The 40th anniversary production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic musical CATS is mesmerising – a real crowd pleaser. Superb prowling and dancing, choreographic excellence, an enticing set design and look at me performances are its hallmark. That is not to overlook moggie-appropriate costuming, attractive hair pieces and feline-friendly make-up. And who can forget the hissing…
Twenty years on, for director Roland Emmerich (Godzilla), Independence Day Resurgence marks a return to the universe he and co-writer and producer Dean Devlin created. Using recovered alien technology, the nations of Earth have collaborated on an immense defense program to protect the planet. But nothing can prepare us for the aliens’ advanced and unprecedented…
Inspired by the reflections of a photojournalist who spent four years as a member of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, The Bikeriders is about testosterone. It’s based around a fictional biker gang known as the Vandals and its founder, Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy). Married with two children, Johnny is a truck driver, although all we…
‘tis the season for Christmas parties and Nakatomi’s is set to be a cracker, hosted as it is by Act React in the return season of the company’s site-specific Die Hard: The Movie, The Play. The Brisbane Powerhouse’s Turbine Platform has been transformed into the Nakatomi Plaza of the 1988 action film favourite’s Los Angeles…
Okay, this is a tough one. Shirley is out-there cinema for the dedicated cinephile. If you like a nice logical, linear plot with likeable characters, well, I’m afraid this isn’t for you. Director Jennifer Decker crafts an imagined portrait of the acclaimed writer Shirley Jackson that bathes in both the American Gothic that Jackson championed,…
Director Paul Cox (My First Wife, Human Touch, Innocence) had a second chance at life when he received a liver transplant on Christmas Day 2009. The experience profoundly affected him and Force of Destiny, the first film in the new phase of his life, is in many ways an outpouring of his renewed love for…
Wickedly clever with lots of droll humour, Logan Lucky is a rare treat. Divorced and desperate for money, unemployed West Virginia coal miner Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) hatches a wildly elaborate scheme. He plans to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway in neighbouring North Carolina during a NASCAR race. He convinces his one-armed brother Clyde (Adam Driver),…
In M. Night Shyamalan’s intriguing psychological thriller, Knock at the Cabin, Kristen Cui plays eight-year-old Wen – a bright young girl who collects grasshoppers so she can study them. She’s special because she was adopted by her two dads – Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff) – when she was only a baby. Now…
A series of vignettes about what it is like being disabled and chronically ill, and the judgments others make, Have You Tried Yoga? is both illuminating and engaging. The star of the piece is also the creator and director, Rachel Edmonds; who makes her professional theatrical debut. Edmonds radiates warmth with her matter-of-fact style of storytelling….
County Kerry is a quiet, close-knit Irish community where everyone is a cousin or sorts and everyone’s stories have already been heard the night before in the local pub. So when a Hollywood crew comes to town to make a film (fil-em in the local dialect), there is excitement as many locals are hired as…
