Heart of Darkness in space anyone? Director James Gray (The Lost City of Z) and star Brad Pitt go boldly where Kubrick, Coppola and Tarkovsky have been before in Ad Astra. This quietly powerful contemplation on fathers, sons and the final frontier won’t appeal to everyone, but it gets top marks for asking the big…
School holidays have arrived around Australia – and that means lots of kids saying “I’m bored!”. Kid-friendly movies make a great outing though, and with that in mind, here are our quick reviews of three. They all opened on 19 September 2019. Dora and the Lost City of Gold (PG) The cartoon TV series Dora…
Good Boys is Superbad with 11 year-olds. The film follows the misadventures of Max (fresh-faced Jacob Tremblay), a sixth-grader on the cusp of adolescence. He’s best friends with Thor (Brady Noon) and Lucas (Keith L Williams), who refer to themselves as “the beanbag boys” because they like sitting in bean bags. Max has been invited…
Scheming and gossip abound in the lavish big-screen version of Downton Abbey, where opulence is the byword. First an admission, I only heard wonderful things about the TV series but I haven’t seen one episode. As a result, it took me some time to work out who was who in the zoo, namely who the…
In the animated comedy The Angry Birds Movie 2, three flightless angry birds and the scheming green piggies take their beef to the next level as both Bird Island and Piggy Island are in danger. So, Red (Jason Sudeikis), Chuck (Josh Gad), Bomb (Danny McBride) and Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage) recruit Chuck’s sister Silver (Rachel…
How long can you party for? When is it time to stop the music and take greater care and responsibility for the rest of your life? Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat) have been flatmates and besties for 10 years. They maraud around the streets of Dublin, rejecting the expectations that bombard modern women…
The late, great Aretha Franklin was affectionately known as “the Queen of Soul”. She was one of the biggest selling female artists an topped the charts with a string of number one hits like “Respect”, “Think”, and “Spanish Harlem”. But in 1972 she took the radical step of returning to her roots and recorded an…
Angel of Mine is a slow-moving thriller about intuition and obsession. Inspired by real events, it follows divorced mother Lizzie Manning (Noomi Rapace). She’s emotionally fraught, as she battles for custody of her son and juggles a job as a sales rep for a cosmetics line. An encounter with Lola (Annika Whiteley) turns Lizzie’s life…
The fact The Farewell even exists speaks to two things. First, the power of podcasting; because the movie probably wouldn’t have been made if director Lulu Wang’s real-life story hadn’t been featured on This American Life. And second, the rise of star Awkwafina (Ocean’s Eight) as an acting force. But the film does exist; which…
In 2017 IT became the highest grossing horror movie of all time. Now the sequel IT Chapter 2 is here. It takes place 27 years after the events of the first film. You may recall that in IT, the seven members of the Losers’ Club took on and defeated the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård)….
