When the Aunty team confirmed that Golden Plains would return in 2023 and locked in dates, it was huge news, with pilgrimages to the Supernatural Amphitheatre finally back on the calendar. Indeed, that was probably all the push you needed to enter the fest's ticket ballot, and start crossing your fingers that you score passes to the beloved sibling to Meredith Music Festival, no matter who ended up on the bill. That online ballot has been extended, now running until 10.15pm AEDT on Monday, October 24. Also, the Golden Plains lineup is now here, too. Bikini Kill, Carly Rae Jepsen, Soul II Soul and Four Tet lead the charge, in what's shaping up to be a huge comeback fest from Saturday, March 11–Monday, March 13, 2023. [caption id="attachment_874299" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Debi Del Grande[/caption] Bikini Kill are playing Mona Foma as well, in what'll be the iconic Kathleen Hanna-fronted, Washington-formed, Riot Grrrl movement-instigating group's first Australian show in more than 25 years. Calling all rebel girls, obviously. If you aren't making the trip to Tasmania in February, you can now see them at Golden Plains in March. Carly Rae Jepsen's inclusion on the bill likely now has 'Call Me Maybe' stuck in your head, but that isn't all that's on the Canadian popstar's discography. And Soul II Soul's spot on the lineup is massive, given the British musical collective have been doing their thing since the late 80s, and also helped change UK club culture. Alongside Four Tet, they're joined by Mdou Moctar, Angel Olsen, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Brian Jackson and more, in what's clearly a gloriously eclectic lineup. Catering to 12,000 punters each year across three days and two nights, Golden Plains has long proven a favourite for its one-stage setup, which skips the need for frantic timetabling. Meredith is also returning, as announced in August, with Caribou, Yothu Yindi and Courtney Barnett leading the lineup from Friday, December 9–Sunday, December 11, 2022. GOLDEN PLAINS 2023 LINEUP: Bikini Kill Four Tet Carly Rae Jepsen Mdou Moctar Soul II Soul Angel Olsen Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Brian Jackson Overmono (live) Earthless Rochelle Jordan Methyl Ethel Kokoroko Andrew Gurruwiwi Band Stiff Richards Armand Hammer Soichi Terada Jennifer Loveless Rick Wilhite Freya Josephine Hollick E Fishpool Mulalo Delivery Golden Plains will return to the Meredith Supernatural Ampitheatre from Saturday, March 11–Monday, March 13, 2023. Head to the festival's website for further details, or to enter the ballot before 10.15pm AEDT on Monday, October 24. Top image: Theresa Harrison.
UPDATE, November 13, 2020: The Front Runner is available to stream via SBS On Demand, Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. A true tale of scandal on the election trail, The Front Runner is inspired by events from three decades ago. The book that it's based on — non-fiction tome All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid — was published in 2014, while columnist-turned-author Mat Bai started the ball rolling with a profile in 2003. And yet, this is a film blatantly begging to be made in the current political climate. Adultery, cover ups, a media firestorm, and debates about the ethics of news coverage and what's even newsworthy all fill the movie's frames. Sound familiar? When Gary Hart's (Hugh Jackman) private life makes the headlines, with a young woman (Sara Paxton) who isn't his wife (Vera Farmiga) seen leaving his Washington DC townhouse, the US politician's response is simple. He might be the Democratic party's leading contender for the 1988 presidential nomination, but he believes that what happens behind closed doors is nobody's business. He's the young, handsome, idealistic hotshot with a real chance of mobilising the masses — the beloved midwestern senator with real policies and real momentum. He's about as far away as you can get from sitting American president Ronald Reagan and likely Republican candidate George HW Bush, and he's certain that his professional deeds matter more to voters than his personal peccadillos. Call Hart naive, call him optimistic or call his judgement incredibly poor; when first asked about his alleged womanising ways, he even dares one Washington Post reporter (Mamoudou Athie) to follow him around. Whichever description you choose, there's one thing that you can definitely call Hart: caught in interesting times. In the thick of the 80s, JFK's rumoured affairs were old news, Bill Clinton's impeachment was still to come, and everything that Donald Trump has brought to the presidency couldn't have been dreamed up. Forced to fight for his political life as stories keep circulating and reporters keep chasing, Hart's situation proves a time capsule of sorts. Unfaithful politicians are splashed across the news with frequency today, but we no longer live in a world where a highly publicised extramarital affair (or worse) precludes someone from becoming America's commander-in-chief. Is that the right outcome or the wrong one? Without overstating the parallels between then and now, The Front Runner successfully shows just how much has changed. That said, the movie also leans heavily on Hart's chief rebuttal to his attackers — that exposing his indiscretions cheapens political discourse. Initially shot and packaged with jaunty, fast-paced flair reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin's political dramas, or of writer-director Jason Reitman's own Thank You For Smoking and Up In The Air, the film doesn't always find a comfortable position. It wants viewers to condemn the current status quo, feel for Hart, experience the deflating effect the controversy has on his loyal staffers, and realise that, without this incident, history could've been very, very different. They're not always compatible ideas, even in a movie that knows how complicated the scenario is. More than that, they're not always given the depth they need by Reitman, Bai and Jay Carson's screenplay. Never lacking in complexity is Jackman, whose performance is charismatic without being smooth and serious without being sombre. Hart isn't the greatest showman, but rather a great believer in the power of elected office — and someone who believes he should get his chance to ascend to the top job. It's the kind of layered portrayal that hasn't featured on Jackman's resume that often of late. Beyond its leading man, however, The Front Runner is well-served by its entire cast. Paxton is never simply the stereotypical other woman, and nor is Farmiga just the bland, dutiful wife. JK Simmons, alongside Paranormal Activity alum Molly Ephraim, convincingly rides the ups and downs that come with working for the senator. But, worlds away from his work in Patti Cake$ and The Get Down, it's Athie who threatens to steal the show. Playing a young journalist trying to do what's right even when he's told that it's wrong, the actor provides the film's conflicted centre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-vFH_G0V4
For Australian music fans, Triple J's Hottest 100 is the most important event of the calendar year — followed closely by the date Splendour in the Grass tickets go on sale. With so much at stake music-wise, nominating yourself as host for the Hottest 100 party — and deciding what to serve — can be a daunting task. So, we've teamed up with BWS to ensure you snag a sausage that pairs perfectly with your Hottest 100 picks — a banger for your banger, if you will. Plus, if you share a snap of your snags to Instagram (post or story) and tag BWS, the company will donate $1 for every sausage in the picture to GIVIT. How good. So, before you head to the shops to get the supplies, hit this list to make sure you select savoury cylinders that are as tasty as your favourite tunes. 'GET MY OUT' BY KING STINGRAY Fans of this track by King Stingray are likely to have found themselves in one of two circumstances in 2021: a seemingly unending lockdown in one of our major cities or in a garbage job that they were ready to give the middle finger to. In our opinion, lovers of a song called 'Get Me Out' deserve a snag that'll set them free. If that's you, we can't go past the free-range frankfurters from Paddock to Plate. 'HERTZ' BY AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS The high-octane energy of Amyl and the Sniffers requires a snag that'll live up to the band's turbo reputation and gets the job done without too much fuss. And, since we're matching it with a title that measures frequency, we believe quantity is important, too. Our pick for Sniffers fans is a value pack of snags that are a staple at all good sharehouse barbecues and Bunnings sausage sizzles — the 1.8 kilomgram value pack of thin snags from Woolies. These bangers have been proven to satisfy the masses and feel almost as good as fanging down a highway in a Hertz hire car. 'MAREA (WE'VE LOST DANCING)' BY FRED AGAIN.. AND THE BLESSED MADONNA If you voted for 'Marea (We've Lost Dancing)', there's a good chance you're the person at a party who dominates the dancefloor. Considering you'll be spending most of the day hurling your flesh prison all over the backyard, we recommend taking your snags in small doses to avoid tasting them twice. A 16-pack of chicken chipolatas are an ideal bite-size snag that you could probably woof down in one go if you really tried. Plus, given there are so many in the pack, you'll have plenty of fuel to sustain your dancing all the way to number one. 'LIE TO ME AGAIN' BY THE BUOYS If you're someone who wants to be lied to, a pack of the plant-based snags with the adjective 'beefy' in the title seem like the kind of misleading sausage that you'd be into. Unreal Co's six-pack of vegetarian beefy brats are perfect for people who want to feel hoodwinked by a sausage. Go on, gaslight yourself with this irresistible snag. It'll be just like when the person this song reminds you of did it, right? 'KIM' BY TKAY MAIDZA (FEATURING BABY TATE) A track that brings as much heat as 'Kim' by Tkay Maidza and Baby Tate calls for a snag that is as hot and spicy as the song itself. Our solution? The smoked chilli snags from Suzy Spoon's Vegetarian Butcher. These vegan sausages are both super delicious and pack a punch, much like the song in question. Big fan of chilli dogs? These are a quality meat-free alternative with a chorizo-like flavour for an added kick. 'GOLD CHAINS' BY GENESIS OWUSU Fans of Genesis Owusu aren't your run-of-the-mill music lovers. They boast a superior sonic palate and we suspect that this elite taste exists when it comes to the humble snag, too. Lovers of an award-winning artist will want an award-winning snag. And, if Kel Knight has taught us anything, winning sausage competitions is serious business. Our go-to is The Gourmet Sausage Company's award-winning artisanal pork and fennel bangers. 'STAY' BY THE KID LAROI AND JUSTIN BIEBER Voted for a collaboration this huge in the Hottest 100? You'll be needing a snag that has a minimum of three main ingredients in it for the countdown. There are plenty of combination sausages to choose from however we're of the firm belief that it's the chicken, feta and spinach variety that pairs perfectly with this sad banger. It's salty, smooth and surprisingly good — much like the Bieber x Laroi collaboration itself. 'DRIVERS LICENCE' BY OLIVIA RODRIGO So you spent 2021 rinsing Olivia Rodrigo's debut album Sour? Us too. And while we simply adored immersing in the rich teenage angst of the record, a track from an album with a title this tangy needs a sweeter snag to balance things out. We recommend a pack of honey-flavoured beef sausages. And if that's a touch too sugary for you, load them up with onions to ensure you get that all-important cathartic cry while slicing them up and belting out this tune. Want to support a good cause while you enjoy your bangers? Upload a snap of your snags to Instagram (post or story), tag @bws_au and use the hashtag #snagadonation to ensure a $1 for every sausage in the shot is donated to GIVIT. Just make sure your Instagram profile is set to public for your entry to be counted. For more information, visit the website. Images: Elliott Kramer.
You'll find Spicers Hidden Vale in Grandchester, which is a 30-minute drive from the Ipswich town centre. Equally suited to couples and groups of friends, this spot has country luxury down pat. Your accommodation comes equipped with thoughtful details, and may very well have a fireplace or a spa — or both — meaning it may be hard to leave your room. When you do venture outside, be sure to check out the kitchen garden, smokehouse and orchard or complete one of the nearby walking trails. As dusk settles you might play a game of pool in the games shed, take a dip in the spa or toast some marshmallows around the campfire. Yep, there's plenty to do around here. That said, you'll likely be just as happy to just pull up a chair on your verandah and watching the sun dip below the hills.
By the time October hits, 3600 Australian pharmacies will be administering COVID-19 vaccinations with the Moderna jab. It's the third coronavirus vax to be used in Australia after AstraZeneca and Pfizer, with doses of Moderna arriving on our shores in the past few days — and now being rolled out to chemists nationwide. During the week beginning yesterday, Monday, September 20, 1800 pharmacies will receive their batches and start getting Aussies to roll up their sleeves for Moderna. Next week, from Monday, September 27, that number again will join the Moderna rollout. So, if you haven't had your jabs yet, you now have more options — both in terms of which vaccination to receive and where to get it. Exactly how many pharmacies will be stocked with Moderna in each state varies; however, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed that 721 chemists across his state will be administering the shots from this week. Obviously, which pharmacists themselves are doing Moderna jabs also varies, but the Australian Government Department of Health's Vaccine Clinic Finder website lets you find where you can get it, or the other COVID-19 vaccines if that's what you'd prefer. Moderna's vax got the nod from Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration back in August, with the TGA advising that "the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine has shown strong efficacy preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and severe COVID-19 in clinical trials." In early September, it was approved for 12–17-year-olds, too, meaning that it's now approved for all Aussies over the age of 12. The Australian Government has an agreement with Moderna for 25 million doses of the vaccine, which includes 10 million this year and 15 million in 2022. Elsewhere around the world, Moderna's jab has also received approval or authorisation to use in emergency situations in countries such as United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, the United States, Switzerland and Singapore. Partly funded by a donation from the one and only Dolly Parton, Moderna's vaccine is actually the fourth to get the nod in Australia, following AstraZeneca, Pfizer and a jab from Johnson & Johnson — the latter of which hasn't been included in the country's vaccine rollout so far. Like the Pfizer vaccine, the Moderna jab is an mRNA-based vaccine. So, it uses a synthetic genetic code called RNA, which tells the cells in our bodies how to make the coronavirus' unique spike protein. Then, once our bodies have done just that, making the protein that's encoded by the mRNA vaccine, we're able to recognise the spike protein as being foreign to our system and launch an immune response against it. Two doses of the Moderna vaccine are required — and while the AstraZeneca jabs are recommended four–12 weeks apart, and the Pfizer jabs three weeks apart, Moderna's should be administered within 28 days of each other. Wondering what that the Moderna approval means in terms of boosting Australia's vaccine ability (because actually getting a jab hasn't been particularly straightforward under the country's slow-moving rollout)? Back when the Moderna vax got the tick, Prime Minister Scott Morrison advised the 25 million doses would join the 125 million doses of Pfizer and 53 million doses of AstraZeneca that are already part of the vaccine campaign. "The first one million doses is on track to arrive next month and will go to pharmacies. Then we will have three million in October, three million in November and three million in December," the PM said. And if you'd like to keep an eye on the country's vaccination rates now that a third vax is in the mix — with those rates tied to easing restrictions nationally, and on a state by state level (as seen in the New South Wales and Victorian roadmaps out of lockdown) — we've rounded up where you can do just that. For more information about the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, head to the TGA website. To find out where you can get vaccinated, check out the Australian Government Department of Health's Vaccine Clinic Finder website.
Like Underworld's 90s anthem 'Born Slippy', Brisbanites will be shouting "lager, lager, lager, lager" at Howard Smith Wharves for three days across the long weekend of Saturday, September 30–Monday, October 2. The reason? The arrival of Lagerpalooza, Felons Brewing Co's new gift to fans of, well, lager — aka a three-day outdoor booze festival by the river that'll hero one type of beer, pouring 34 different varieties from 16 breweries. Felons' own Crisp Lager will feature, of course, but it's also celebrating tipples from fellow beermakers locally, across Australia and internationally. Range, Revel and Heads of Noosa are among the other Queensland outfits set to serve up their top lagers. Hop Nation, Stomping Ground and Wayward are on the Aussie list, too. Eagle Bay joins in from Western Australia, and Lost & Grounded from Bristol in the UK. Felons' riverside location in the HSW precinct means taking over a grassy patch and a waterside perch, with the event hosting five sessions: 11am–4pm and 5–10pm runs on both the Saturday and Sunday, and a public holiday event from 11am–6pm on the Monday. Attendees can opt for a $20 ticket that includes their first fill, or a $90 pass that covers all tastings, plus a festival tote and access private al fresco area. While lager is the drink in the spotlight across the entire event, there'll also be gluten-free beers, non-alcoholic sips and cocktails to enjoy. Food-wise, attendees can look forward to barbecued meats fresh from an eight-metre Argentinian grill, as well as rotisserie chicken rolls, artisanal cheese, and a seafood range that goes big on local catches — and the almost-obligatory oysters, too. Live tunes and roaming performers will help set the cruisy mood — and if it sounds big, Felons have advised that it's both Australia's largest lager party and the first fest of its kind.
While visiting Far North Queensland, make a stop at Mossman Gorge in the Daintree Rainforest. To give you a deeper understanding of the extraordinary beauty surrounding you, we recommend booking a Ngadiku Dreamtime Walk. After a traditional smoking ceremony, your local Indigenous Australian guide will lead you into a magical forest while sharing Dreamtime stories. You'll get to source and taste bush tucker, learn how to make soap from leaves and see ochre painting in progress, before finishing up with bush tea and damper. On the way out, spend as long as you like beside the spectacular Gorge, where a waterfall plunges into a cool, rushing river. Images: Tourism and Events Queensland
Fancy getting an early start on a big citywide festival? And, while you're at it, celebrating Vietnamese Lunar New Year? Before BrisAsia Festival takes over Brisbane for ten days from Friday, January 31–Sunday, February 9, filling as much of this town of ours with as many events as it can — as it does every year — it's marking the changing of the lunar calendar at the Hội chợ Tết Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival. Your destination: Richlands. Running from 5.30–10pm on Friday, January 24, this LNY celebration is organised by the Queensland Chapter of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, takes place at CJ Greenfield Complex Park, and includes food stalls, lion dances, music performances and a traditional costume parade. Drop by for Vietnamese cuisine aplenty, arts showcases and possibly even learning a new skill — calligraphy is on the lineup, too. Also on offer: firecrackers, fireworks, a martial-arts performance and an official festival photo booth to snap some memories while you're there.
Over a hot, tumultuous summer, a group of teenagers struggle with love, sex and betrayal. Like an artsy Australian version of an episode of Skins, writer-director Rhys Graham's debut feature Galore is an earnest and technically confident piece of filmmaking but noticeably lacking in stakes. Like so many other tales about teens behaving badly, the overblown drama on which the movie hinges never really seems that important. Lush cinematography and natural performance ultimately make little difference when you just don't care about the story. The film takes place around the outskirts of Canberra, a few weeks before the devastating 2003 bushfires. Puberty Blues star Ashleigh Cummings plays 17-year-old Billie, whose voiceover bookends the film. Her best friend is Laura (Lily Sullivan), an aspiring writer and the girlfriend of skater boy Danny (Toby Wallace). She's thinking about giving Danny her virginity, and goes to her life-long BFF for advice. What Laura doesn't know is that Billie is already sleeping with him. In short, it's exactly the kind of angst-ridden rubbish that makes you glad you're no longer in high school. Petulant and manipulative, Billie treats life like a sordid little soap opera in which she's the tragic star. The reality of the situation is far less kind, not to mention a whole lot less interesting. The movie's dramatic inflation of Billie's selfish behaviour may strike a chord with teenage audiences, although they'll probably be bored by the film's deliberate pacing. Adults, on other hand, will just want to throttle her. The poor plotting is unfortunate, because in other areas the film is quite strong. Despite Cummings being saddled with a deeply unsympathetic character, both her and Sullivan give intensely authentic performances. The same is true of newcomer Aliki Matangi as Isaac, a troubled but good-natured youth who gets caught up in Billie's drama. The weak link is Wallace as the mopey, uncharismatic Danny, whose blandness makes the love triangle that much more difficult to comprehend. Graham also deserves credit for his graceful visual direction. While handheld camerawork and sun-dappled cinematography aren't exactly new tricks for an Australian made indie, there's no discounting the beauty of the film's setting, nor the elegance with which Graham, a Canberra local, brings the sleepy location to life. But the skill all comes to naught in the service of such an uninvolving narrative. Both Graham and his cast likely have bright futures ahead of them, sure to be filled with far more accomplished projects. Go and see them, but give Galore a miss. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iRWbh_TOLdw
Float on, festival fans: come April, Australia's newest excuse to see a heap of bands in one spot will make its way along the country's east coast. That touring event: the just-announced Daydream. It's hitting Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with quite the roster of indie-rock talent — headlined by Modest Mouse three decades after the Washington-born group first got together. Don't listen to the title of the band's acclaimed 2004 album, though — this is good news for people who love good news, not bad. Joining Modest Mouse on the bill are Britain's Slowdive, who initially formed in 1989, the reformed in 2017, as well as Australian favourites Tropical F*ck Storm. Daydream will hit up Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Saturday, April 22 to kick things off, then head north. The fest plays the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on Saturday, April 29, followed up Brisbane's Riverstage on Sunday, April 30. The lineup varies slightly per city, with Beach Fossils and Cloud Nothings taking to the stage at all stops, but Majak Door missing Brisbane. And no, it isn't too early into 2023 to start packing your calendar with music festivals. New year, new diary to fill, after all — and Daydream, the also just-announced Lazy Mountain and more are firmly here to help. DAYDREAM 2023 LINEUP: Modest Mouse Slowdive Tropical F*ck Storm Beach Fossils Cloud Nothings Majak Door DAYDREAM 2023 DATES: Saturday, April 22 — Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne Saturday, April 29 — Hordern Pavilion, Sydney Sunday, April 30 — Riverstage, Brisbane [caption id="attachment_886745" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dylan Jardine[/caption] Daydream will hit Australia's east coast capitals in April. Early-bird pre-sales start at 9am local time on Thursday, February 2, with general sales from 9am local time on Friday, February 3 — head to the tour website to sign up for the pre-sale, or for more information. Top images: Modest Mouse by Matthewvetter via Wikimedia Commons; Tropical F*ck Storm by Somefx.
'Based on true events' has been the theme for 2013, and why the hell not? Stranger than fiction and all that. Pick any genre and you'll find an example: Action - Gangster Squad; Comedy - Pain & Gain; Thriller - Captain Phillips; Horror - The Conjuring. None, however, are as adept at circling the carcass of history and picking away at the choice bits like Drama. Even just to look at the 'now showing' or 'coming soon' listings is to see: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyer's Club, Philomena, Fruitvale Station and The Railway Man — all in some way grounded in real-world events. The question is how grounded, and that's why the opening to David O. Russell's new film American Hustle is so refreshing. "Some of this actually happened," it declares, acknowledging in those five simple words that — yes — liberties have been taken for your amusement, but also — yes — some of this stuff actually happened. That stuff is the infamous 'Abscam' sting of the late 1970s, during which the FBI engaged two prolific con artists — Sydney Prosser and Irving Rosenfeld — to ensnare a number of high-ranking US politicians on corruption charges. Sporting elaborate combovers, fake accents and plunging necklines, Prosser (Amy Adams) and Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) were a retro Bonnie and Clyde pairing who used smooth words instead of Tommy guns to fleece desperate men of their savings. Eventually caught by the FBI, they avoided jail time by agreeing to work alongside the ambitious agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), and atop their list of targets was a New Jersey mayor named Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). What began as a simple enough sting, however, soon ballooned out of control as hubris, greed and jealousy picked away at the already threadbare alliance and placed both the operation and their lives in jeopardy. O. Russell is undeniably an actors' director, and like just his previous films (The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook), American Hustle is built around its strong performances and crackling dialogue. Bale, Adams, Cooper and Renner are all at their best here; however, it's Jennifer Lawrence as Rosenfeld's wife, Rosalyn, who steals the show. Part seductress, part clown, she moves seamlessly between the two extremes with such ease and speed that each can appear multiple times in a single scene. Keep an eye out, too, for an uncredited cameo by Robert De Niro as a mafia heavyweight in easily the most gripping of the film's 138 minutes. Yes, it is long, and it definitely drags at times; however, it's also immensely funny and beautifully captures the flashy/trashy excess of the '70s — most notably in Adams' countless revealing dresses — for which none will receive any 'best supporting role' nods vis-a-vis her perilously positioned breasts. Yet even they have their place, establishing the complexity of a character who freely exposes all to the world save for the truth of who she really is. That's American Hustle, too: a layered and captivating film where you're never quite sure who to believe or which stuff actually happened. https://youtube.com/watch?v=NqgjPRNRDSY
There's no shortage of ways to send your love to your nearest and dearest, though sometimes an emoji, a surprise bunch of flowers or even a hardy succulent just doesn't cut it. Similarly, showering those close to you in sweet treats is far from difficult — but Australia's new chocolate company wants to provide another option. Combining taste, style and heartfelt messages, Good Measure Co is offering up the country's newest personalised artisan chocolate delivery service, not only ferrying their cocoa-based delicacies around the nation in attractive packaging, but letting you write your own tender missive to go along with them. You pick what goes inside and on the outside, choosing from gourmet dark and milk chocs in blueberry, milk and honey, dark raspberry, chocolate noir and signature salted caramel flavours — or Champagne truffles — plus four styles of box and whatever nice words you can dream up. Those eager to tailor their choccie selection for their special someone can expect to pay $50 for a box of 12, and $75 for 24. Boxes with a range of pre-written statements are also available for the same price, ranging from "chocolate for my favourite" to "it's time to celebrate". And, the cost includes free delivery, arriving the same day in Sydney for orders placed before 11am, and the next day if ordered afterwards. The company was created by Pete and Hannah Craggs, who "wanted to reimagine the humble chocolate box, and create a new way to share the joy of chocolate with friends and family in a simple and easy way," Pete explains. Continues Hannah, "we've tapped into the same sense of occasion and excitement you'd get from giving and receiving flowers, but with high quality, gourmet chocolate instead." For more information, visit Good Measure Co's website.
Bunnings Warehouse is supercharging its usual sausage sizzle to support a few Aussie communities that are doing it pretty tough right now. On Friday, March 11, all of the hardware giant's stores will host a special pre-weekend edition of the chain's legendary snag sessions, raising coin for those across Queensland and New South Wales that've been impacted by the recent floods. All of the day's sausage profits will go to the Givit Storms and Flooding Appeal. So, on Friday, grab a snag in bread and show those in need some love — the sausage sizzles will run from 9am–4pm across all Bunnings Warehouses in Queensland (and the country). There'll also be donation tins at Bunnings registers, if you don't have time for a snag while you shop for hardware. And, if you can't make it along at all, you can also chuck a few dollars into the Givit collection tin online.
UPDATE, May 14, 2021: American Utopia is available to stream via Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Amazon Video. There may be no catchier lyric in music history than "same as it ever was", the five words repeated in Talking Heads' 1981 single 'Once in a Lifetime'. As uttered again and again by the band's inimitable frontman David Byrne, it's a looping phrase that burrows into your skull and never leaves. It's a line that, apropos of nothing, starts echoing through your brain at random moments as well. It's also the type of lyric that, when the above situation happens, no one protests. So when American Utopia opens with the musician sat at a table holding a brain and talking about what its various parts do, it feels as if Byrne is acknowledging what everyone already knows in the deepest recesses of their consciousness: that Byrne long ago got cosy in our craniums and has been nattering away to us ever since. As he stares at grey matter while wearing a grey suit — a perfectly fitting one, unlike the famed big number he wore in iconic 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense — Byrne has something else on his mind, though. American Utopia starts with the part of our bodies where we all mentally reside, but slowly and smartly evolves from the cerebral to the communal. It segues from one man alone on a stage lost in his own thoughts to 12 people singing, dancing, playing instruments and connecting, and also pondering the state of the world and how to better it in the process. And it takes its titular concept seriously along the way, confronting America's political and social divisions in Byrne's witty, wise and impassioned between-song chats, but never satirising the idea that the US could be improved to the benefit of everyone. American Utopia is a concert film like its predecessor; however, as that masterpiece proved, the whole notion means more to Byrne than merely standing in front of a camera and busting out well-known hits. From the sublimely soothing 'This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)' to the punchier 'Burning Down the House', plenty of Byrne's best-known songs do grace American Utopia. 'Once in a Lifetime' is among them, of course, as are 'Road to Nowhere' and 'Everybody's Coming to My House', with the film's playlist spanning his career with Talking Heads and solo. Across a range of styles and tempos, each track is a wonder, and not just in the way that fans already know. As should be obvious from the fastidious fashion in which Byrne has conceptualised this stage performance — which he toured in 2018, then adapted for Broadway in 2019, and has now turned into this standout movie directed by Spike Lee — this is a meticulously crafted work. Basking in the glory of Byrne and his band is inevitable and would happen regardless, but soaking in everything that American Utopia does is another marvel entirely. It shouldn't be so striking to notice that Byrne and his colleagues are doing their thing completely untethered, for instance. The stage they stand on is bare except for a shimmering grey chainmail curtain that wraps around three sides, and their instruments and microphones are powered by packs so there are no pesky cords all over the place. Even percussion instruments are strapped to the folks playing them, with absolutely nothing touching the floor other than dancing (and in Byrne's case, bare) feet. It's freeing, not just for Byrne and his band, but to watch. Every move made is immaculately choreographed, but without all the wires and big equipment that's usually part of every concert experience, the performers can simply interact. And as they do, the audience engages on a deeper lever as well. Stop Making Sense devotees, which should include everyone given that it's the best concert movie ever made, will spot that Byrne has reversed his strategy from that earlier film. There, he walked onto the stage with a tape deck, pressed play, grabbed the microphone and kicked off by singing 'Psycho Killer'. When it came time for the next song, another bandmate joined him with their instrument of choice. The cycle repeated with the next track, and the next as well. It was a playful and also probing approach to the genre that made viewers confront its literally staged nature, which American Utopia achieves in the opposite manner and with broader aims — because, other than Byrne's presence, nothing is the same as it ever was here. Before Byrne forces you to do so, you probably won't have realised how enlivening, wondrous and cathartic it is to see the act of connecting so firmly thrust to the fore. It takes an incredible amount of work to make something so tightly constructed seem so loose and natural, and that's just one of the reasons that American Utopia is yet another of the star's masterpieces. The other sizeable factor: Lee, who is on quite the hot streak via BlacKkKlansman, Da 5 Bloods and now this. Like Byrne, he doesn't just want to plonk the performers in front of a lens, with his energetic directorial choices designed to complement the show and make the audience feel as if they're in the room. American Utopia, the stage production, already celebrates intimacy. At its core, it features a dozen people turning a semi-enclosed cube into an inviting space for collaboration and togetherness. Sometimes peering down on the action from above, sometimes weaving between band members, Lee and his 11 camera operators find the exact right shot for the exact right moment in every instance — and prove inventive and creative as they're doing so, too. Although it comes early in the film, when Byrne sings "home is where I want to be", another of his earworm lyrics, everything about what's easily the most joyous cinematic experience of the year instantly makes you feel that he's talking about exactly where he's standing at that very second. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97nnV0fNd30&feature=youtu.be
Sharp, savage and skewering, plus twisted in narrative and the incisive use of genre tropes alike: as a filmmaker, Emerald Fennell certainly has a type. With the Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman and now Saltburn, the Barbie and The Crown actor-turned-writer/director takes aim, blazes away giddily and blasts apart everything that she can. When she made a blisteringly memorable feature debut behind the lens — giving audiences one of 2021's's best Down Under releases, in fact, and deservingly earning a place among the Academy Awards' rare female Best Director nominees in the process — she honed in on the absolute worst that a patriarchal society affords women. Now, after also pointing out the protection provided to the wealthy in that first effort as a helmer, Fennell has class warfare so firmly in her gaze that Saltburn is named after a sprawling English manor. With both flicks, the end result is daringly unforgettable. This pair of pictures would make a killer double, too, although they enjoy neighbouring estates rather than frolic across the same exact turf. On her leaps from one side of the camera to the other, Fennell also keeps filling her features with such spectacular casts that other filmmakers might hope to fall into her good graces to bask in their glow — a fate that sits at the heart of Saltburn, albeit beyond the movie world. Fresh from nabbing his own Oscar nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin, Barry Keoghan adds yet another beguiling and astonishing performance to a resume that's virtually collecting them (see also: The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Dunkirk, American Animals, The Green Knight and Calm with Horses), proving mesmerisingly slippery as scholarship student Oliver Quick. Usually standing in his sights, Euphoria's Jacob Elordi perfects the part of Felix Catton, aka that effortlessly charismatic friend that everyone wishes they could spend all of their time with. And as Felix's mother Elspeth, father Sir James and "poor dear" family pal Pamela, Rosamund Pike (The Wheel of Time), Richard E Grant (Persuasion) and Carey Mulligan (Fennell's Promising Young Woman star, also an Academy Award nominee for her work) couldn't give more delicious line readings or portraits of the insular but shambolic well-to-do. Saltburn's first stomping ground is Oxford University, as is Oliver's as well, not that he's initially able to make the most of it. Fennell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren — who shot this after Babylon, going all-in on decadence and its dark side on back-to-back projects — spy the careful look on the film's protagonist's face as he enters the revered college among the class of 2006, and also see how he stands out from his moneyed peers. Felix isn't merely at the centre of the in-crowd; not just because his blue blood may is pure sapphire, he's the sun that everything revolves around. When a bicycle mishap threatens to make him late for class but Oliver is on-hand to assist, Felix also shines his light on his working-class outsider schoolmate. At the end of term, to save his new loyal offsider from a fraught homecoming and to treat him to a heady summer dream instead, he then extends a sympathetic invitation to while away the break with the full Catton clan at their palatial property. Cue Brideshead Revisited by way of The Talented Mr Ripley, Cruel Intentions, gothic thrillers and Fennell-esque flair, as set in the mid-00s and graced with a superlative soundtrack from the era to go with it — a wickedly entertaining and delightful blend. Butler Duncan (Paul Rhys, A Discovery of Witches) might be stern and strict rather than welcoming when Oliver decamps to their stately surroundings, but Elspeth and Sir James are as obliging as they are eccentric (one of the family matriarch's best moments, and Pike's as her, involves sharing a tidbit about her role in potentially inspiring Pulp's 'Common People'). Amid the group's nightly black-tie meals ("we dress for dinner here," Felix advises), leisurely sunshiny days, swish soirées, oozing lust and the kind of hallucinatory blowouts that you can only have if you're basically corrupting Downton Abbey, fellow Oxford student and Catton cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story) sits in the competitively icy camp about Oliver's arrival. Sharing the next generation's seductive vibe, Felix's sister Venetia (Alison Oliver, Conversations with Friends) is warmer, but with a seen-this-before air about her sibling's new bestie (or, in her eyes, plaything). As the name of a grand country tract where cashed-up privilege is so flavoursome that it leaves a mark, Saltburn is a brilliant choice. As the moniker for a bitingly piquant movie, it similarly couldn't be more gloriously on-target. This is a spicy and sweltering film again and again: in its cast, farce, luxuriousness, confidence, horrors, bodily fluids, pitch-perfect portrayals, devil-may-care protagonist, blooming sense of mischief, intoxicatingly opulent look, and deeply committed boldness to dig in and tear down. That secrets and lies line the walls of the eponymous property, gathering far less dust than the well-appointed library that no one appears to use — scary flicks are the Cattons' communal pastime of choice, aptly — isn't at all surprising. That eat-the-rich brutality awaits resides in the same category. But Saltburn never stops enticing jaws to the floor, then sticking them there with sweat, blood and more, as it murders a dance floor filled with posh entitlement, yearning desire, and the impulsiveness of the young and the affluent. Sophie Ellis-Bextor's best-known tune does indeed get a spin, alongside expertly deployed tracks by Bloc Party and MGMT. For the second time in as many movies, Fennell knows how to nail not only a meticulously matched playlist but the precise mood. That she could've been one of Oliver and Felix's Oxford peers given that she was also studying at the prestigious university when the feature is set helps every detail gleam, including the mid-00s fashions. Crucially, though, Fennell never forgets that her film is showing to today's audiences, not to newly minted adults nearly two decades back (or anyone transported so evocatively to the past by this film that it feels like they've never left). Whether or not Elordi boasted such a pivotal role, Euphoria is unmistakably one of Saltburn's visual touchstones. With its swooning and sultriness — and scorching obsession as well — so is Call Me By Your Name. As much as it revels in the alluring, and torridly, Saltburn is fearlessly and devilishly about tarnishing not gloss. In the pursuit of love, comfort, belonging and revenge, nothing glitters within its chandelier-lit story that can't be shattered and smeared — that doesn't deserved to be cracked and crumbled, either — even when the movie's namesake place appears to host the most carefree of times. With boxed-in frames and looking-back narration as a framing device, the film purposefully unspools as a provocative fantasy and an unreliable memory combined, as the tales we all tell ourselves about our lives in our deepest, darkest, most closely held thoughts and feelings always do. As anchored exquisitely by the enigmatic Keoghan in entertaining everyman mode, it's no wonder that Saltburn feels so potent, so haunting, so visceral, and so attuned to vulnerability and viciousness in equal doses: it's the reverie and nightmare beating inside us all with infatuating abandon if we'd let it.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the alternative music scene that came before is unquestionably better than the scene right now. It's something we've all grown up crowing (no matter if we said the same thing a decade ago). So we know that the tendency towards nostalgia and a willingness to make heroes out of drunken twenty-year-olds who only released two records is damn near irresistible. For the semi-autobiographical film Lucky Them, this kind of nostalgia is both the target and the appeal. Loosely based on the experiences of screenwriter Emily Wachtel in the New York music scene, the film is set in Seattle, the birthplace of grunge, and spends equal time exposing nostalgia and falling right into its trap. Lucky Them tells the story of an aimless music journalist, Ellie Klug (Toni Collette), as she searches for an acclaimed Seattle musician, who supposedly died years earlier. Ellie is initially reluctant to uncover the whereabouts of her former lover and music idol, and she struggles to find closure, while her ex-boyfriend Charlie (Thomas Haden Church) films an amateur documentary about her efforts. While the film supposedly runs close to Wachtel's own personal experiences, in taking on the mythology behind Seattle's music history (where director Megan Griffiths lived for many years), the film manages to feel like a broader story of music nostalgia. The character of the lost musician, Matthew Smith, makes references to the early deaths of Pacific Northwest music idols Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith, and the whole film is layered with Seattle alt-rock nostalgia. The soundtrack that plays over the sweeping shots of the wet, dreary landscape hints at riffs from Nirvana's 'All Apologies', and memorabilia lent to the film by the iconic local record label Sub Pop line the walls of almost every scene, from original Mudhoney posters to gold records from the Shins and Postal Service. These pleasant hometown references make Seattle feel like an extra character in the film. Alongside this, Church gives an excellent comic performance as the eloquent but music-illiterate Charlie and the fantastic Oliver Platt appears as Ellie's editor Giles, the surprisingly patient, ageing pot-smoker forced to deal with shareholder demands that he boost circulation in a fading print music journalism industry. All this makes it easier to stick with Ellie, whose relentlessly immature decisions, alongside the uncomfortably petulant tone Collette uses, make it difficult to connect with her. Although there's a surprise cameo that manages to be charming rather than distracting from the story, it's a shame that Lucky Them finishes in almost rom-com cliche terrain. It's enough to make you wish you were watching Charlie's fictional documentary instead, like the real nostalgia junkie that you are.
The Australian festival scene's worst-kept secret for 2023 has been confirmed: Post Malone is headlining Spilt Milk. When the melancholic hitmaker announced his latest solo tour Down Under, he named venues in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, but also had Canberra, Gold Coast, Ballarat and Perth listed without specific sites. We predicted that those stops would see him play Spilt Milk — and, yes, that theory was right. Music lovers and festival fans in Canberra, Ballarat, Perth and the Gold Coast, Post Malone is on his way. The fest will kick off its 2023 season on Saturday, November 25 at Exhibition Park in the nation's capital, then head to the Gold Coast Sports Precinct on Sunday, November 26. The following weekend, it'll hit up Ballarat's Victoria Park on Saturday, December 2, before wrapping up on Sunday, December 3 at Claremont Showgrounds in Perth. The latter stop marks Spilt Milk's debut in the Western Australian city, and might just see the fest prove even more popular than it usually does. In 2022, that year's three stops all sold out in less than seven days. Post Malone has company on the fest's stages, with Dom Dolla and Latto also leading the bill. So, expect to hear everything from 'Sunflower' and 'I Like You' to 'Rhyme Dust' and 'Big Energy'. Tkay Maidza and Aitch also rank among Spilt Milk's impressive 2023 names, with Chris Lake, Dermot Kennedy, Budjerah, Cub Sport, Lastlings, Partiboi69, Ocean Alley, Peach PRC, Royel Otis also set to hit the stage. [caption id="attachment_851189" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Billy Zammit[/caption] Also, because this fest is also about food, there'll be bites to eat from Chebbo's Burgers, 400 Gradi, Chicken Treat, and the BBQ and Beer Roadshow. Originally only held in Canberra, then expanding to Ballarat, then the Gold Coast and now Perth, the multi-city one-dayer has cemented its spot as a must-attend event for a heap of reasons. In 2023, this just-announced lineup is one of them. [caption id="attachment_851187" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jordan Munns[/caption] SPILT MILK 2023 DATES: Saturday, November 25 — Exhibition Park, Canberra Sunday, November 26 — Gold Coast Sports Precinct, Gold Coast Saturday, December 2 — Victoria Park, Ballarat Sunday, December 3 — Claremont Showgrounds, Perth SPILT MILK 2023 LINEUP: Post Malone Dom Dolla Aitch Budjerah Chris Lake Cub Sport David Kushner Dermot Kennedy Djanaba Grentperez Jessie Murph Lastlings Latto Levins & Friends (Guilty Pleasures) Lime Cordiale May-A Mincy Ocean Alley Pacific Avenue Partiboi69 Peach Prc Poolclvb Redhook Royel Otis The Buoys The Dreggs Tia Gostelow Tkay Maidza Also in Canberra: Apricot Ink Clique & Brittany Demarco G.A.C.T (Just Tneek, Kinetictheory, Bin Juice, Geo) Sputnik Sweetheart Zach Knows + more to be announced Triple J Unearthed Winner Also on the Gold Coast: Bill Durry Friends Of Friends Logan Peach Fur + more to be announced Triple J Unearthed Winner Also in Ballarat: Ango Ben Gerrans Blue Vedder Sami Srirachi Yorke Triple J Unearthed Winner Also in Perth: Don Darkoe Dulcie Sammythesinner The Vault Djs + more to be announced Spilt Milk will hit Canberra, Ballarat, the Gold Coast and Perth in November and December 2023. Pre-sale tickets go on sale on Tuesday, July 11 and general sales on Thursday, July 15 — at 8am AEST for Canberra tickets, 8am AWST for Perth tickets, 9am AEST for Ballarat tickets and 11am AEST for Gold Coast tickets. Head to the festival website for more info and to register for pre-sales. Top image: Jordan Munns.
Thirty years, hundreds of films and thousands of minutes spent staring at the silver screen: that's what the Alliance Française French Film Festival is celebrating in 2019. Three decades since first launching in Australia, the event is marking its mammoth milestone with a particularly huge festival. And like all of the best big birthday bashes, the fest has assembled quite the on-screen guest list. When AFFFF starts touring the country from March 5 — kicking off in Sydney before heading to heading to Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide, Avoca Beach, Parramatta and Byron Bay — it'll not only screen 54 movies across a six-week period, but also showcase a heap of French acting greats. Think Juliette Binoche, Audrey Tautou, Isabelle Adjani, Vincent Cassel, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Mathieu Amalric, plus Vanessa Paradis and her daughter Lily-Rose Depp. The list goes on (obviously). With acclaimed French directors Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard each making their English-language filmmaking debuts over the last 12 months, this year's AFFFF also boasts a bit of Hollywood star power. Robert Pattinson and André Benjamin (aka André 3000) join the aforementioned Binoche in Denis' stellar dystopian space effort High Life, while Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly and Jake Gyllenhaal star in Audiard's western, The Sisters Brothers. Both titles have been gathering praise on the international festival circuit since late last year, and will hit Aussie screens for the first time at AFFFF. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtOwfo1ypOw From opening film The Trouble with You to closing night's Kiss & Tell — both comedies — the full lineup boasts plenty of other features to get excited about. Intimate drama A Faithful Man steps into the complications of romance, with Louis Garrel both in front of and behind the camera; César award-nominee Amanda follows a twentysomething forced to bond with his niece; and doco fans can get a fashion fix with both Celebration: Yves Saint Laurent and Jean-Paul Gaultier: Freak & Chic. Elsewhere, famed director François Ozon returns with By the Grace of God, which comes our way after premiering in Berlin in February, and Olivier Assayas is back with his thoughtful latest offering, Non-Fiction. While the trio of The World Is Yours, Knife + Heart and Sorry Angel have already played on Australian screens, specifically in Melbourne last year, they're also worth looking out for — the crime caper, campy slasher and queer romance all made our best of MIFF list for a good reason. Finally, if you're keen on both old and new French talents, they're both in the spotlight in a considerable way. The former comes courtesy of a restored screening of Alain Resnais' classic 1961 effort Last Year at Marienbad, and a dedicated program strand highlights the latter, including emerging filmmakers such as Coralie Fargeat (Revenge), Cécila Rouaud (Family Photo) and Dominique Rocher (The Night Eats the World). The Alliance Française French Film Festival tours Australia from March 5, screening at Sydney's Chauvel Cinema, Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona, Palace Central and Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace from March 5 to April 10; Melbourne's Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Cinema Como, Palace Westgarth, Kino Cinemas and The Astor Theatre from March 6 to April 10; Perth's Palace Raine Square, Cinema Paradiso, Luna on SX, Windsor Cinema andCamelot Outdoor Cinema from March 13 to April 10; and Brisbane's Palace Barracks and Palace James Street from March 14 to April 14. For more information and to buy tickets, visit the AFFFF website.
Julian Assange. You might have heard of him? That Lucius Malfoy-haired, Peter Garrett-choreographed, Ecuadorian Embassy-ensconced hacker who almost certainly kisses and tells. Yeah, you know him? Of course you do, because thanks to years of media coverage, Robert Connolly's impressive biopic Underground (2012), Alex Gibney's excellent documentary We Steal Secrets (2013) and, of course, Mr Assange himself, the Wikileaks/Assange saga (now largely synonymous) is one of the most well-known, well-told stories of the decade. Accordingly, if you're going to make a new movie about that story, it had better offer up something new. Unfortunately, The Fifth Estate does not. Directed by Bill Condon (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn), The Fifth Estate sources much of its material from the two books Assange is least likely to ever recommend during cake corner, namely: Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011), and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (2011). Both were written by men who were about as close to Assange as one could get in the lead up to, and during, his infamous publication of hundreds of thousands of classified US military and government documents, and both detail how their initial infatuation with this quasi-messianic figure for openness and transparency gave way to horror at his apparent total disregard for consequence. In short, powerful stuff but nothing even remotely revelatory this far into the Wikileaks narrative. If there is a reason to see The Fifth Estate, then, it is unquestionably Benedict Cumberbatch. Few who are not Australian have ever mastered the accent, yet Cumberbatch wields both it and Assange's specific cadence and timbre with aplomb. So impressive is the feat, in fact, that it actually works against the movie. Assange's slow, measured and largely monotone articulation robs even the most dramatic moments of energy, both in real life and in this film, so much so that were it not for the consistently explosive content of his conversations, one suspects he'd be an unbearably boring man to meet in person. Stylistically, The Fifth Estate does what it can to make coding, reading and emailing something of a spectator sport; however, the only real drama occurs when the key figures engage in actual person-to-person (cf peer-to-peer) exchanges — most notably, the debates between Assange and his right-hand man, Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), who wrote Inside Wikileaks, over what to release, and when. Everything else feels largely pedestrian, and — remarkably — the contentious allegations of sexual misconduct for which Assange has been indicted by Sweden appear only as a footnote in the credits. Ultimately, The Fifth Estate is an example of the whole being somehow lesser than its parts; a film easily outperformed by its performers and the real life players who inspired it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=YQOiS_l_0Jk
Minions: they’re cute, yellow and mostly unintelligible — and they’re everywhere. Off screen, it certainly feels that way, with every store seemingly filled with brightly coloured merchandise. On screen, it definitely feels that way in their first stand-alone film. That's the point, though. Those mumbling, bumbling critters first sighted in Despicable Me and its sequel are inescapable, both in the antics they cause, and to audiences. In fact, minions aren't just prevalent in every frame of the movie that shares their name; as the film makes plain, the overalls-and-goggles-wearing fellows have always been here. An amusing introduction big on revisionist history and narrated by Australia's own Geoffrey Rush charts their evolution from the sea to swarming around a host of bad guys — dinosaurs, pharaohs, Dracula and Napoleon included. Those with short memories might need reminding that the titular figures are the ultimate henchmen, living to serve villainous masters. That's what they seek in 1968, and wreak havoc across several continents to find. After bad luck with their previous horrible bosses, and centuries spent holed up in an icy Antarctic cave as a result, leader Kevin, teddy bear-clutching Bob and guitar-playing Stuart (all voiced by co-director and Despicable Me veteran Pierre Coffin) trundle back to civilisation to find a new scoundrel to trail. At a convention for rogues and rascals, they team up with the scheming Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock), who tasks them with stealing the crown of Queen Elizabeth II (Jennifer Saunders). To say things don't go smoothly is an understatement. Soon, the trio is fleeing from their would-be overlord and her inventor husband (Jon Hamm). Expect slapstick hijinks aplenty, with much of the mayhem designed with the minions' adorable nature in mind and little else. In general, the golden, rounded figures don't make that much sense, so it follows that neither does the madcap movie and its frantic array of gags. Eschewing logic, abandoning emotional awakenings and avoiding imparting a message add to the delight of the film in this day and age of lesson-centric all-ages affairs. As they flit across the screen to a period-appropriate soundtrack of the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Who and the Beatles, the sidekicks turned stars simply enjoy revelling in silliness and anarchy. That's what Minions is: chaotic, amusing fun, albeit of the slight, sweet and ultimately disposable variety. In what amounts to an origin story, Coffin and his crew never take anything too seriously, including shoehorning in as many nods to other genres as they can — such as superhero flicks, of course, as well as royal comedies and even monster movies. They also never forget that, in their first two big screen outings, the minions were the primary source of comic relief. No doubt they'll be fulfilling that role again in Despicable Me 3, due out in 2017, but for now, they do just fine lapping up the limelight all by themselves.
Watching a man painstakingly recreate an oil painting doesn't exactly sound like the basis for a winning documentary. Yet in the hands of popular TV double act Penn and Teller, that's exactly what it turns out to be. Told in clear, accessible terms that laymen can understand, Tim's Vermeer is a lively, intriguing look at the line between artist and inventor, one that challenges the very notion that the distinction should be made at all. Johannes Vermeer was a 17th-century Dutch artist, best known these days for Girl with a Pearl Earring. His paintings have been lauded for their photorealistic look. Various theories exist as to how he was able to achieve such detail, one of which suggests that he made use of optical aids — mirrors, curved lens and so on. One subscriber to this theory is San Antonian inventor Tim Jenison. Despite having no artistic training, Jenison believes that by following what he thinks were the Dutchman's methods, he'll be able to produce similar results. An unassuming project about an unassuming man, this film is an ode to quiet determination. Jenison pours years into his hobby, teaching himself the skills to build a life-size replica of Vermeer's studio, and even finagling a private viewing in Buckingham Palace of the piece he wishes to recreate. His painting technique, which involves matching colour to an image reflected in an elevated mirror, is rather difficult to do justice in writing. Rest assured though that it's fascinating to behold. Penn provides the narration — his verbosity and humour helping viewers follow the science behind the art. Teller, meanwhile, does solid work in the director's chair, keeping the movie moving at a reasonably rapid pace. If the film has an issue, it's that it leaves little room for viewpoints other than its own. Apparently the optics theory is quite controversial in the art world, but everyone in the movie dismisses the sceptics out of hand. Then again, it's rather hard not to be convinced by Jenison's hypothesis, particularly when you see what he's able to put on the canvas. Whether or not his was the same technique that Vermeer used, the final product is certainly remarkable. At the end of the day, that may be more important. This film doesn't work because you care about Vermeer. It works because you care about Tim. https://youtube.com/watch?v=cxVxti5Fnf8
Consider yourself reminded – Valentine's Day is just around the corner. But don't fear if you've forgotten to organise a fancy table for you and your SO, bestie or group of pals – with A Table to End Hunger you can secure that last minute booking, while also supporting an important cause. A Table to End Hunger has already made reservations at 140 of Australia's best restaurants, which come inclusive with a dinner and drinks package to ensure your night goes off without a hitch. All you have to do is place the winning bid on any one of the many high-flying restaurants, and you'll get the spot. Plus, your winning bid will also help end world hunger by 2030, as 100% of the proceeds go straight to The Hunger Project. And going one step further, if the winning bid is paid with an eligible American Express Card, Amex will donate an additional 15% of the bid value. No matter what part of the country you live in, there are loads of participating restaurants in your state. Feel like some Spanish tapas overlooking Melbourne CBD? Place a bid on Bomba. Or, if stylish Italian is more your game, stake your claim on Double Bay's Matteo. If you're in Brisbane, snag a table at newcomer Little Big House. There's pretty much every type of atmosphere, cuisine and location you could need, so head over to the A Table to End Hunger auction page and spread the love this Valentine's Day. Online bidding is happening right now and will close on Sunday February 11, 2018 at 9pm AEDT. Terms and conditions apply. Image: Nikki To.
It's not every day that a Fortitude Valley street shuts down for queer music and fun. No, just Big Gay Day. A mainstay at, in and around The Wickham, the annual event turns 23 in 2023, and will return to take over the beloved pub's surrounding roadway again — but at the end of the year. 2023's afternoon and evening of tunes and LGBTQIA+ celebrations has moved its date from the end of April to the beginning of October. To answer the big question that might've popped into your head, yes, it's still happening on a Sunday as part of a long weekend. It'll just take place on Sunday, October 1 instead of Sunday, April 30. "We have been working hard over the past few months to deliver an amazing event on the original date of Sunday 30th April; however, due to scheduling conflicts with neighbouring stakeholders, we will be unable to deliver the event on this original date," The Wickham advised via a mailout to its subscribers. "We are excited to announce that in lieu of Big Gay Day, we will be holding our annual Little Gay Day inside the newly renovated Wickham Hotel on Sunday 30th April. We will be fundraising for local LGBTQIA+ youth charities and presenting an incredible line up of interstate and local talent across our three spaces." So, you still have two dates for your diary — starting off with a small shindig first, then jumping into the whole shebang later in the year. Lineups for both events are still be to announced, but 2022's Big Gay Day lived up to its name, with 'Absolutely Everybody' singer Vanessa Amorosi headlining. Back in 2020, Mel C from the Spice Girls did the honours. Whoever Big Gay Day 2023's highest-profile act happens to be, they'll be joined by a hefty lineup of performers, musicians, DJs and drag stars — plus carnival acts, multiple performance spaces, food trucks, themed pop-up bars and plenty of partying people on the agenda. And, both Big Gay Day and Little Gay Day will enjoy The Wickham's $3.1-million revamp, which Brisbanites will get to see from Monday, March 27. Part of the makeover: a weather-proofed beer garden, late-night snacks, monthly drag brunches and a dedicated food menu for dogs. Big Gay Day will take place on Sunday, October 1, 2023, with Little Gay Day popping up on Sunday, April 30. Keen an eye on Big Gay Day website and The Wickham's website for further details.
On February 24, 2010, Florida SeaWorld employee Dawn Brancheau drowned after being pulled underwater by the park's star attraction, a five-and-a-half tonne orca named Tilikum. Her death was the third in 20 years to involve the massive killer whale, who has spent most of his life in captivity. Troubled by reports of the marine park's unethical treatment of its animals and spurred on by conflicting stories about how Brancheau's tragic death occurred, documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite decided to investigate further. The result is Blackfish, a troubling if not particularly revelatory doco about the dangers of keeping predators in captivity. It's obvious that Blackfish is pushing an agenda, albeit one that most viewers will probably agree with. Convinced that SeaWorld's treatment of animals like Tilikum is morally wrong and may have played a key role in the death of Brancheau and others, Cowperthwaite's primary aim is to appal and incite outrage. Her interview subjects consist of marine biologists, animal activists and disillusioned former SeaWorld workers. Through the testimony of the latter in particular, Blackfish paints a damning portrait of physically and emotionally neglected animals along with subpar safety conditions for their trainers. Despite this, the trainers maintain they felt connected to their animals, like a parent does to a child. Footage of Brancheau at work — focused, professional but full of energy and laughter — is Cowperthwaite's emotional trump card. In contrast, the marine park chain is depicted as a faceless corporate entity, whose primary concerns seem to be dodging culpability and maximising profit (an end credits title card pointedly informs viewers that SeaWorld representatives refused to appear on camera). At the same time, Cowperthwaite never really breaks with documentary convention. Most of her major talking points, from the intelligent and social nature of marine mammals to the shady practices of the animals-in-captivity industry, have already been covered in earlier exposes, like Louie Psihoyos's shocking, emotionally devastating Oscar winner The Cove, to which Blackfish can't quite compare. Still, there's no denying the director's noble intentions, or the fact that her film is effective. While viewers may not be presented with much information that they didn't already know (or at least, assume to be true), there's certainly no harm in being reminded. Sickening footage of trainers barely escaping with their lives begs the question: when will the next fatality occur? If Blackfish causes even a few members of the public to reconsider where they go on holiday, then the project will have been a success. https://youtube.com/watch?v=G93beiYiE74
It's with a seemingly devil-may-care attitude that A Bigger Splash indulges in the dreams of many, as Tilda Swinton channels her rock star-like essence into actually playing one, and Ralph Fiennes writhes, dances, swims and just generally throws about all of his charms. With Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson, they form a smouldering quartet holidaying on an island off of the coast of Italy, eating, drinking, partying and enjoying the kind of sun-drenched, picturesque vacation most can only fantasise about. Of course, situations that appear relaxed and people who come across as carefree rarely remain that way under scrutiny. In loosely remaking the 1969 Italian-French film La Piscine for his English-language debut, director Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love) teams with writer David Kajganich (True Story) to present a picture of ostensible bliss, then breaks down its many moving parts. Swinton's singing superstar Marianne Lane is recovering from a vocal injury that has left her speaking only in whispers, with her cameraman boyfriend Paul (Schoenaerts) keeping her company. Enter Fiennes' Harry Hawkes, Marianne's ex-producer, ex-lover and whirlwind of a friend who has shared in many of her personal and professional ups and downs. His arrival is unexpected, as is the fact that he has his newly discovered adult daughter Penelope (Johnson) in tow. The movie flirts with a dark, devious tone, teasing the desire-fuelled tension that simmers between the four characters, particularly in light of Marianne and Harry's shared past, as well as the obvious attraction Penelope quickly harbours towards Paul. Still, there's little that's surprising in A Bigger Splash. The best movies manage to present insights into human behaviour that feel inevitable, relatable and still revelatory, which the movie manages at times. Yet it's equally as fond of simply luxuriating in the company of its characters, and in their lush backdrop, as it is dissecting their relationships. With cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (Clouds of Sils Maria) ensuring every image looks like it could have been lifted from a postcard or glossy magazine spread, and the main cast as ablaze as the visuals, the feature's affection for both is understandable. The combination of Swinton and Fiennes proves mesmerizing — and while the always-enigmatic former is in her element in a largely non-verbal role, it is the latter that steals the show. If ever an actor could capture the all-round force-of-nature that is Harry, it's Fiennes. That Schoenaerts and Johnson seem somewhat subdued in his shadow is more a reflection of his prominence than of their individual performances. Accordingly, A Bigger Splash is a film filled with standout, cast-fuelled moments that dare you to try to peel your eyes away: Harry letting loose to the Rolling Stones' aptly titled 'Emotional Rescue', the glimpses of Marianne's past glories, and the glances shared between Penelope and Paul chief among them. It's also a feature in which the triumphs linger, overpowering the less effective aspects, though never quite erasing them. Given the importance of music to the four main players, the end result comes to resemble an album that can't find the right balance between its smash hits and its non-single tracks, but keeps you listening over and over again regardless.
UPDATE, August 26, 2020: Bumblebee is available to stream via Amazon Prime Video, Foxtel Now, Google Play, YouTube Movies and iTunes. According to journalist and author Christopher Booker, there are seven basic story archetypes. According to the writers of the Michael Bay Transformers movies, there are none. Thank goodness, then, for screenwriter Christina Hodson, whose new film Bumblebee manages to be both a Transformers spinoff and a coherent story at the same time. This is, put simply, a franchise reborn. Rebooted. Resurrected. It dispenses with all the bombast of the Bay cacophony machine – the inexplicable explosions, one-dimensional characters and hyper-sexualised teenagers – in favour of a small scale story about a teen girl and her first car. Yes, a girl, and instead of miniature ripped shorts and extreme push-up bras, this one's prone to wearing grubby overalls, Smiths tour t-shirts and a spanner in her back pocket. Even better, her characterisation doesn't feel contrived: her late father was a grease monkey and fixing cars was their special father/daughter thing. Now that he's gone, it's all she has left. Played by Hailee Steinfeld, Charlie is an instantly appealing lead to get behind. She loves her family but feels detached and alone because of her reluctance to move on and accept the new man in her mother's life. She's independent, but not wealthy enough to forge a new life for herself. She's pretty, but not in the 'rich girl' way like the cruel queen bee from across town who torments her at every opportunity. When Charlie eventually finds Bumblebee, an injured alien robot hiding on earth disguised as an old yellow VW beetle, the instant bond they form is as touching as it is (strangely) believable. Together they will help each other find what they're looking for, with their bond far more integral to the story than the intergalatic robot war that provides the film its backdrop. Does that mean Transformers fans will feel shortchanged? Absolutely not. The opposite, in fact, because everything about Bumblebee treats its mechanical stars with the love and respect of someone who grew up watching the cartoons in the 80s (the film itself is set in 1987). The robot design and colour palette is admirably faithful to the source material, the voice work is spot on, and *that* sound effect (aka the transformation garble) is used with gleeful abandon. Even better, the action is entirely comprehensible, even at its most frenetic. Take nothing away from the Bay-era special effects – they were utterly groundbreaking. But there was just so much of it going on at all times that keeping track of who was fighting what became an exercise in nausea. In Bumblebee it's rare to see more than two transformers on screen at any one time, and the agile direction by Travis Knight allows you to enjoy every punch, blast and transformation. In the scenes involving the other human characters, principally John Cena's robot-hunting soldier Agent Burns, the story does tend to lose its momentum, flicking between goofy comedy and comic-book villainy without ever properly nailing either. Thankfully, though, the focus remains squarely on Charlie and 'Bee' for the majority of Bumblebee, and it's a better film for it. A delight in its own right, Bumblebee is also the perfect pivot point for a welcome franchise reset. On that front, the future looks bright. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcwmDAYt22k
Whether you're having a shit day or a really good one, a bunch of blooms delivered to your doorstep (or doughnuts, for that matter) will almost always make it better. But, like everything good in this world, flowers are only temporary. So if you're looking for a gift that will go the distance (like, survive in the desert kind of distance), this new Brissy delivery service is for you. The Succy Bunch lets you send a succulent to your pals around Brisbane. Each week the succulent offering — which comes in a little etched pot — will change, which means you can rack up quite the collection if you become a regular. First up, The Succy Bunch are delivering a 'Black Prince' echeveria in an 11cm x 12cm blue botanic pot. If you're in the Brisbane metro area, you're in luck — this little guy can make it to your desk (or a mate's, if you're feeling generous) for $40, including delivery. If your recipient is outside that reach, there's still hope — just get in touch with the team directly and they'll see if they can make it work. Orders are shipped out on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and must be ordered the day before at thesuccybunch.com.
Looking back on the last 24 years, the fashion world really hasn't changed all that much. Outfits are still outrageous, trends are as cyclical as the tides, and the pomp and puffery of the PR machine is as condescending and self-aggrandising as ever. In that sense, fashion's immutability makes it just as ripe for parody now as it was back in 1992, when Absolutely Fabulous first aired on the BBC. On the other hand, that the fashion world really hasn't changed all that much means that any parody done now risks feeling banal and familiar. Hence, the challenge of breathing new life into something old proves just as relevant for any pastiche as it does for the fashion world itself. It's here that we find ourselves presented with Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie. The notoriously precarious production road of TV adaptations has seen a lot of traffic of late. In just the past few years, programs that have graduated to the big screen include The A-Team, 21 Jump Street, Entourage, The Equaliser, GI Joe and The Man From U.N.C.L.E, plus a whole bunch of Mission Impossibles and Star Treks as well as a Baywatch film currently in post-production. More often than not these films fall short of the mark, tending to feel like two and a half episodes stuck together, or one longer episode struggling to justify its expanded scope and budget. The best are more like reinterpretations, taking the idea of the TV series and using that as the base for an entirely new adventure (21 Jump Street and Star Trek: Into Darkness being the best of the recent bunch). Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie attempts to follow that trend, throwing its stars Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley) back into the limelight of the fashion PR milieu. The theme of the movie, appropriately, is relevance, with its two leads fighting to stay part of the conversation in a world that has all but left them behind. Physically that means morning rituals of self-applied botox, suction tubes and foetus-blood facial transfusions, while professionally it means trying to land a client who still means something to people (sorry Lulu). The solution presents itself in the form of fashion icon Kate Moss (who cameos), but when an attempt to lure her business ends in disaster, Eddie and Patsy find themselves pariahs of the fashion world and fugitives from the law. Does it all come together as a film? In parts, perhaps, but overall the feeling is one of overreach and superfluity. If anything, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is more like a reunion episode than a film, bouncing from scene to scene with barely a plot in sight, even fewer laughs, and a series of fleeting walk-ons from characters you kind of, sort of, maybe remember from back when you watched the show. Barbs about gender reassignment and mixed-race families fizzle by without any real substance, and the drunken stumbling/falling routine that defined so much of the original series now seems sadder than it does funny. That's all part of the point, of course, that the desire for the party to go on forever will, over time, only serve to make fools of its disciples. But the delivery fails to resonate for much of the film's first hour. Where the film does shine is when it returns to its absolute core: pushing in tight on intimate, whispered conversations between its two outstanding leads as they heap red-hot private vitriol on everyone else in the room. Eddie's scatterbrained solipsism and Patsy's unwavering sex-bomb confidence are as funny now as they were two decades ago – making the film's insistent focus on slapstick and buffoonery all the more frustrating. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie opened number two at the UK Box Office, where it will surely find its homegrown audience more than dutiful to the cause. Even so, it's hard to see this film resonating with either international audiences or moviegoers under the age of 40. When Saunders declared an end to the original TV series after just three short seasons, she did so proudly declaring that it was better to go out on top rather than to overstay your welcome until you're politely asked to leave. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie might well have heeded such wisdom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj3ZWhlmexw
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Brisbane at present. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. THE LAST DUEL A grim historical drama that recreates France's final instance of trial by combat, The Last Duel can't be described as fun. It hinges upon the rape of Marguerite (Jodie Comer, Free Guy), wife of knight Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon, Ford v Ferrari), by his ex-friend Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver, Annette) — aka the event that sparked the joust — so that term will obviously never apply. Instead, the movie is exquisite in its 14th-century period staging. After a slightly slow start, it's as involving and affecting as it is weighty and savage, too. When the titular battle takes place, it's ferocious and vivid. And with a #MeToo spirit, the film heartbreakingly hammers home how poorly women were regarded — the rape is considered a crime against Carrouges' property rather than against Marguerite herself — making it an expectedly sombre affair from start to finish. The Last Duel must've been fun to make from a creative standpoint, however. Damon sports a shocking mullet, and Ben Affleck (The Way Back) dons a ridiculous blonde mop while hamming up every scene he's in (and demanding that Driver drop his pants), although that isn't why. Again, the brutal events seen don't earn that term, but teasing out Marguerite, Carrouges and Le Gris' varying perspectives is fascinating. Director Ridley Scott (All the Money in the World) and his screenwriters — Good Will Hunting Oscar-winners Damon and Affleck, plus acclaimed filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said) — have clearly seen Rashomon, the on-screen benchmark in using clashing viewpoints. In their "he said, he said, she said" tale, journeying in the iconic Japanese film's footsteps proves captivating. It must've been an enjoyable challenge for its cast, too, terrible hairstyles and all; as moments repeat, so much of the movie's potency stems from minuscule differences in tone, angle, emphasis and physicality. "The truth according to Jean de Carrouges" proclaims The Last Duel's first chapter, adapting Eric Jager's 2004 book of the same name in the process. (Le Gris and Marguerite's segments, following in that order, receive the same introduction.) Even in his own instalment, Damon plays Carrouges as a scowling and serious soldier, and as petulant and entitled. He's also a victim in his own head. That attitude only grows as Le Gris finds favour with Count Pierre d'Alençon (Affleck), cousin to teenage King Charles VI (Alex Lawther, The Translators), and starts collecting his debts — including Carrouges' own. And when the knight marries the beautiful and well-educated Marguerite, it's purely a transaction. It also deepens his acrimony towards Le Gris long before the rape, after land promised in the dowry ends up in his former pal's hands via the smarmy Pierre. Still, Carrouges is instantly willing to fight when he hears about the sexual assault. That said, it's also just another battle against Le Gris and the Count, after taking them to court and the King over their property squabble. In Le Gris' chapter, where Driver broods with an intensity that's fierce even for him, Carrouges' joylessness and pettiness is given even more flesh. Also explored here: the Count's hedonism, the ambition and greed driving the opportunistic Le Gris, and the fixation he develops with Marguerite. Scott ensures that the rape lands like the horror it is, too, leaving no doubt of its force and coercion despite Le Gris' claims otherwise. Read our full review. THE HARDER THEY FALL Idris Elba. A piercing gaze. One helluva red velvet suit. A film can't coast by on such a combination alone, and The Harder They Fall doesn't try to — but when it splashes that vivid vision across the screen, it's nothing short of magnificent. The moment arrives well into Jeymes Samuel's revisionist western, so plenty of stylishness has already graced its frames before then. Think: Old West saloons in brilliant yellows, greens and blues; the collective strut of a cast that includes Da 5 Bloods' Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors, Atlanta's Zazie Beetz and LaKeith Stanfield, and If Beale Street Could Talk Oscar-winner Regina King; and an aesthetic approach that blasts together the cool, the slick and the operatic. Still, Elba and his crimson attire — and the black vest and hat that tops it off — is the exclamation mark capping one flamboyant and vibrant movie. Imaginative is another appropriate word to describe The Harder They Fall, especially its loose and creative take on American history. Where some features based on the past take a faithful but massaged route — fellow recent release The Last Duel, for example — this one happily recognises what's fact and what's fantasy. Its main players all existed centuries ago, but Samuel and co-screenwriter Boaz Yakin (Now You See Me) meld them into the same narrative. That's an act of complete fiction, as is virtually everything except their names. The feature freely admits this on-screen before proceedings begin, though, and wouldn't dream of hiding from it. Team-up movies aren't rare, whether corralling superheroes or movie monsters, but there's a particular thrill and power to bringing together these fictionalised Black figures in such an ambitious and memorable, smart and suave, and all-round swaggering film. After proving such a commanding lead in HBO series Lovecraft Country, Majors takes centre stage here, too, as gunslinger Nat Love. First, however, the character is initially introduced as a child (Anthony Naylor Jr, The Mindy Project), watching his parents get murdered by the infamous Rufus Buck (Elba, The Suicide Squad). A quest for revenge ensues — and yes, Nat shares an origin story with Batman. Samuel definitely isn't afraid to get stylised and cartoonish, or melodramatic, or playful for that matter. One of the keys to The Harder They Fall is that it's so many things all at once, and rarely is it any one thing for too long. This is a brash and bold western from its first vividly shot frame till its last, of course, and yet it's also a film about the tragedies that infect families, the violence that infects societies, and the hate, abuse, prejudice, discrimination and bloodshed that can flow from both. It's a romance, too, and it nails its action scenes like it's part of a big blockbuster franchise. As an adult, Nat still has Rufus in his sights. It'll take a few twists of fate — including a great train robbery to free Rufus en route from one prison to the next — to bring them face to face again. The sequence where the outlaw's righthand woman Trudy (King) and quick-drawing fellow gang member Cherokee Bill (Stanfield) take on the law is sleek heist delight, and the saloon clash with marshal Bass Reeves (Lindo) that gets Nat back on Rufus' trail is just as dextrously handled. Nat also has bar proprietor and his on-again, off-again ex Stagecoach Mary (Beetz) on his side, plus the boastful Beckwourth (RJ Cyler, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), sharp-shooting Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi, Briarpatch) and diminutive Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler, P-Valley). Everyone gets their moments, and every one of those moments sashays towards a blood-spattered showdown. Read our full review. MALIGNANT Nearly two decades have passed since a pair of Melbourne talents made a low-budget horror flick that became a franchise-starting smash, sparking their Hollywood careers. Thanks to Saw, James Wan and Leigh Whannell experienced every aspiring filmmaker's absolute fantasy — a dream they're still living now, albeit increasingly on separate paths. Wan's latest, Malignant, is firmly grounded in those horror roots, however. Most of the Insidious and The Conjuring director's resume has been, aside from recent action-blockbuster detours to Fast and Furious 7, Aquaman and the latter's upcoming sequel. With Malignant, though, he shows how strongly he remains on the same page as his former collaborator. Anyone who's seen Whannell's excellent Upgrade and The Invisible Man will spot the parallels, in fact, even if Malignant is the far schlockier of the three. Malignant is also an exercise in patience, because plenty about its first half takes its time — and, when that's the case, the audience feels every drawn-out second. But after Wan shifts from slow setup mode to embracing quite the outrageous and entertainingly handled twist, his film swiftly becomes a devilish delight. Heavily indebted to the 70s-era works of giallo master Dario Argento, David Cronenberg's body-horror greats and 80s scary movies in general, Malignant uses its influences as fuel for big-swinging, batshit-level outlandishness. Most flicks can't segue from a slog to a B-movie gem. Most films can't be saved by going so berserk, either. Wan's tenth stint behind the lens can and does, and leaves a limb-thrashing, blood-splattering, gleefully chaotic imprint. Perhaps it's a case of like name, like approach; tumours can grow gradually, then make their havoc felt. Regardless, it doesn't take long within Malignant for Dr Florence Weaver (Jacqueline McKenzie, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears) to proclaim that "it's time to cut out the cancer" while treating a locked-up patient in the film's 1992-set prologue. This is a horror movie, so that whole event doesn't turn out well, naturally. Jump forward a few decades, and the feature's focus is now Seattle resident Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis, Boss Level), who is hoping to carry her latest pregnancy with her abusive husband to term. But then his violent temper erupts again, she receives a head injury, and childhood memories start mixing with visions of gruesome killings linked to Dr Weaver's eerie hospital — visions that Madison sees as the murders occur. Bearing telepathic witness to horrific deaths is an intriguing concept, although hardly a new one — and, that aforementioned first scene aside, it's also the most interesting part of Malignant's opening half. Wan and screenwriter Akela Cooper (Grimm, The 100) play it all straight and obvious, including when the cops (Containment's George Young and Songbird's Michole Briana White) are skeptical about Madison's claims. That leaves only her younger sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson, Mr Mercedes) believing what's going on, and leaves the movie a plodding psychological-meets-supernatural thriller predicated upon routinely predictable but improbable character decisions. It makes the second half feel positively electrifying in contrast, when the big shift in tone comes, but also makes viewers wonder what might've been if that lurid look and kinetic feel had been present the whole way through. Read our full review. ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN When Anthony Bourdain strode around the world, and across our screens, in food-meets-travel series A Cook's Tour, No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown, he was as animated as he was acerbic and enigmatic. Beneath his shock of greying hair, the lanky New Yorker was relatable, engaging to a seemingly effortless degree and radiated a larger-than-life air, too. The latter didn't just apply because he was a face on TV, where plenty gets that bigger-than-reality sheen, but because he appeared to truly embrace all that life entailed in that hectic whirlwind of travelling, eating and waxing lyrical about both. Arriving three years after his suicide in 2018, documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain captures that. It's so filled with Bourdain thanks to all that time he'd spent in front of the camera, it'd be near-impossible for it not to. But it also lurks under a shadow due to its now-infamous choice to use artificial intelligence to add dialogue that its subject didn't speak. Watching the film, there's no way of knowing which words Bourdain merely penned but didn't utter; the technology truly is that seamless. It still resounds as an unnecessary move, though, especially when such lines might've been incorporated in ways that wouldn't sit at stark odds with his visible liveliness. Roadrunner delves behind the facade that Bourdain presented to the world, of course. It notes his death immediately and goes in search of the sorrow and pain that might've led to it, as mulled over by friends such fellow chefs David Chang and Éric Ripert, and artist David Choe; crew members on his shows; and his second wife Ottavia Busia. Still, once you know about the AI, there's a sense of disconnection that echoes through the doco — because it surveys all that Bourdain was, compiles all of this stellar material and still resorted to digital resurrection. Thankfully, the passion and curiosity that always made Bourdain appear so spirited — yes, so alive, as compared to being vocally recreated by AI after his death — still makes Roadrunner worth watching. That's true for Bourdain fans and newcomers alike, although director Morgan Neville (Oscar-winner 20 Feet From Stardom) doesn't use his two-hour-long film as a birth-to-life primer for the uninitiated. Crucially, as also proved the case with his 2018 Mr Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Neville jumps through the details of Bourdain's life in a way that also muses on what his success and popularity said about the world. Why he struck such a chord is as essential an ingredient in Roadrunner as how he went from cook to celebrity chef, TV host, best-selling author and travel documentarian. The footage of Bourdain — from his shows, obviously, as well as from a plethora of TV interviews, behind-the-scenes clips and home videos — is edited together with the same restlessness that the man himself always exuded. You don't spend most of your year travelling if you can be easily pinned down, after all. It's a wise choice on Neville and editors Eileen Meyer (Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution) and Aaron Wickenden's (Feels Good Man) parts, but Neville has long had a knack for making his films feel like his subjects. Talking-head chats are spliced throughout, offering further details and grappling with how Bourdain's story ends; however, Roadrunner is repeatedly at its finest when it's peering at him and showing how his work encouraged us all not just to watch, but to eat, travel, think, talk and live. Read our full review. BECOMING COUSTEAU He's been parodied in a Wes Anderson film and mentioned in a Flight of the Conchords song. His red beanie, and those worn by his fellow crew members on his research ship Calypso, are an enduring fashion symbol. He won the second-ever Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or — becoming not only the first filmmaker to receive the prestigious prize for a documentary, but the only one to do so for almost half a century afterwards. When he started making television in the 60s, he turned his underwater-shot docos about the sea into truly must-see TV. He helped create undersea diving as we know it, and he's the most famous oceanographer that's ever lived. He was also one of the early voices who spoke out about climate change and humanity's impact upon the oceans. He's a rockstar in every field he dived into — and he's Jacques Cousteau, obviously. Becoming Cousteau touches on all of the above — except The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Flight of the Conchords' 'Fou de Fafa', of course — and makes for a a riveting splash into its namesake's life and career. There's just so much to tell, to the point that it frequently feels as if director Liz Garbus (an Oscar-nominee for What Happened, Miss Simone?) could've filled an entire series instead. Her big-screen tribute to Cousteau doesn't suffer from packing so much into its slice of celluloid, however. It simply makes the most of its time, leaving viewers wanting more because they've loved what they've just experienced. Becoming Cousteau is the cinematic equivalent of having a splash, gazing fondly at the sea's blue expanse, or peering deeply at the ocean's underwater wonders, all activities that beg for as much of your attention as possible. This isn't just an affectionate ode, though, even with ample praise floated Cousteau's way. When Garbus includes vision of wide-eyed children beaming up at her subject with wonder splashed across their faces, you could call it a case of a director telling audiences how they should feel — or signalling how she's looking his way, or both. But she knows that Cousteau's achievements, and the glorious archival footage that comes with it, elicits that reaction anyway. She also doesn't shy away from the thornier aspects of his personal and professional lives, tragedies and struggles among them. This is a film about a man who lived a life like no one else's, especially when he kept plunging beneath the sea, but it's also a movie about a man first and foremost. That's why Garbus sticks to a familiar biographical documentary format, as tempting as it might've been to take a more playful route. By chronicling Cousteau's existence in a chronological fashion — from naval officer to icon, with help from his own words as read by French actor Vincent Cassel (The World Is Yours) where footage doesn't exist — she emphasises who he becomes as he spends more and more time in, atop and contemplating the ocean. Yes, her title is that straightforward; however, neither the simplicity of Becoming Cousteau's structure nor the descriptiveness of its moniker can sum up this fascinating and thoughtful documentary. There's nothing standard about the way it charts his evolution or examines how he used his fame, either, or about the glorious way it selects, curates and compiles its wealth of clips — or about the movie's transfixing ebb and flow. LOVE YOU LIKE THAT She's alive, wrapped in seaweed. When a woman with amnesia washes up on the beach in Love You Like That, no one makes that Twin Peaks-esque comment. That's the most surprising thing about this Australian rom-com, because it doesn't skim on the obvious inclusions from that point onwards — and it isn't shy about swimming through an ocean of cliches, either. Indeed, by the time its big finale arrives to the sounds of John Paul Young's 'Love Is in the Air', blatantly trying to bring Strictly Ballroom to viewers' minds seems like the next natural step for a movie that's as generic and derivative as it comes otherwise. It's a misguided move, though, reminding audiences of what they would've been better off watching. Seafront Sands' mysterious new arrival (Allira Jaques, Charlie's Farm) claims she can't remember anything, including her name; however, she gravitates towards Mim, after the beach where she was found. People are drawn towards her in return, with the fictional coastal town swiftly influenced by her presence. Romance and kindness seem to follow in her footsteps — leaving Harrison (Mitchell Hope, Let It Snow), the local ladies' man who also runs a dating agency, intrigued. Of course, Mim has made her appearance on a day when the council is trying to woo developers, a big beach festival is scheduled and a policeman is pondering popping the question, and has an impact upon all three. There's a twist to Love You Like That, pegging the film firmly in the realm of sappy, soapy fantasies — although it lurks in that territory well before the big revelation arrives. That said, this is a tonally chaotic film. It's schmaltzy from start to finish, but also tries to stitch in middle-aged siblings mending their squabbles, a local cafe owner confronting her grief over her missing-in-action soldier husband, Harrison's parent issues thanks to an ailing dad and mum he never knew, and the raucousness of his assistant Emily (comedian Steph Tisdell) and her forcefully outgoing personality. Mostly, Love You Like That plays as if debut writer/director Eric C Nash has thrown everything he can at the screen to see what sticks. Alas, all that lingers is ridiculousness. The twist earns that description, and so does the seesawing mess that both precedes and follows it. A cast that includes well-known Aussie faces such as John Jarratt (Wolf Creek) and Chris Heywood (Dirt Music) — both in wasted parts — can't improve the careening screenplay. They also can't anchor a mood that changes in an instant like it's bobbing and weaving on the surf, including the jerky lurching from overblown sweetness (whenever Mim has an effect on people) to over-amped comedy (because Emily seems like she's come hurtling in from a completely different movie). Love You Like That is sunnily shot, but it's impossible to plaster over the film's many struggles with warm hues, beach imagery and wide smiles. Or, with 'Love Is in the Air' — which'll also get viewers thinking about how little this flick conjures. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on June 10, June 17 and June 24; July 1, July 8, July 15, July 22 and July 29; August 5, August 12, August 19 and August 26; September 2, September 9, September 16, September 23 and September 30; and October 7 and October 14. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Lapsis, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Fast and Furious 9, Valerie Taylor: Playing with Sharks, In the Heights, Herself, Little Joe, Black Widow, The Sparks Brothers, Nine Days, Gunpowder Milkshake, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Old, Jungle Cruise, The Suicide Squad, Free Guy, Respect, The Night House, Candyman, Annette, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Streamline, Coming Home in the Dark, Pig, Big Deal, The Killing of Two Lovers, Nitram, Riders of Justice, The Alpinist, A Fire Inside and Lamb.
Despite being nominated for Best Actor for Being the Ricardos, Javier Bardem had zero chance of nabbing a shiny trophy at the 2022 Oscars. The movie he deserves his next nod for instead: savagely sharp workplace satire The Good Boss, which is home to a tour-de-force of a performance from the Spanish actor. Already an Academy Award-recipient for his powerhouse effort in No Country for Old Men — and a prior contender for Before Night Falls and Biutiful, too — Bardem does what he long has, playing a character who uses a set facade to mask his real self. Here, he's a seemingly kindly factory owner who makes a big fuss about treating his employees like family, but happily lets that ruse slip if they want more money, or have problems at home that disrupt their work, or happen to be an attractive intern. He still sports a smile though, naturally. In his latest Goya Award-winning part — his 12th to be nominated, too — Bardem becomes the outwardly friendly, inwardly slippery Básculas Blanco. Given the darkness that lingers in his self-serving, self-confident, self-satisfied true nature, the character's name is patently tongue-in-cheek. He presides over a company that makes professional-grade scales, which he inherited from his father, and tells his staff "don't treat me like a boss". But filmmakers who put the word 'good' in their movie's monikers rarely mean it literally, and writer/director Fernando León de Aranoa (who reteams with his lead after 2002's Mondays in the Sun and 2017's Loving Pablo) is one of them. As portrayed with quietly compelling magnetism by Bardem, The Good Boss' ostensibly respectable CEO finds his perfectly calibrated public persona cracking slowly, surely and devilishly, all thanks to the weight of his own ruthlessness. Awards aren't just coming Bardem's way off-screen for this exceptional turn; they're baked into the movie's plot as well. When The Good Boss begins, Blanco is determined to win a prestigious business prize — but he can't be called desperate, because appearing anything other than commanding, magnanimous and prosperous isn't in the grey-haired, sleekly attired manager's wheelhouse. Still, everyone around him knows how insistent he is about emerging victorious, including his clothing boutique-owning wife Adela (Sonia Almarcha, The Consequences). Their dutiful but hardly passionate marriage says plenty about Blanco, how he operates, and how careful he is about maintaining the illusion he wants the world to see. Indeed, when pretty young Liliana (Almudena Amor, The Grandmother) starts in his marketing department for a month-long stint, she instantly earns his attention, while he still outwardly flaunts committed family-man vibes. Liliana's arrival isn't without complications either professionally and personally. But in a film that skewers nine-to-five life and relationships alike, that's one of several troubles that upsets the company's balance. Just as Blanco's business is set to be inspected during the prize's judging process, his orderly world is pushed askew. There's the just-retrenched José (Óscar de la Fuente, The Cover), who won't accept his sacking, has set up outside the worksite's gate with a loudspeaker shouting out his woes and even has his school-aged children in tow. Then, there's underling and childhood friend Miralles (Manolo Solo, Official Competition), whose marital struggles are impacting day-to-day operations. And, trusted employee Fortuna (Celso Bugallo, The Paramedic) calls upon Blanco's sway for help with a domestic situation of his own. The Good Boss doesn't lack for subplots. It's filled with them — overstuffed, even. Putting so much chaos on Blanco's plate stretches the film out to two hours, and it feels it, but there's a method behind León de Aranoa's approach. The deceitful air that lurks around his protagonist, not to mention everything he weathers and gets away with, has its heart in paralleling Spanish history. The filmmaker is in as pointedly comedic territory as he was with 2015's A Perfect Day, his Benicio del Toro-starring English-language debut about aid workers — and while the analogy to his homeland's past here remains unspoken, it's as gleaming as Blanco's ashen tresses nonetheless. An employer, husband, friend and person like The Good Boss' central figure isn't unique to Spain, but it's easy to connect the dots between the morally reprehensible behaviour on display and what's come before at the highest level in the European nation. Also mutely blatant: the statement made about what Blanco and his ilk will justify to maintain their authority. With its shaggy running time, and the convenience that seethes through some of its plot points, The Good Boss isn't as fine-tuned as it could be. While bearing a completely different tone, it also somewhat sits in the shadow of Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers, which similarly nods to Spanish history. And, it is inescapably a movie of two clear halves — the patiently building setup, because there's much to establish; and the payoff, where what Blanco's corruption means for men like him in a place with such a past becomes apparent. Still, when León de Aranoa's script slices, it cuts deeply and with a blackly comic disdain for the excesses of power and privilege that's so palpable that feeling it is inescapable. Also a key component: layering in the change bubbling in modern Spain, especially with gender roles. Regardless of whether The Good Boss happens to be hitting all of its marks at any given moment, Bardem is always mesmerising. Exuding menace has never been hard for him, as his Academy Award illustrates, but he proves as skilled here at letting that unease linger behind a superficially affable exterior as he is at flat-out getting villainous (for the latter, see also: Skyfall). Perhaps what's most striking about that polished-but-ominous combination is how recognisable it is at every turn, as it's designed to be, and how genuinely unnerving it is as a result. Workplaces everywhere are filled with Blancos, of course, aka people who can't ever quite hide their entitled, opportunistic, bullying and winner-takes-all tendencies with pleasant posturing, and yet have made successful careers thanks to coming close enough. Bardem mirrors a world of folks like Blanco with his transfixing performance, but also ensures that The Good Boss' namesake won't be easily forgotten.
More than three decades since it was first published, the Watchmen series of comics is still considered one of the all-time greats of the medium. Brought to the page by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, the premise says plenty: in an alternative version of the world we all live in, superheroes definitely exist — but their presence has drastically altered history. Here, the Cold War turned out differently, caped crusaders largely work for the government and anyone else enforcing law and order while wearing a costume has been outlawed. Now, imagine that tale told with a satirical edge that deconstructs the superhero phenomenon, and you can see why it has hordes of devotees. Back in 2009 when comic book flicks were just starting to pick up steam — and when 23-film franchises were a mere dream — Watchmen was turned into a movie by Zack Snyder (who was fresh from 300, but hadn't made the jump to Batman v Superman or Justice League yet). Sequels clearly didn't follow; however, HBO is now hoping that the story will flourish on the small screen, enlisting Lost and The Leftovers co-creator Damon Lindelof to make it happen. Obviously, with Game of Thrones all done and dusted (at least until its prequels start hitting the screen), the network is in the market for a new pop culture phenomenon. This isn't just a straight adaptation. Apparently the ten-part series "embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name while attempting to break new ground of its own," according to HBO. If you're wondering just how that'll play out, the program's trailers might help. Building on the first teaser from a few months back, the latest trailer serves up murky mysteries, complicated heroes and villains, and a fine line between the two — plus "a vast and insidious conspiracy". To help bring the above to the small screen, Watchmen boasts quite the stacked cast, which includes Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, this year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Regina King, Hong Chau, Louis Gossett Jr and Aussie actress Adelaide Clemens. The big names don't stop there, with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross providing the score. Check out the new trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-33JCGEGzwU Watchmen launches on October 21, Australian and New Zealand time — with the series airing weekly from that date on Foxtel in Australia. Image: Mark Hill/HBO
With filmmaking in her blood, Alice Englert makes her directorial debut with a movie about a mother and daughter with cinema similarly pumping through their veins. The creative force behind Bad Behaviour is the offspring of Oscar-winner Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog) and fellow helmer Colin Englert (The Last Resort), but here focuses on actor Lucy (Jennifer Connelly, Top Gun: Maverick) and stunt performer Dylan (Englert herself). There's a knowing, winking vibe to this New Zealand-shot dramedy, then, including in the Labyrinth-starring Connelly playing a former child star, as she is; Campion popping up for a memorable cameo; and Bad Behaviour's writer/director taking on the progeny-to-a-household-name part. The internet ensures that avoiding Englert's family ties is impossible, so she wryly leans into everywhere that life can and does inspire art; however, this bold and involving spiritual retreat-set feature isn't about nudges and nods, or even built on them. When there's evident parallels between what's on-screen and reality, a question springs: take all those links away and does the film still hit its marks? The answer for Englert's first stint behind the camera after acting in Ginger & Rosa, Beautiful Creatures, Campion's Top of the Lake, Them That Follow, Ratched, You Won't Be Alone and more is a resounding yes that could be shouted from the mountaintops. Bad Behaviour savvily satirises the wellness and enlightenment industry with the look of the also Aotearoa-made Nude Tuesday, but with a finely balanced understanding of its indulgences and its meaning to attendees. There's a glorious slice of The Lobster to the picture's tone, and not just because Ben Whishaw (Women Talking) features in both. Englert also constructs two phenomenal character studies, all while never being afraid to take wild turns that push everyone out of their comfort zones on- and off-screen. Open to splashing cash but closed to almost everything except her own pain, Lucy is Loveland Ranch's latest arrival, hitting the Oregon venue seeking what everyone is paying for: bliss, peace, reassuring words, kindly ears, shoulders to lean on, a renewed sense of self and the knowledge that all is well. If Lucy also decamps to the remote spot amid towering ranges to escape her own complications, that won't be on the itinerary. A phone call en route teases what loiters elsewhere, with strain echoing down the line as she tells Dylan — who is in NZ working on a big film — where she's going. It takes time and a shocking-but-earned twist to get Lucy and Dylan in the same space in Bad Behaviour's second half, when they're each weathering their own mayhem while also sifting through shared baggage, and the tension and anxiety between them seethes with a lifetime's worth of fractures and fraying. At Loveland, new-age sessions run by guru Elon Bello (Whishaw) are meant to get spiky, process trauma and demand hard work. That's even more true with its latest attendee, her dripping cynicism and her immediate distaste for self-obsessed model Beverly (Dasha Nekrasova, Succession). Everyone lapping up Elon's teachings has woes to wade through, with Lucy's distress at the path her life has taken since her heyday — she mentions a "warrior princess" role — just one problem put to the group. She's trying yet she's also igniting in a place where platitudes are doled out as wisdom and no one truly wants to do anything but hog the limelight. That the camp insists on silence between therapy chatter is an astute comic touch from Englert: the facility's customers gleefully believe that it'll help, purchasing the privilege of being told so and also struggling to comply; as scripted and portrayed, they'd also genuinely benefit from stopping to think through rather than natter about their emotions. As Lucy is stuck in agonising mother-baby role-play classes that go as well as anyone would expect — although in Englert's hands, nothing plays out as anyone could anticipate — Dylan is on set. There, plying her trade, getting bruises for her efforts and sporting a crush are her daily minutiae. Penned with precision, both of Bad Behaviour's threads tease out details about its two central women, whether unpacking Lucy's unhappiness, guilt and contempt, or exploring why Dylan seeks peril professionally and personally alike. A mother-daughter reckoning is always coming, though. Englert not only makes the build-up and the fallout equally knotty, revelatory and compelling — she commandingly establishes the ins and outs of her two protagonists beyond the most important relationship in their lives. More than four decades after her first-ever screen credit and two since winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, Connelly remains a reason to seek any project out. While she isn't Bad Behaviour's sole highlight, she's that good. Of late, she's been stellar in the TV version of Snowpiercer as well (also navigating uneasy parental bonds), but this film boasts one of her next-level performances. Stepping into Lucy's shoes is a go-for-broke effort to dive into the character's many complexities and conflicts, and Connelly is not only excellent but rivetingly raw and deeply resonant. She's also delightfully funny in the film's wry way. Englert has cast herself well, too, showing off her wit and empathy as an actor in a feature with no weak on-screen links, Whishaw, Ana Scotney (Millie Lies Low), Beulah Koale (Dual) and Marlon Williams (Sweet Tooth) among them. References to Englert and Connelly's pasts aren't all that Bad Behaviour wears proudly, clearly; thorniness is embraced just as strongly and ambition gleams bright. There's no doubting that this picture is the product of someone who knows what she wants to dig into, shower around, contemplate, excavate, call out and laugh at — and that it's made by a filmmaker who is as certain of how she wants her feature to look and feel at every moment. As cinematographer Matt Henley (Coming Home in the Dark) takes in the surroundings, it isn't difficult to spot New Zealand standing in for Bad Behaviour's American half, although there's a fitting air to that to that move in this movie. Perspective is a core part of this emotionally lingering flick, as is seeing intricacies in multiple lights as Englert shines the torch.
UPDATE: July 6, 2020: Seberg is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube and iTunes. Sorry, fans of Twilight — the most fascinating thing about the terrible vampire franchise is the haunted look in Kristen Stewart's eyes. If you were being particularly unkind to the blockbuster saga that catapulted her to superstardom, you might incorrectly call that expression boredom, but the same gaze has lingered in much of the actor's work since she stopped cuddling up to a fanged Robert Pattinson. It's the look of someone grappling with deep-seated uncertainty and conflict — that is, the type of character that has marked Stewart's superb post-Twilight roles in Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper and Certain Women. And, after a big-budget detour through Charlie's Angels' average action antics, plus dismal Alien ripoff Underwater, it's an expression she once again sports with purpose and potency in biopic Seberg. Jean Seberg, the American actor plucked from a talent search by director Otto Preminger when she was still a teenager, then cast in the starring role of Joan of Arc in her very first film, also had that same look. It's evident in her famed debut performance in 1957's Saint Joan, in her melancholy turn in Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse, and in French new wave masterpiece Breathless, the movie that cemented her place in cinema history. As Seberg shows through Stewart's dynamic yet quietly anguishedportrayal, however, that gaze became a constant off-camera as well. Focusing on a mere sliver of her career, rather than charting its eponymous figure's birth-to-death story, this engaging, intriguing thriller illustrates why a star who was acclaimed and adored across two continents came to brandish such inner sorrow — and why that, and not her career highlights, has earned this involving film's attention. Charting scandals of both the political and personal kind, infuriating government espionage and America's heated racial divisions, this twisty true tale was always going to make it the big screen. Set against the backdrop of Hollywood's fading heyday — the same period that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood chronicled so well so recently — it's the story of a woman punished, like the causes she fought to support, for refusing to remain in her place. Seberg is already an international star when the movie that bears her surname begins. It's 1968 and, following her first big roles, she has spent almost a decade setting up a life in Paris. At the urging of her agent (Stephen Root), she flies back to the US to make a few undemanding genre movies, only to fall afoul of the FBI as soon as she steps onto the tarmac. Seberg's crime? Being sympathetic to Black Power activist Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie) while they're in the air, joining him in a raised-fist salute when they hit the ground and — despite the fact that she has a husband (Yvan Attal) and Jamal has a wife (Zazie Beetz) — falling into bed with her new friend as well. Already surveilling Jamal, the FBI starts bugging Seberg too, tasking tech-savvy newcomer Jack Solomon (O'Connell) and heavy-handed veteran Carl Kowalski (Vince Vaughn) with listening in on her every move. As she donates to Jamal's civil rights efforts, using her status to draw attention to his cause, the government decides that she's an enemy. Through the tabloids, she's also easy to torment, discredit and destroy publicly. As the FBI's tactics ramp up, Seberg understandably reacts, while Solomon questions the morality of this state-sanctioned persecution. It's by no means a criticism of O'Connell that his storyline proves Seberg's weakest link. Whether his character is eavesdropping on his target or arguing with his medical student wife (Margaret Qualley) about his long hours, the Skins breakout turned '71 and Money Monster star is reliably excellent — but his part of the narrative always feels superfluous. In a tale about law enforcement secretly and maliciously harassing a real-life famous actor because the powers-that-be dislike her political affiliations, it's the victim that's of far greater interest, not the agony felt by one of the fictionalised perpetrators. That's doubly the case with an iconic figure such as Seberg and with such a tragic true story, something that screenwriters Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse (The Aftermath) occasionally seem to forget. That said, O'Connell's character does serve an important purpose, anchoring the film's visual approach. By giving Solomon's work-mandated spying such prominence, Australian filmmaker Benedict Andrews (Una) and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison (Mudbound) give their movie an observational air, like it's surreptitiously peering at Seberg's most intimate moments as well. And that look and feel is essential. Helped by top-notch production and costume design — Seberg's hilltop Los Angeles house is all windows, boxing her into a glass cage above the world, for example — Seberg steals a meaningful glimpse at the woman behind the celebrity, smears and scrutiny. It stares deeply and carefully, seeing that haunted look that Stewart wears so commandingly, and demonstrating why that tortured gaze says everything about Jean Seberg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANJZWxsQ8Ag
Sure, you've dreamed of flying like a bird — but have you ever wanted to flock like one? You might not be able to take to the skies, but you can use sound, movement and mass choreography to mimic the natural behaviour of our feathered friends while running around New Farm Park. That's the experiment that is Aeon, aka WTF's interactive, inexpensive, outdoor component. It's also a chance for Performing Lines to premiere their latest effort in a work-in-progress performance. Here, you won't just experience an immersive production. After the show is over, you'll also be asked to take part in a feedback session.
Last month felt particular steamy and uncomfortable (even for Australian summer) and it was — January was Australia's hottest month ever recorded. The Bureau of Meteorology this morning released its monthly climate summary, reporting that, for the first time ever in Australia, the mean temperature for a month exceeded 30 degrees. NSW, ACT, Victoria and the NT all had their hottest Januarys ever recorded, while other states had unusually hot weather and very little rain. If you're currently sitting at your desk — after running through rain in Sydney, waking up to 14 degrees in Melbourne or commuting in low-20s in Brisbane — and thinking, it didn't seem that bad, here's a quick summary of some of the weather we endured last month. The year kicked off with a country-wide heatwave, with the mercury hitting the 30s in every capital city and Canberra sweltering through four days of 40-degrees. By mid-January, the heatwave was causing record-breaking high temperatures across the country — including 48.9 in SA and high-40s across Victoria's North — with Sydney's west copping dangerously high levels of ozone gas. And, just last week, Melbourne survived its hottest day in ten years. Here's how hot our country looked at one point: https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1084218154782478337 Phew. We're sure you're happy to see the back of January. According to the BOM's senior climatologist Dr Andrew Watkins, the unprecedented heat was due to a "a persistent high pressure system in the Tasman sea which was blocking any cold fronts and cooler air from impacting the south of the country." Dr Watkins also said in a statement that Australia looks to continue getting hotter, too. "The warming trend which has seen Australian temperatures increase by more than 1 degree in the last 100 years also contributed to the unusually warm conditions." Unfortunately for our farmers, last month was also extremely dry. In NSW, where 100 percent of the state has been in drought, the northeast experienced one of the driest Januarys on record, while most of Victoria and Brisbane received less than 20 percent of their average January rainfall. Tasmania had its driest Jan on record and SA, which experienced some of the highest temperatures, also had very little-to-no rain — the Bureau's Adelaide city site recorded no rainfall for the month for the first time since 1957. So far, it looks like February is going to be less spicy. But if you'd rather not risk it, it might be time to book a trip to the northern hemisphere. Image: Visit Victoria.
More than just that patch of grass and trees at the edge of the CBD, the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens boasts a whole heap of wonders — gorgeous greenery, ponds filled with cute turtles, free exercise classes and more. From Friday, May 10 to Sunday, May 19, it's also the site of Brissie's returning major outdoor contemporary art exhibition: Botanica. For ten days, the gardens will come alive with artworks, talks, walks, workshops and more, including an installation of mirrors located in the northwest lagoon and a series of pop-up glasshouses. Or, stop by after 5pm on May 10–12 and 17–19 for Beats and Eats, which will involve all of the above plus food trucks and live music. On May 10 and 17, special Botanica by Night sessions will also include guided tours, plus artists on hand. If you missed the first one last year — or if you went along and loved it — 2019's event promises a whole heap of new garden wonders. Either way, prepare to roam through the centre of Brisbane and see its natural splendour in a whole new way.
More than just that patch of grass and trees at the edge of the CBD, the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens boasts a whole heap of wonders — gorgeous greenery, ponds filled with cute turtles, free exercise classes and more. From Friday, May 7–Sunday, May 16, it'll also be the site of Brissie's returning major outdoor contemporary art exhibition, Botanica. And this time, it's happening after dark. For ten days, from 5pm onwards, the gardens will come alive with artworks, talks, installations and microprojections — plus talks, workshops, guided tours, a live drawing performance, spoken word events and a poetry slam evening. Also on the bill: live music, food trucks and a pop-up bar on the fest's two weekends. The full program will drop in early April, but you can pencil in seeing nine dazzling new outdoor pieces from artists Hiromi Tango, Simone Eisler, Georgie Pinn, Esem Projects, Charlotte Haywood, Jenna Lee, Kellie O'Dempsey, Paul Bai and Georgia Hillas. If you missed the first two fests in 2018 and 2019 — or if you went along and loved it — 2021's event promises a whole heap of new garden wonders. Either way, prepare to roam through the centre of Brisbane and see its natural splendour in a whole new way.
Forget ocker comedies and downbeat dramas — when it comes to Aussie cinema, there's a new trend in down. Sure, plenty of titles have made the leap from theatre to film during the country's movie-making history, but with Ruben Guthrie, Holding the Man, Last Cab to Darwin and Spear all hitting cinemas within the last year, the nation appears to be in the middle of a stage-to-screen renaissance. Next comes The Daughter, with actor and playwright turned filmmaker Simon Stone leading the charge. After treading the boards with his own take on Henrik Ibsen's 1884 work The Wild Duck, he now turns the tale into an Australian-set feature film. When Christian (Paul Schneider) returns to the mountainous outskirts of New South Wales after years spent in the US, his homecoming stirs up mixed emotions. His father Henry (Geoffrey Rush), is pleased to see him, but Christian has more than a few reservations about his dad's impending marriage to the much younger Anna (Anna Torv). And while his reunion with childhood best mate Oliver (Ewen Leslie) proves happy, the more time Christian spends with his pal, his wife Charlotte (Miranda Otto) and teenage daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young), the more troubles start to emerge. Some characters know things they shouldn't, others are hiding details they're trying to forget, and everyone gets caught up in the chaos when certain truths are exposed, making secrets and lies The Daughter's primary currency. There's more than a little bit of melodrama at play, though there's not much in the narrative that's unexpected. Even if you're not familiar with the source material or Stone's previous theatre version, it's not hard to see where the soapy story is going. That's disappointing in terms of delivering real twists, turns and mysteries, but it does showcase the movie's true focus: its characters and performances. Corralling an impressive, mostly Australian cast — a scene-stealing Sam Neill among them — Stone hones in on the actions and emotions of a close-knit group struggling with the weight of past and present deeds. Accordingly, the tension that bubbles throughout the feature stems from their reactions, rather than the many not-so-surprising revelations. Whether frozen with shock, arguing with anger or crying in pain, their response to the situation always feels real. Take the figure of Hedvig, the titular daughter, for example. She seethes with a blend of confidence and vulnerability not often seen in teens on screen, with Young giving her second great performance, behind Looking For Grace, of the year so far. It certainly helps that Stone, as a director rather than a writer, favours an empathetic, subjective approach in his stylistic choices. With a colour scheme that reflects the characters' moods, and camera angles that mirror their perspectives, he crafts a movie that looks as intimate as the age-old issues it trifles with. The end result may be obvious and histrionic, story-wise, yet it's still for the most part engrossing. As such, The Daughter doesn't just bring the stage to the screen, but the messy nature of life as well.
If there's one thing everyone needs this Christmas, it's food. And if there's one thing that makes grocery shopping two days before the biggest eating day of the year bearable, it's heading to a farmers' market that's also a music festival. That's where The Gap Farmer's Market Christmas Twilight Music Festival comes in — that is, the only place you want to be gathering supplies from on December 23. From 3pm, more than 100 stalls will be selling their freshest fruit, vegetables, meat, seafood, eggs, pasta, cheese, breads, juices and more, while a host of bands provide the perfect soundtrack. If you've ever been to The Gap Farmer's Market before, you'll know that their festive edition is your one-stop shopping destination. And if you haven't, here's your chance to check them out. Yes, you'll be able to pick up arts, crafts and artisan gifts, should you have more than a little last-minute scrambling to do.
When The Market Folk brought a heap of stalls to Newstead's Gasometer last Christmas, it was clearly a smart move. Browsing and buying beneath one of inner-city Brisbane's most striking sights, including at night — what's not to love? Because some ideas are too great to only happen once a year, this winning combination is making a comeback — even though we're months and months away from festive season. Of course, February has its own date worth celebrating, so you'll be shopping for fashion, art, homewares, plants and ceramics on the romantic occasion that is Valentine's Day. [caption id="attachment_758933" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] The Market Folk[/caption] Taking place from 5–9pm on Friday, February 14, the Gasworks Valentine's Day Market will feature plenty of artisanal goodies to tempt your wallet — and a heap of perfect gift ideas for your special someone, too. As always, Brisbane creatives will be in the spotlight, so you'll also be showing them some love as well. Top image: Andrew S via Flickr.
Some desserts always tempt the tastebuds, because there's going wrong with a classic. As well as tasting great every time you bite into them, some of those same sweet treats have inspired a heap of creative takes, too. If you've ever sipped a lamington-flavoured milkshake or plunged a scoop into some Iced VoVo gelato, then you know exactly what we're talking about. The next dessert mashups on offer hail from chocolatier Koko Black — and, if you're particularly fond of nostalgic Aussie favourites, your stomach might just start growling. As part of its new Australian Classics Collection, the Melbourne-founded company is making chocolate versions of plenty of your childhood staples. Think honey joys, chocolate crackles and Golden Gaytimes, plus the perennial go-tos that are Iced VoVos and lamingtons. The artisanal range turns some of the above sweets into separate bars sold in three-packs, and some into slabs of chocolate. So, you can tuck into Gaytime Goldies, which combine vanilla and malted caramel ganache, then dip the bar in dark chocolate, before covering it with hazelnuts — or opt for a block of Koko Crackles, which features rice bubbles, caramelised coconut and white chocolate, as then dipped in dark chocolate. Also available: a Lamington Slice slab, combining chocolate marshmallow and raspberry jelly, as covered in dark chocolate and dusted with coconut; bars of Koko Vovo, aka milk chocolate-coated biscuits topped with strawberry rosewater marshmallow, raspberry jelly and coconut; and Jam Wagons, which top biscuits topped with marshmallow and raspberry jam, then coat them in milk chocolate. Or, there's also Honey Joys, if you like your cornflakes drizzled with honey, then mixed with either milk chocolate or dark chocolate. The Australian Classics Collection is available separately or as one big hamper, with prices ranging from $15.90–$169. If you're keen, they've already hit Koko Black's online store — with delivery available nationally — and will show up in its physical shops from September 24. For more information about Koko Black's Australian Classics Collection, visit the store's website. Images: Studio Round.
Think Fortitude Valley is just about weekend markets and bars, bars, bars? Think again. There's art to see and food to eat, too — and a trip to TWFINEART followed by a stroll down Bakery Lane makes quite the combo. At the first you'll find an exhibition, of course. And while just who the artist is and what kind of style they prefer might change, the fact that you'll experience a creative onslaught won't. Then, eat your way along the coolest off-Ann Street space there is. Nom-Nom Korean's three types of bibimbap always hit the spot, but Johnny's Pizzeria might tempt you with their woodfired wares and disco theme. Either way, call into I Heart Brownies as well. From jaffa to double chocolate to salted caramel, you really will heart their baked goodies.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. SCREAM Twenty-six years ago, "do you like scary movies?" stopped being just an ordinary question. Posed by a wrong-number caller who happened to be a ghostface-masked killer with a fondness for kitchen knives, it was the snappiest and savviest line in one of the 90s' biggest horror films — a feature filled with snappy and savvy lines, too — and it's now one of cinema's iconic pieces of dialogue. It also perfectly summarised Scream's whole reason for being. The franchise-starting slasher flick didn't just like scary movies, though. It was one, plus a winking, nudging comedy, and it gleefully worshipped at the altar of all horror films that came before it. Wes Craven helmed plenty of those frightening features prior to Scream, so the A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes director was well-equipped to splash around love for the genre like his villain splashed around entrails — and to eagerly and happily satirise all of horror's well-known tropes in the stab-happy process. If you've seen the 1996 film or its three sequels till now, you've bathed in all that scary movie affection. You might've gleaned the horror basics from their rules and references; the OG film even had its characters watch Halloween and borrows the 70s classic's stellar score for key scenes. Geeking out over spooky cinema is the franchise's main personality trait, to the point that it has its own saga-within-a-saga, aka the Stab movies, and its fifth entry — also just called Scream — wouldn't dream of making that over. The famous question gets asked, obviously. Debates rage about the genre, enough other horror films are name-checked to fill a weekend-long movie marathon, cliches get skewered and dissected, and there's a Psycho-style shower scene. 'Elevated' horror standouts The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch and Hereditary earn a shoutout as well, but Scream itself just might be an elevator horror flick. It isn't set in one, but it crams in so much scary movie love that it always feels like it's stopping every few moments to let its nods and nerding-out disembark. In other words, you'd really best answer Scream's go-to query with the heartiest yes possible, and also like watching people keep nattering about all things horror. Taking over from Craven, who also directed 1997's Scream 2, 2000's Scream 3 and 2011's Scream 4 but died in 2015, Ready or Not's Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett task their next generation of slasher fodder with showing their devotion with all the subtlety of a masked murderer who can't stop taunting their prey. That'd be Ghostface, who terrorises today's Woodsboro high schoolers, because the fictional spot is up there with Sunnydale and Twin Peaks on the list of places that are flat-out hellish for teens. The same happened in Scream 4, but the first new attack by the saga's killer is designed to lure home someone who's left town. Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera, In the Heights) hightailed it the moment she was old enough, fleeing a family secret, but is beckoned back when her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega, You) receives the feature's opening "do you like scary movies?" call. Soon, bodies are piling up, Ghostface gives Woodsboro that grim sense of deja vu again, and Tara's friends — including the horror film-obsessed Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown, Yellowjackets), her twin Chad (Mason Gooding, Love, Victor), his girlfriend Liv (Sonia Ammar, Jappeloup), and other pals Wes (Dylan Minnette, 13 Reasons Why) and Amber (Mikey Madison, Better Things) — are trying to both survive while basically cycling through the OG feature again, complete with a crucial location, and sleuth out the culprit using their scary movie knowledge. Everyone's a suspect, including Sam herself and her out-of-towner boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid, The Boys), and also the begrudging resident expert on this exact situation: ex-sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette, Spree). The latter is the reason that morning show host Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox, Cougar Town) and initial Ghostface target Sidney Prescott (Skyscraper) make the trip back to Woodsboro again as well. Read our full review. KING RICHARD In King Richard, Will Smith does more acting than expected with his back to the on-screen action. He does more acting in general — while the Ali and Concussion star can be a transformative performer, here he feels like he's overtly playing a part rather than disappearing into a role — but the way his eponymous figure handles his daughters' matches instantly stands out. Richard Williams is a tennis parent who despises the usual tennis parent histrionics. At the time the film is set, in the early 90s, he has also coached Venus (Saniyya Sidney, Fences) and Serena (Demi Singleton, Godfather of Harlem) since they were four years old, and penned a 78-page plan mapping out their futures before they were born. He's dedicated his life to their success; however, he's so restless when they're volleying and backhanding that he can't bring himself to watch. These scenes in King Richard are among Smith's best. He's anxious yet determined, and lives the feeling like he's breathing it, in some of the movie's least blatantly showy and most quietly complex scenes as well. The Williams family patriarch has wisdom for all occasions, forged from a tough childhood in America's south, plus the hard work and hustle of turning Venus and Serena into budding champions, so he'd likely have something to say about the insights gleaned here: that you can tell oh-so-much about a person when they're under pressure but nobody's watching. If he was actively imparting this lesson to his daughters — five of them, not just the two that now have 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them — and they didn't glean it, he'd make them watch again. When they see Cinderella in the film, that's exactly what happens. But his courtside demeanour is teachable anyway, recognising how all the preparation and effort in the world will still see you tested over and over. King Richard mostly lobs around smaller moments, though — still life-defining for the aforementioned trio, matriarch Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis, Lovecraft Country) and the rest of the Williams brood, but before Venus and Serena became women's tennis superstars. It unpacks the effort put in to even get them a game, set or match and be taken seriously in a sport that's whiter than the lines marking out its courts, and the chances, sacrifices and wins of their formative years. From cracked Compton courts and homemade hype videos to seizing every hard-earned opportunity: that's the tale that King Richard tells. But, despite making a clear effort to pose this as a family portrait rather than a dad biopic, it still shares an approach with Joe Bell, director Reinaldo Marcus Green's prior film. It bears one man's name, celebrates him first and makes him the centre of someone else's exceptional story. In screenwriter Zach Baylin's debut script, Richard's aim is simple: get Venus and Serena to racquet-swinging glory by any means. His DIY tapes are bait for a professional coach, but attracting one is easier said than done for a working-class Black family without country club connections facing America's inbuilt racism and class clashes, and tennis' snobbery — even if Richard knows his daughters will reach their goals. A turning point comes when, after strolling into a practice match between Pete Sampras and John McEnroe, Richard convinces renowned coach Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn, Scandal) to watch his kids play and take on Venus for free. While she's swiftly impressing on the junior circuit, her dad becomes concerned about her psychological and emotional wellbeing, so he next works his persuasive act on Florida-based coach Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal, The Many Saints of Newark) — with a strict no-competition rule. Read our full review. LIMBO Describing a dance and a state of uncertainty alike, limbo is one of those always-intriguing words. Many terms boast multiple meanings, but this one skirts two ends of the spectrum — the party-fuelled joy of a parade of people trying to pass under a bar while bending over backwards, and the malaise of being stuck waiting and not knowing. Both require a degree of flexibility, though, to either complete physical feats or weather the fickleness of life (or, in limbo's religious usage, of being caught in an oblivion between heaven and hell). It's no wonder then that British writer/director Ben Sharrock chose the word for his second feature, following 2015's Pikadero. His Limbo lingers in a realm where men are made to contort themselves, biding one's time anticipating a decision is the status quo and feeling like you've been left in a void is inescapable. The fancy footsteps here are of the jumping-through-hoops kind, as Limbo ponders a revelatory question: what happens when refugees are sent to a Scottish island to await the results of their asylum applications? There's zero doubting how telling the movie's moniker is; for Syrian musician Omar (Amir El-Masry, Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker) and his fellow new arrivals to Scotland, there's little to do in this emptiness between the past and the future but wait, sit at the bus stop, check out the children's playground and loiter near the pay phone. That, and navigate the wide range of reactions from the locals, which veer from offensive to thoughtful. Everything about the situation demands that Omar and his companions make all the expected moves, but it also forces them to potter around in purgatory and stomach whatever is thrown at them to do so. In Omar's case, he's made the trip with an actual case — physically, that is, thanks to his prized possession. He's brought his grandfather's oud with him, which he rarely lets slip from his grasp, and so he feels its weight where he goes. It's a canny part of Limbo's script in two ways. Whatever they're fleeing in search of a better life, every refugee has a case to be welcomed into safer lands that they carry around with them, but Sharrock manifests the idea in a tangible sense. With Omar's musical dreams, which the beloved oud also represents, in limbo as well, the ever-present instrument additionally acts as a constant reminder of the sacrifices that asylum seekers make in leaving their homes, even when there's no other option, and the costs they pay when they're met with less-than-open arms, then left waiting for their new existence to begin. Just as the term limbo means so much, so does that oud — and so does the feature it's in. A film can be heartbreaking, tender, insightful and amusing all at once, and Limbo is indeed all of those things. It's both dreamlike and lived-in, too, a blend that suits its title and story — and also the mental and emotional state shared by Omar and his other asylum seekers as they eke out their hope and resilience day after unchanging day, all while roaming and roving around an island that may as well be another world. The Scottish landscape around them looks like it could grace a postcard, and Sharrock has cinematographer Nick Cooke (Make Up) box it into an almost-square frame to make it resemble vacation snaps. That choice of 1.33:1 aspect ratio also confines the movie's characters in another fashion, of course, offering a blatant visual flipside to the holiday-perfect splendour; being trapped anywhere is bleak, even if it appears picturesque. Read our full review. GOLD Gold's title doubles as an exclamation that Australian filmmakers might've made when Zac Efron decamped to our shores at the beginning of the pandemic. Only this outback-set thriller has put the High School Musical, Bad Neighbours and Baywatch star to work Down Under, however, and he definitely isn't in Hollywood anymore. Instead, he's stuck in "some time, some place, not far from now…", as all-caps text advises in the movie's opening moments. He's caught in a post-Mad Max-style dystopia, where sweltering heat, a visible lack of shelter, a cut-throat attitude, water rationing, and nothing but dirt and dust as far as the eye can see greets survivors navigating a rusty wasteland. But then his character, Man One, spots a glint, and all that glisters is indeed gold — and he must guard it while Man Two (Anthony Hayes, also the film's director) seeks out an excavator. Exactly who stays and who goes is the subject of heated discussion, but Gold is an economical movie, mirroring how its on-screen figures need to be careful about every move they make in such unforgiving surroundings. As a filmmaker, helming his first feature since 2008's Ten Empty, Hayes knows his star attraction — and he's also well-aware of the survivalist genre, and its history, that he's plonking Efron into. Almost every male actor has been in one such flick or so it can seem, whether Tom Hanks is talking to a volleyball in Castaway, Liam Neeson is communing with wolves in The Grey or Mads Mikkelsen is facing frosty climes in Arctic. Although Gold purposefully never names its setting, Australia's vast expanse is no stranger to testing its visitors, too, but Hayes' version slips in nicely alongside the likes of Wake in Fright, The Rover and Cargo, rather than rips them off. The reason such tales persist is pure human nature — we're always battling against the world around us, even if everyday folks are rarely in such extreme situations — and, on-screen, because of the performances they evoke. Efron isn't even the first import to get stranded in sunburnt country in 2022, after Jamie Dornan did the same in TV miniseries The Tourist, but he puts in a compellingly internalised performance. Man One's minutes, hours and days guarding an oversized nugget pass with sparing sips of H20, attempts to build a shelter and altercations with the locals, including of the two-legged, canine, insect and arachnid varieties, and the toll of all this time alone builds in Efron's eyes and posture. His face crackles from the sun, heat and muck, but his portrayal is as much about enduring as reacting, as both Efron and Hayes savvily recognise. Writing with costumer-turned-scribe Polly Smyth as well as directing solo, Hayes puts more than just survival on Gold's mind, though: when the titular yellow precious metal is involved, greed is rarely good. Here, staying alive at any cost is all about striking it rich at any cost, and also about the paranoia festering between two new acquaintances who've randomly stumbled upon a life-changing windfall — as heightened by the film's stark, harsh, post-apocalyptic setup. When a third person (Susie Porter, Ladies in Black) enters the scenario, Gold grimly lets its life-or-death and lucky break elements keep clashing, but also pairs Man One's desperation with the mental decline that blistering in the sun, being parched with thirst and starving with hunger all bring. Greed proves perilous in a plethora of ways in the film's frames, including inside its main character's head. Read our full review. THE 355 They're globe-hopping, ass-kicking, world-saving spies, but women: that's it, that's The 355. When those formidable ladies are played by a dream international cast of Jessica Chastain (Scenes From a Marriage), Lupita Nyong'o (Us), Penélope Cruz (Pain and Glory), Diane Kruger (In the Fade) and Fan Bingbing (I Am Not Madame Bovary), the tickets should sell themselves — and Chastain, who suggested the concept and produces, wasn't wrong for hoping that. Giving espionage moves the female-fronted spin that Bond and Mission: Impossible never have isn't just this action-thriller's quest alone, of course, and nothing has done so better than Atomic Blonde recently, but there's always room for more. What The 355 offers is an average affair, though, rather than a game-changer, even if it so evidently wants to do for its genre what Widows did for heist flicks. The film still starts with men, too, causing all the globe's problems — aka threatening to end life as we know it via a gadget that can let anyone hack anything online. One nefarious and bland mercenary (Jason Flemyng, Boiling Point) wants it, but the CIA's gung-ho Mason 'Mace' Browne (Chastain) and her partner Nick Fowler (Sebastian Stan, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) head to Paris to get it from Colombian intelligence officer Luis Rojas (Édgar Ramírez, Jungle Cruise), who's gone rogue and is happy to sell; however, German operative Marie Schmidt (Kruger) is also on its trail. The French connection goes wrong, the two women get in each other's ways, but it's apparent — begrudgingly to both — that they're better off together. They need ex-MI6 cyber whiz Khadijah Adiyeme (Nyong'o) to help, while Colombian psychologist Graciela Rivera (Cruz) gets drawn in after making the trip to stop Luis going off the books. No stranger to covert affairs or formidable women after penning Mr and Mrs Smith, but helming only his second movie following the awful X-Men: Dark Phoenix, director/co-writer Simon Kinberg spreads the action across several continents — including a foot chase in Marrakesh and an auction in Shanghai, which is where Lin Mi Sheng (Fan) joins the story. Scripting with TV veteran Theresa Rebeck (Smash), his big setpieces all play with the film's gender focus, mostly dissecting how women are so often overlooked in various situations; the indifference given wait staff, the invisibility of women in male-dominated societies and the way they're meant to be pure eye candy at black-tie occasions all earn the movie's ire. But these sentiments, like everything else in the feature, are blatant and straightforward at best. The mood the movie vibes with: "James Bond never had to deal with real life," as Cruz is given the misfortune of uttering. The 355 should be better — with its dialogue, clearly; with its girl-power, girl-boss, girls-can-do-anything messaging; and at celebrating more than five women, or even showing them. (If you were going to pick five ladies to do the job, though, this casting is spot-on.) It could use a sense of style and charm beyond Nyong'o's suits and the gang's personality-matched auction outfits, and its over-edited action scenes put Kinsberg two for two with tanking a crucial part of his directorial efforts to-date. Women can star in mediocre action movies as well, however. That isn't meant to be the picture's big push for gender parity, but The 355 is also exactly what seemingly millions of bland men-led actioners have been serving up for decades upon decades. It packages it up in an Ocean's 8-meets-Bourne approach, or a more self-serious Charlie's Angels, but these run-of-the-mill flicks have long been everywhere, just without as much oestrogen. The Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises have their own, too. Read our full review. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on September 2, September 9, September 16, September 23 and September 30; October 7, October 14, October 21 and October 28; November 4, November 11, November 18 and November 25; December 2, December 9, December 16 and December 26; and January 1 and January 6. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Streamline, Coming Home in the Dark, Pig, Big Deal, The Killing of Two Lovers, Nitram, Riders of Justice, The Alpinist, A Fire Inside, Lamb, The Last Duel, Malignant, The Harder They Fall, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, Halloween Kills, Passing, Eternals, The Many Saints of Newark, Julia, No Time to Die, The Power of the Dog, Tick, Tick... Boom!, Zola, Last Night in Soho, Blue Bayou, The Rescue, Titane, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Dune, Encanto, The Card Counter, The Lost Leonardo, The French Dispatch, Don't Look Up, Dear Evan Hansen, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Lost Daughter, The Scary of Sixty-First, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, The Matrix Resurrections, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Worst Person in the World, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, House of Gucci, The King's Man and Red Rocket.
The place: earth in the near future. The situation: a frozen planet chilling at a frosty -119 degrees celsius, as caused by humanity's attempts to combat climate change. The only solution: a constantly hurtling 1001-car train that plays host to the world's only remaining people. But, instead of banding together on the speeding locomotive, the residents of Snowpiercer have transported society's class structure into the carriages of their new home. That's the story that drives Snowpiercer — on both the big screen and on TV. First came Bong Joon-ho's 2013 film, which marked the acclaimed South Korean writer/director's first English-language film, and one of the movies that brought him to broader fame before Netflix's Okja and 2019's Cannes Palme d'Or-winning and Oscar-winning Parasite. Then, unsurprisingly, came a US-made television series, which was first announced back in 2016, and then finally started speeding across screens — including Down Under, where it's available via Netflix — from May this year. In both forms, Snowpiercer boasts a smart, immersive and all-too-timely concept — and unpacks its underlying idea in a thrilling and involving manner. While the TV version isn't as great as Bong's film (because, honestly, how could it be?), it takes the same dystopian concept, heightens the suspense and drama, and serves up both a class warfare-fuelled survivalist thriller and a murder-mystery. Think constant twists, reveals and reversals, cliffhangers at the end of almost every scene, and a 'Murder on the Snowpiercer Express' kind of vibe. Indeed, it's rather addictive — and, after just wrapping up its first season, the show has dropped its first teaser for its second batch of episodes. Once again, Hamilton's Tony Award-winning Daveed Diggs leads the charge, playing an ex-detective who has spent seven years in the tail end of the train and is dedicated to overthrowing the status quo to achieve equality for all. Also aboard is Jennifer Connelly as the engine's all-seeing, ever-present head of hospitality, with the likes of Frances Ha's Mickey Sumner, Slender Man's Annalise Basso and The Americans' Alison Wright all part of Snowpiercer's new world order as well. And, in the new trailer, they're all facing a significant change. They're also about to meet a new adversary, as played by none other than Game of Thrones' Sean Bean. Just when Snowpiercer's second season will arrive is yet to be revealed — although it's safe to say it won't start dropping until 2021 at the earliest. Just how long Bean will survive in his latest role, well, that's something you can start pondering right now. Watch the Snowpiercer season two trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xEFQpBc3Nc Snowpiercer's second season will hit Netflix Down Under at a yet-to-be-revealed date — we'll update you with further details when they come to hand.
Pipes blow gently. The camera swirls. Rows of plants fill the screen. Some are leafy and flowery as they reach for the sky; others are just stems topped with closed buds. Both types of vegetation are lined up in boxes in an austere greenhouse. Soon, another shoot of green appears among them. Plant breeder Alice (Emily Beecham, Cruella) is cloaked in a lab coat far paler than any plant, but the symbolism is evident — and, although audiences don't know it yet, her cropped red hair resembles the crimson flowers that'll blossom in her genetically engineered new type of flora, too. "The aim has been to create a plant with a scent that makes its owner happy," she says. She explains that most research in her field has involved cultivating greenery that requires less human interaction; however, her new breed does the opposite. This species needs more watering and more protection from the elements, and responds to touch and talk. In return, it emits a scent that kickstarts the human hormone oxytocin when inhaled. Linked to motherhood and bonding, that response will make everyone "love this plant like your own child," Alice advises, beaming like a proud parent. So starts Little Joe, which shares its name with the vegetation in question — a "mood-lifting, anti-depressant, happy plant," Alice's boss (David Wilmot, Calm with Horses) boasts. She's borrowed her son's (Kit Connor, Rocketman) moniker for her new baby, although she gives it more attention than the flesh-and-blood teen, especially with the push to get it to market speeding up. The clinical gaze favoured by Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner (Amour fou) is telling, though. The eerie tone of the Japanese-style, flute- and percussion-heavy score sets an unsettling mood as well. And, there's something not quite right in the overt eagerness of Alice's colleague Chris (Ben Whishaw, Fargo), and in the way that everyone dismisses the one naysayer, Bella (Kerry Fox, Top End Wedding), who has just returned to work after a mental health break. Making her first English-language feature, Hausner layers this tension across every image, sound and interaction within Little Joe. Dread, too. Agitation blooms inescapably in a movie that quickly becomes a disquieting sci-fi/horror masterwork. Like many features in the genre, this is a film about possibilities and consequences, creation and costs, and happiness and sacrifices. It's about both daring to challenge and dutifully abiding by conformity as well, and about the societal need not just to thrive and survive, but to prosper and propagate by creating order out of chaos. And yet, as recognisable as these themes and ideas are, Little Joe is always its own beast. Aspects of Frankenstein are at play, and The Day of the Triffids, and even Side Effects. The film also has much to say about motherhood, the expectations that come with it, and the way that women are supposed to acquiesce to everything around them. But as anyone familiar with Mary Shelley's iconic work knows, combining familiar elements can give birth to an intriguing new entity that's much more than just the sum of its components. Little Joe, the plant, is alive — obviously. As it scent wafts through nostrils, it evokes change. Like Frankenstein's creature, it yearns for love and attention. It doesn't scream, but it still clamours to be cared for. As Alice notes in the aforementioned opening scene, her creation is specifically designed to respond to human affection. It reacts when it's nurtured, though, rather than rankling against its absence. And, as Alice begins to discover slowly but noticeably, that response has repercussions. Co-scripting with Géraldine Bajard, who she also worked with on Amour fou and Lourdes, Hausner tinkers with a classic tale to make several statements. She ponders the advertising-reinforced need for bliss that we're all meant to covet, and the way we're conditioned to accept progress and advancement — and to actively work towards it — no matter the ramifications. She also interrogates wellness bandwagons, purportedly easy cures and profiting from the quest for happiness, as well as the notion that normality and being like everyone else is worth striving for. The more that Little Joe examines the impact that Alice's work has upon her home life, too, the more it explores the pressures and demands that come with balancing personal and professional spheres. As a science fiction film, this savvily unnerving creation has much germinating within its frames. As a horror movie, it unpacks existential and primal worries with slickness and smarts. Hausner also calls upon aspects of The Little Shop of Horrors and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers — and, although it premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, before the pandemic, Little Joe slides into the cohort of contagion-focused flicks that contemplate the way infections spread, evolve and reshape everything in their image. Plus, this is a feature about awakenings, as Alice cottons on to exactly what she's created. Its aesthetic might be sparse — whites, greys and glassy surfaces punctuated by small bursts of colour, including from Little Joe's petals and the pink lights needed to make them blossom — but its musings and impact are anything but. Indeed, if there's any stylistic flourish that epitomises the film overall, it's Martin Gschlacht's exacting and controlled cinematography. In his camera placement and shot composition, he peered just as meticulously in the exceptional Australian horror film Goodnight Mommy, and he demonstrates the festering unease that lingers in icy restraint here once again. Watching Alice navigate all of the above, it should come as no surprise that Beecham has earned awards for her performance — the Best Actress prize at Cannes, in fact. She plays a creator forced to face the reality of her dreams, achievements and choices; a mother confronted with changes in both of her children; and a woman weathering the world's expectations. As Alice's status quo crumbles, Beecham's quiet distress and sprouting doubts are palpable, and she couldn't be more crucial to the film. Hers isn't an overt portrayal, though. Its power grows, fittingly, in a movie that's constantly striking in its premise, tone, look, emotions and concepts. Little Joe's audience won't need a plant to alter their mood — this distinctive and beguiling standout manages that all by itself.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. THE FORGIVEN Patience is somewhat of a virtue with The Forgiven. It would be in it, too, if any of its wealthy white characters hedonistically holidaying in Morocco were willing to display the trait for even a second. Another addition to the getaways-gone-wrong genre, this thorny satirical drama gleefully savages the well-to-do, proving as eager to eat the rich as can be, and also lays bare the despicable coveting of exoticism that the moneyed think is an acceptable way to splash plentiful wads of cash. There's patently plenty going on in this latest release from writer/director John Michael McDonagh, as there typically is in features by the filmmaker behind The Guard, Calvary and War on Everyone. Here, he adapts Lawrence Osborne's 2012 novel, but the movie that results takes time to build and cohere, and even then seems only partially interested in both. Still, that patience is rewarded by The Forgiven's stellar lead performance by Ralph Fiennes, playing one of his most entitled and repugnant characters yet. Sympathies aren't meant to flow David Henninger's (Fiennes, The King's Man) way, or towards his wife Jo (Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye). Together, the spiky Londoners abroad bicker like it's a sport — and the only thing fuelling their marriage. Cruelty taints their words: "why am I thinking harpy?", "why am I thinking shrill?" are among his, while she counters "why am I thinking high-functioning alcoholic?". He's a drunken surgeon, she's a bored children's author, and they're venturing past the Atlas Mountains to frolic in debauchery at the village their decadent pal Richard (Matt Smith, Morbius) and his own barbed American spouse Dally (Caleb Landry Jones, Nitram) have turned into a holiday home. Sympathy isn't designed to head that pair's way, either; "we couldn't have done it without our little Moroccan friends," Richard announces to kick off their weekend-long housewarming party. But when the Hennigers arrive late after tragically hitting a local boy, Driss (Omar Ghazaoui, American Odyssey), en route, the mood shifts — but also doesn't. The wicked turns of phrase that David slings at Jo have nothing on his disdain for the place and people around him, and he doesn't care who hears it. His assessment of the desert vista: "it's very picturesque, I suppose, in a banal sort of way". He drips with the prejudice of privilege, whether offensively spouting Islamophobic remarks or making homophobic comments about his hosts — and he doesn't, nay won't, rein himself in when Richard calls the police, reports the boy's death, pays the appropriate bribes and proclaims that their bacchanal won't otherwise be disturbed. The arrival of Driss' father Abdellah (Ismael Kanater, Queen of the Desert), and his request that David accompanies him home to bury his son, complicates matters, however. While David begrudgingly agrees, insultingly contending that it's a shakedown, Jo helps keep the party going, enjoying time alone to flirt with hedge fund manager Tom (Christopher Abbott, Possessor). John Michael McDonagh hasn't ever co-helmed a feature with his filmmaker brother Martin, but actors have jumped between the duo's respective works, with Fiennes — who starred in Martin's memorable In Bruges — among the latest. The siblings share something else, too, and not just a knack for assembling impressive casts; they're equally ace at fleshing out the characters inhabited by their dazzling on-screen cohorts via witty and telling dialogue. The Forgiven plays like it's in autopilot, though, but having Fiennes, Chastain, Smith and Jones (who appeared in Martin's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) utter its lines is a gift. Indeed, here it's the attitudes captured while they're speaking, and the behaviours and mannerisms made plain in how they're speaking, that add layer upon layer to this murky affair. That'd ring true even if Driss, Abdellah and the tense journey with the latter to inter the former weren't even in the narrative. Read our full review. FULL TIME Perhaps the greatest trick the devil ever pulled — the devil that is time, the fact that we all have to get out of bed each and every morning, and the sleep-killing noise signalling that a new day is here — was to create alarm clocks in a variety of sounds. Some are quiet, soft, calming and even welcoming, rather than emitting a juddering screech, but the effect always remains the same. Whatever echoes from which device, if your daily routine is a treadmill of relentless havoc, that din isn't going to herald smiles or spark a spring in anyone's step. The alarm that kickstarts each morning in Full Time isn't unusual or soothing. It isn't overly obnoxious or horrifying either. But the look on Laure Calamy's face each time that it goes off, in the split second when her character is remembering everything that her day will bring, is one of pure exhaustion and exasperation — and it'd love to murder that unwanted wake-up siren. That expression couldn't be more relatable, as much in Full Time is, even if you've never been a single mother living on the outskirts of Paris, navigating a train strike, endeavouring to trade up one job for another for a better future, and juggling kids, bills, and just getting to and from work. At the 2021 Venice International Film Festival, Antoinette in the Cévennes and Call My Agent! star Calamy won the Best Actress award in the event's Horizons strand for her efforts here — and while the accolade didn't come her way for a single gaze, albeit repeated throughout the movie, it easily could've. Mere minutes into Full Time, it's plain to see why she earned herself such a prize beyond that withering gape, however. Calamy is that phenomenal in this portrait of a weary market researcher-turned-hotel chambermaid's hectic life, playing the part like she's living it. In our own ways, most of us are. The first time the alarm sounds, Julie Roy (Calamy) is already lethargic and frustrated; indeed, writer/director Eric Gravel (Crash Test Aglaé), who won the Venice Horizons Best Director gong himself, charts the ups and downs of his protagonist's professional and personal situation like he's making an unflagging thriller. In fact, he is. Julie is stretched to breaking point from the get-go, and every moment of every day seems to bring a new source of stress. For starters, her job overseeing the cleaning at a five-star hotel in the city is both chaotic and constantly throwing up challenges, and the hints dropped by her boss (Anne Suarez, Black Spot) about the punishment for not living up to her demands — aka being fired — don't help. Julie has put all her hopes on returning to market research anyway, but getting time off for the interview is easier said than done, especially when the French capital is in the middle of a transport strike that makes commuting in and out from the countryside close to impossible. Also adding to Julie's troubles is well, everything. The childcare arrangement she has in place with a neighbour (Geneviève Mnich, Change of Heart) is also precarious, thanks to threats of quitting and calling social services. Having any energy to spend meaningful time with her children at the end of her busy days is nothing but a fantasy, too. Trying to get financial support out of her absent ex is a constant battle, especially given he won't answer the phone — and the bank won't stop calling about her overdue mortgage payments. It's also her son Nolan's (J'ai tué mon mari) birthday, so there are gifts to buy, plus a party to organise and throw. Julie is so frazzled that having a drink with her best friend is a luxury she doesn't have time for, because some other task always beckons. And when a father from her village, the kindly Vincent (Cyril Gueï, The Perfect Mother), helps her out not once but twice, she's so starved of affection that she instantly misreads his intentions. Read our full review. MURDER PARTY With apologies to William Shakespeare, all the world isn't just a stage in French farce Murder Party. Instead, it's a game, then another one, then yet another after that. This candy-coloured murder-mystery takes perhaps the ultimate high-concept setup and hones in on a crucial fact: that audiences love whodunnits, whether they're watching them on the screen or reading them on the page, because charting the unravelling details entails sleuthing along. In other words, when we're wondering who killed who in which room and why (and with what weapon), we're playing. The board game Cluedo also nailed this truth, as have murder-mystery parties, plus the increasing array of other interactive shows and events that thrust paying participants into the middle of such puzzle-laden predicaments. And while Murder Party acknowledges this idea in a variety of manners, here's the first and simplest: it's set among a family famed for making best-selling board games themselves. First-time feature writer/director Nicolas Pleskof and his co-scribe Elsa Marpeau (Prof T) kickstart the film with a killer setup: that eccentric crew of relatives, their brightly hued home on a sprawling country estate, an usual task given to a newcomer and, naturally, a sudden passing. Architect Jeanne Chardon-Spitzer (Alice Pol, Labor Day) is asked to pitch a big renovation project to the Daguerre family, transforming their impressive abode so that living there always feels like playing a game (or several). Patriarch César (Eddy Mitchell, The Middleman) already encourages his brood to enjoy their daily existence with that in mind anyway, including dedicating entire days to letting loose and walking, talking and breathing gameplay. But he's looking for a particularly bold next step. He's unimpressed by Jeanne's routine proposal, in fact. Then he drops dead, the property's doors slam shut and a voice over the intercom tells the architect, plus everyone else onsite, to undertake a series of challenges to ascertain the culprit among them — or be murdered themselves. Also thrust into the high-stakes game, which'll dispense with anyone who refuses to take part or guesses incorrectly: César's son Théo (Pablo Pauly, The French Dispatch), daughter Léna (Sarah Stern, Into the World) and nudgingly named youngest boy Hercule (Adrien Guionnet, Le Bazar de la Charité). Yes, sibling rivalry complicates the hypothesising, as well as the attempts to stay alive. Théo is particularly friendly towards workaholic Jeanne, adding another complexity to the already-chaotic situation. Similarly at hand is the dead man's younger wife Salomé (Pascale Arbillot, Haute Couture) — a mystery writer herself — and his no-nonsense offsider sister Joséphine (Miou-Miou, The Last Mercenary). And, because a home this immense was always going to have some help hovering around, butler Armand (Gustave Kervern, Love Song for Tough Guys) gets drawn in, too. If Amelie and Knives Out combined, the end result would look like Murder Party. If Wes Anderson and Agatha Christie joined forces, the outcome would be the same. It's highly unlikely that Pleskof was ever going to call his feature Murder in the Game-Filled Mansion or Death While Rolling the Dice, but that's the overwhelming vibe. There's an escape room element, too — thankfully, though, nodding towards the Escape Room franchise isn't on the agenda. Murder Party's characters get stuck in intricately designed locked spaces and forced to piece together clues to secure their freedom, and are only permitted to remain breathing by keeping their wits about them, but no one's in a horror movie here. Read our full review. THE REEF: STALKED In the crowded waters of cinema's shark-attack genre, which first took a hefty bite out of the box office with mega hit Jaws and then spawned plenty of imitators since, a low-budget Australian effort held its own back in 2010. The second movie from writer/director Andrew Traucki after his crocodile-attack flick Black Water, The Reef wasn't ever going to rake in enough takings to threaten the larger fish, but the stripped-back survival-thriller was grippingly effective. As Black Water did with 2020's Black Water: Abyss, the creature-feature helmer's shark film has now be given a sequel — and like Traucki's other franchise, this followup is a routine splash. The filmmaker keeps most of the basics the same, casting out a remakequel, aka a movie about basically the same scenario but with different faces. No, Traucki isn't seeking a bigger boat, or even to rock the one he has. The Reef: Stalked does make one curious new choice, however, stemming from its nine-months-earlier prologue. The film's opening sequences set up quite the harrowing source of trauma for protagonist Nic (Teressa Liane, The Vampire Diaries), and also clumsily equate domestic violence with the ocean's predators in the process. The aim is to show how Nic and her youngest sister Annie (debutant Saskia Archer) refuse to become victims after their other sibling Cathy (Bridget Burt, Camp-Off) is stalked and savaged in a different way, devastatingly and fatally so, at the hands of her partner Greg (Tim Ross, Dive Club). Drawing attention to assaults against women and femicide is a worthy mission, but it lacks bite here. Traucki's metaphor is as clear as the sky on a cloud-free day, and yet the domestic abuse plot point primarily plays as a way to complicate Nic as a character — PTSD flashes and all — rather than make a meaningful statement about violence within intimate relationships. After finding Cathy herself, Nic is so understandably distressed that she heads as far away as she can, but returns from overseas for a big diving and kayaking trip that was important to her sister. With friends Jodie (Ann Truong, Cowboy Bebop) and Lisa (Kate Lister, Clickbait), as well as Annie — who isn't known for enjoying the water, let alone for handling herself on it — they embark on a multi-day paddle. It isn't long until a different sinister force terrorises their getaway, though; even if you don't already know what "the man in the grey suit" refers to in surfer slang, this is a shark-attack sequel, after all. Aside from the haunting shots taking Nic back to Cathy's last moments, everything about The Reef: Stalked plays out as expected from the moment the quartet set off from north Queensland. Cue the obligatory waves of jump scares, many efficiently staged but their impact lessening as they just keep coming in increasingly predictable ways (when shark flicks are happy to swim by the numbers, if you've seen one movie like The Reef, 47 Metres Down, The Shallows, Bait, The Meg and the like, it feels like you've seen them all). Cue the tension that springs from the film's characters rarely being close enough to the shore to escape — but, when it's convenient, being close enough for kids playing on the beach to become potential fodder. Cue a score by Mark Smythe (Love You Like That) that tells viewers exactly how to react at every moment, too, and dampens the thrills and frights as a result. Still, Traucki has cast The Reef: Stalked well, enough that buying Nic and company's life-or-death stress comes easily. Trusting them, rather than clunkily overcomplicating the setup — no matter how well-intentioned — might've resulted in a better return to The Reef. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on April 7, April 14, April 21 and April 28; and May 5, May 12, May 19 and May 26; June 2, June 9, June 16, June 23 and June 30; and July 7, July 14 and July 21. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore, Ambulance, Memoria, The Lost City, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Happening, The Good Boss, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Northman, Ithaka, After Yang, Downton Abbey: A New Era, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Petite Maman, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Firestarter, Operation Mincemeat, To Chiara, This Much I Know to Be True, The Innocents, Top Gun: Maverick, The Bob's Burgers Movie, Ablaze, Hatching, Mothering Sunday, Jurassic World Dominion, A Hero, Benediction, Lightyear, Men, Elvis, Lost Illusions, Nude Tuesday, Ali & Ava, Thor: Love and Thunder, Compartment No. 6, Sundown, The Gray Man, The Phantom of the Open, The Black Phone, Where the Crawdads Sing and Official Competition.
A Noel Coward play, a series of Haydn string quartets, a concert by Clannad — wait, is this Melbourne Festival? It is, but it's the new-look Melbourne Festival, now in its first year under new artistic director Josephine Ridge. Ridge's goal with her first program has been to broaden the festival's appeal. While there will as always be a range of offerings on the weirder side of wonderful, from an epic dramatisation of a verbatim phone conversation (Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life and Times), to an artist who makes playable musical instruments out of disarmed assault weapons (Pedro Reyes), the 2013 program is also aiming to draw in audiences who may normally have seen Melbourne Festival as not their thing. An expanded music program is a big part of that, bringing an eclectic range of acts from pop bands such as British India and Polyphonic Spree to a celebration of ska, a classical program put together with the help of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Richard Tognetti and a concert in the dark by blind artists Amadou and Mariam. This year also sees a greater focus on commissioned works, both from local artists such as Eddie Perfect and Daniel Schlusser and from big international names such as British choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Other guests of note include much-loved Indigenous singer Archie Roach, who will be playing in a grand welcome to country to kick the festival off, Hollywood legend John Landis and celebrated French ballerina Sylvie Guillem. There’s plenty for free and even if you can’t get yourself to a single film screening, gallery exhibit, concert or performance, the art will be coming to you anyway, via a series of decorative 'art trams'. Ridge has just come from nine years working on the Sydney Festival, an event which she says seems to draw more emotional engagement from its audience, compared to the intellectualised response typical of Melbourne. She’s hoping this year to bring a bit of that passion south, with a program that truly gets into Melbourne's heart. Tickets for the Melbourne Festival are on sale on Friday, 16 August. For tickets and the full program, see the festival website.
If you live in Brisbane and you're into theatre, you've probably heard about the city's venue problem. During busy times when all the usual locations are already booked, some shows can't tread our boards because there's nowhere for them to perform. That's where Anywhere Theatre Festival comes in, transforming unlikely places into lively performance spaces since 2011. If any event proves that anywhere and everywhere can host theatre, comedy, dance, music, magic and poetry, it's this. In 2016, 63 productions and 420 performances will grace gaols, reservoirs, rural railway stations, old skate rinks, pubs, people's homes and more — including these ten shows, our pick of the bunch.
Nineties kids, Disney fans and everyone who's ever cried over a lion cub that just couldn't wait to be king, it's time to climb onto a rock and yell your lungs out. The circle of life has struck again, and The Lion King is back. It's in live-action form this time around, and another new teaser for the movie has just dropped. While it's not the first teaser or trailer to drop — we've been blessed with not one, not two, but three already — this time we finally get to hear Nala voiced by Queen Bey herself. Yep, if you didn't already know, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter will be voicing Nala, while Donald Glover is Simba and James Earl Jones is his dad. Other big names attached include Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, John Oliver as Zazu, and Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen as Timon and Pumbaa. Elton John is back working on the soundtrack with Tim Rice, as they both did on the first film. They'll reportedly have some help from Beyoncé, naturally, while The Jungle Book's Jon Favreau is in the director's chair for the entire production. If you're anxious about how it might turn out, it's worth taking Timon and Pumbaa's advice at this early stage — although this initial look should help get rid of your worries for the rest of your days. Here's the new teaser with Beyoncé as Nala: https://youtu.be/CQCUnDjYn50 The Lion King hits Australian cinemas on July 17, 2019.
