Bogan culture on our screens is nothing unusual, dating back to The Adventures Of Barry McKenzie right through to Fat Pizza, Housos, and their ilk. And now the ugly bogan stereotype raises its head again in Down Under, a politically incorrect black comedy set in the aftermath of the 2005 Cronulla Riots. This is very…
Based upon writer/director Gary Ross’ original screenplay, Free State of Jones tells the extraordinary story of a little known episode in American history. It concerns Newt Knight, a fearless Mississippi farmer, who led an unlikely band of poor white farmers and runaway slaves in an historic armed rebellion against the Confederacy at the height of…
Sound quality was the only sour note in an at times uproariously funny opening night for First Date The Musical, a comedic musical about a hook up between a serial dater and a nerd. With a book by Austin Winsberg and music and lyrics by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, the show – inspired by…
As the program told us, when Endgame was first performed in 1957 it polarized audiences and critics alike. People saw Beckett as either a genius or a babbling fraud. I’m one of the latter. I put Beckett alongside of Picasso as a successful deceiver of people in an Emperor’s new clothes sort of way. But…
Despite the success of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Mel Gibson’s visceral The Passion of the Christ, the lavish big budget Biblical epic and sword-and-sandals drama has gone the way of the once popular Western. They have become a moribund genre that holds little appeal or relevance for today’s movie going audiences raised on a diet…
Greek tragedy done Scottish style, Sunset Song is tortuous to sit through. This is Terence Davies’ (Distant Voices, Still Lives) intimate epic of tragedy and love set at the dawn of the Great War. It is about a young woman’s endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life, based on a novel by Lewis Grassic…
Looks like I’ve found myself another author for my must-read list. S.K. Tremayne’s latest novel The Fire Child is everything I want in a psychological thriller. Here’s the blurb: When Rachel marries dark, handsome David, everything seems to fall into place. Swept from single life in London to the beautiful Carnhallow House in Cornwall, she…
You could call A Hologram for the King a coming-of-age story for a man or a midlife crisis tale. It’s Tom Hanks in less-than-populist filmmaking mode. The film features an unconventional narrative based on a culture clash. In recession-ravaged 2010, American businessman Alan Clay (Hanks), broke, depressed and freshly divorced, arrives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia…
A sensitive drama with a mystery at its core, the Israeli feature The Kind Words combines humour and pathos. At age 35, Dorona’s (Rotem Zissman-Cohen) life seems to have hit a dead-end. She can’t have children, she’s abandoned attempts at adoption and she seems intent on pushing her loving husband, Ricky, as far away as…
– Spin Out – Only in cinemas from 15 September 2016 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to Sony Pictures Releasing. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Billy and Lucy have grown up together in a small, close-knit Australian country town, where they form one of the town’s most formidable Ute…
