“We had such a great time on the first film that I was just excited to be involved again,” enthuses the very busy Australian actor Xavier Samuel about working on his latest film the low brow comedy, A Few Less Men, which is the sequel to 2011’s comedy A Few Best Men. The last time…
There is a decent yarn to be told in Jasper Jones, but with the story the filmmakers had to work with it didn’t quite shake out that way. Based on the Australian best-selling novel by Craig Silvey, this is the tale of Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller), a bookish boy of 14 living in a small…
What an engaging, charming and heart-warming film! David Stratton: A Cinematic Life opens up the life history and passion of one of this country’s most revered reviewers. Cinema has always been an obsession for the English-born Australian critic David Stratton. Filed in a ring binder labelled “1946” on a shelf in his office he can,…
A new play by a debut writer is always something worth seeing and Single, Asian, Female is no exception. Michelle Law’s opus contains some brilliant dialogue and characters you come to love, even with their flaws. They are truly people many of us can say “I know her – and her mum!” It is however…
The Aquarius of the title is a two-storey 1940’s apartment block in the upper-class seaside district of Boa Viagem Avenue in the Brazilian city of Recife. The eponymous apartment block has been the home for Clara (played by Brazilian actress Sonia Braga), a middle-aged former music critic and breast cancer survivor, most of her life….
After the overthrow of Nicholas II in 1918 the Russian peasants of the Ukraine thought they would be better off under the Bolsheviks. But it was not to be as the socialist ideal of collectivisation decreed that they had to cede a certain percentage of their harvest to feed the country. The peasants eventually rebelled…
The Little Dog Laughed, by American writer, Douglas Carter Beane, has had a previous outing at the Ensemble Theatre in 2009. The play had been nominated in 2006 for a Tony Award, in New York, and, I, based on the Ensemble production that I saw, could not understand why. It appeared to be one of…
An intriguing story and strong performances by the three principals are distinguishing features of this World War II drama. Based on the international best seller by Hans Fallada (Every Man Dies Alone), Alone In Berlin shines a light on two ordinary Germans with extraordinary impact. The location is Berlin and the year 1940. Working class…
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi writes and directs gritty slice-of-life dramas and The Salesman, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, continues that fine tradition. The moral quandary at the heart of this picture is what helps maintains interest. Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are a middle class couple –…
It’s been four years since the last Son Volt album, Honky Tonk (2013), and Jay Farrar describes his effort here as an attempt to climb inside the guitar tunings of two blues icons, Skip James and Mississippi Fred McDowell, and British folk artist Nick Drake. As such, we find Farrar approaching his songs intentionally with…
