The Wrath of Becky continues the story of its titular character, played by Lulu Wilson, who reprises her role from the 2020 film, Becky. Two years on, she has moved on from foster parent to foster parent after the loss of her real parents in the events from the first film while keeping up with…
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Polite Society tells the story of two Pakistani-Muslim sisters in London; plucky Ria (Priya Kansara), who dreams of being a stuntwoman, and Lena (Ritu Arya), her world-weary older sister who wants to be an artist. With Lena recently returned home after dropping out of art school, Ria constantly goads her into helping her make YouTube…
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Set in 22nd century New York, The Pod Generation tells the story of Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a happy couple who live in a future where technology has become overabundant in terms of efficiency and convenience. Rachel is a rising executive at the Womb Center and Alvy is a botanist with a…
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, Fall tells the story of Becky (Grace Caroline Currey), an adventurous go-getter who is always up for a challenge in service of thrills and living life to the fullest. She is happily married to the charismatic Dan (Mason Gooding, in a small role). Whilst climbing together on a cliff face with the voracious Hunter…
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Sonic the Hedgehog 2 picks up after the events of the first film as the titular character (voiced by Ben Schwartz) has taken the mantle of being the hero for the people in the town of Green Hills. But his recklessness and overeager bravado has consequences as he wreaks unintentional havoc while trying to do…
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Multi-talent Lena Dunham is back into the realm of filmmaking after 11 years since her feature-film debut Tiny Furniture. For her latest film Sharp Stick, she writes, directs and appears in a supporting role in a story that invites discussion about sexual freedom, depiction and perceptions via gender, media, hypocrisy and empowerment. While the film…
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Kandisha tells the story of three young teenage women Amelie, Bintou and Morjana (Mathilde Lamusse, Suzy Bemba and Samarcande Saadi); three childhood friends who are enjoying their summer break in the dilapidated streets of Paris. Chilling out with their peers, branding walls with splatterings [sic] of graffiti; it is all about living in the moment…
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Chasing the McCubbin, the debut novel by Melbourne academic and writer Sandi Scaunich, delves into what may be unfamiliar territory for most readers – a world of second hand dealers with nicknames like Blue Merc, Fritz the German and The Builder and His Missus. Beginning in the early ’90s during a financial recession, it is the story…
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Clarissa Goenawan‘s second novel The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida may tread familiar ground for her fans. While Goenawan is an Indonesian-born Singaporean writer, both this and her debut novel Rainbirds are set in Tokyo. Perhaps it is only fitting, then, that Sharlene Teo compares Goenawan’s writing to that of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, calling this novel…
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Writer/director Suzanne Lindon stars as Suzanne, a 16-year old student who is starting to feel a sense of ennui as she trudges through her daily routine of high school adolescence. Her mingling with her friends is becoming tedious and boring – evident in an amusingly awkward party sequence – and her outside life feels constrained…
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There are genre conventions that we see all the time in film that whenever they show up, we cannot help but smile at the sight of it. One of them is seeing the hero succeed in their journey; another is seeing the protagonist triumph over oppression and adversity and another is seeing a zombie getting…
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Based on the 2001 book series by author Eoin Colfer, Disney have finally released their latest adaptation onto their streaming service. The film was originally delayed from an August release last year to April 2020. Then the Covid-19 pandemic caused a closure of cinemas globally. Now, finally, the film finally receives a release on Disney Plus…
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Pipe organs are interesting, yet largely under-utilised beasts. Built into the grand expanse of the building, the organ at Sydney Town Hall is not an instrument in itself but rather turns the entire building into one. Ireland-based Australian composer and artist Robert Curgenven utilised this to its full extent in his immersive production: Bronze Lands (Tailte…
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Canberra-based author Kathryn Hind‘s debut novel Hitch was published in June this year. The inaugural winner of the Penguin Literary Prize, Hitch tells the story of Amelia, a young woman of indeterminate age, who is hitchhiking her way to Melbourne. Her journey is an emotional one as well as a physical one, and throughout the book, there…
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Rohan Wilson’s latest novel, Daughter of Bad Times is a novel with an extremely global outlook, but this may just be its problem. The novel follows two protagonists, Rin Braden and Yamaan Ali Umair, two lovers from very different circumstances. Rin is the daughter of Alessandra Braden, the CEO of Cabey-Yasuda Corrections, a company which owns…
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Buddy comedies are a dime-a-dozen these days. And much like romantic films, they rely on the chemistry of the leads to succeed. An original plot? Unimportant. Solid acting? No need. If the chemistry works between the leads, then it should offset a lot of the film’s flaws. Case in point, Michael Dowse‘s action-comedy Stuber, a…
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Singled [Out] is a new documentary by directors Mariona Guiu and Ariadna Relea; and the premise is what really struck out to me, as we follow the lives of five women (under 30) of different backgrounds (Australia, Turkey, Spain and two women from China), and how they live their lives with their choices, whether they…
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If you were to see the cast of Triple Threat, which is jam-packed with talented martial artists/established action heroes, chances are that you would be overly excited. With this much talent in an action film, how can it possibly fail? We must consider the people behind the scenes. Triple Threat has director Jesse V. Johnson,…
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An impending wedding often brings out the worst in people. Familial and societal expectations collide with capitalism at the extreme of feminine expression. The wedding industrial complex magnifies every insecurity and extracts large sums from its subjects. Where women on the larger end of the body spectrum deal with constant reminders and callouts regarding their…
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It’s fair to say that most people know Shakespeare and his plays. But, very little is known about the old Bard himself. All Is True is a bio-pic about ye olde William i.e. the writer in his twilight years. The result is a story that relies on some speculation and doesn’t always live up to…
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The Shining Wall, the gripping debut novel from author Melissa Ferguson, is an exploration of scientific possibility through the lens of feminism and fiction. The novel tells the frightening story of the orphaned Alida and her younger sister Graycie, who are left along following the death of their mother in the Demi-Settlements outside the wall. …
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It is rare that at the age of eighty and after publishing sixteen books – a mixture of novels, short story collections, and non-fiction – that an author comes into the light of the public consciousness and begins to find notoriety. But the works of Gerald Murnane have begun to garner considerable interest in recent…
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One only needs to look at the poster art for James Kent‘s postwar-set romance The Aftermath to gage the triangle of transgression that will unfold over the course of the film’s 108 minute running time. In fact, the surface level of the Joe Shrapnel/Anna Waterhouse-penned script practically begs you to accept the predictable turn of events,…
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2019 is going to be a fairly big slate for the House of Mouse with not one but four “live action adaptations” of their intellectual property hitting cinema screens. The first one out of the gate is the film about a baby elephant with overly large ears who can fly. Originally Dumbo was based on…
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Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has made some of most critically acclaimed dramas in the 21st Century. Garnering awards from many festivals, including winning two Oscars for Best Foreign Film, it is a testament to Farhadi’s impeccable storytelling about the social, gender and class differences in modern Iran as well as his assured hand in telling…
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Monica Tan’s first novel, Stranger Country, will take you on a 30,000km journey of discovery around selected parts of Australia. Tan is Chinese Australian, but at thirty-two, felt that she didn’t know as much about Australia’s history as she did about China’s. In a bid to change that, Tan embarked on a journey around parts…
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What is it about stories about the rise to stardom that makes it so fascinating to audiences? Is it because it resembles a wish fulfillment fantasy? Or is it because it resembles a cautionary tale? Either way, it is a well-worn formula, that has been the backbone of well-regarded films, including 2018 films A Star…
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English-language live-action film adaptations of manga/anime source material have been quite problematic, to say the least. While most of the films just fail to capture the spirit of the source material due to bad filmmaking (eg. Fist of the North Star, Death Note [2017]), other examples fail just due to the fact that they did…
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Eccentric, heartbreaking and hilarious- this is how Debra Adelaide‘s latest book of short stories is described on the cover by her Picador stable-mate, Jennifer Mills. The book is Zebra and Other Stories, a collection comprised of fourteen stories, divided into three sections: First, Second and Third. These sections refer to the point of view taken in the stories. Adelaide covers a…
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Changelings, or babies swapped with supernatural beings in their infancy, permeate the mythology of a number of cultures throughout Europe. Often, it was believed that fairies had taken the child and left one of their own behind- a sign of bad luck for the family. The idea of a changeling may have been used to…
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