Now, Joaquin Phoenix is destined for the 2020 Academy Awards in a similar guise, as the lead in Todd Phillips’ crime-thriller Joker. This is an unusual origin story set in the early 1980s. Joker…
The Goldfinch spends a great deal of time working out how the puzzle fits together. Theodore “Theo” Decker was 13 years old when his mother was killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not surprisingly, it changed the course of his life. Moments before Theo’s attention was taken by a pretty, young…
This comprehensive documentary about the rise and fall of the iconic and flamboyant fashion designer, simply known as Halston, is a tale of fashion, fame and hubris. Roy Halston Frowick was born in Iowa in the Depression era, but made his reputation in New York in the 70s. He started his career as a milliner….
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a tween horror set in small town America in 1968. It points back to a girl from the late 19th century who’s out for revenge. It all starts on Halloween night when Stella Nicholls (Zoe Margaret Colletti) isn’t keen to go trick-or-treating. Talked into doing so by…
Jim Jarmusch is like a cinematic magpie. His filmography includes a Western (Dead Man), a samurai movie (Ghost Dog), a rock doco (Year of the Horse) and a vampire movie (Only Lovers Left Alive). So what does the director who’s done just about everything do next? Why a zombie movie of course! And The Dead…
I got a lump in my throat when I watched Teresa Palmer – as Michelle Payne – cross the line to become the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup. That’s despite remembering a great deal about that fateful day on the first Tuesday in November 2015. I was concerned that knowledge might detract…
It’s nearly forty years since Sylvester Stallone first shed blood as Rambo, the former Vietnam veteran and special services soldier who ran afoul of a redneck sheriff in the 1982 film First Blood. The character of Rambo was created by author David Morrell in the 1972 novel of the same name. The novel also explored…
