It's the home stretch. Winter is almost over, which is a good thing depending on who you ask — but whether you love the cold or loathe it, there's no denying a hearty soup makes cold Melbourne nights so much more enjoyable (and bearable). So it's wonderful news that Hanoi Hannah's Winter Soup Series has kicked off for another year. Running until Tuesday, 12 September, diners will be able to enjoy a rotating selection of six mouthwatering soups. Highlights include Banh Canh Cua — crab and tomato broth, banh canh noodles, soft shell crab and quail egg ($28), Hu Tieu Noodles — pork loin broth, tapioca noodles, prawns and fried shallots ($28), and Crispy Chicken With Dry Egg Noodles — master stock crispy chicken, sweet soy egg noodle, garlic chives and choi sum ($26). That's not where the good times end though. If you fancy yourself something of a soup whisperer, Hanoi Hannah is inviting diners to jump onto its website to submit their very own soup recipe. But you won't be sharing your genius for free, as the winning entry will appear on the official menu — not a bad addition to any resume. It's not just bragging rights on offer either, with the winner also scoring a $1000 voucher to use at any Commune venue. Images: supplied.
Jaws, but bigger. Jurassic Park but sharks. Like a prehistoric underwater predator scooping up a heap of beachgoers in one hefty mouthful, describing what The Meg and its sequel Meg 2: The Trench are each aiming to be is easy. Ridiculous big-screen fun that sets Jason Statham (Fast X) against multiple megalodons, his scowl as shiny as their razor-sharp teeth: they're the type of waters that this creature-feature franchise also wants to paddle in. Since debuting in cinemas in 2018, all things The Meg have always had a seriousness problem, however. They're at their best when they're also at their silliest, but they're rarely as entertainingly ludicrous as they're desperate to be. This five-years-later follow-up might task Statham with shooting harpoons while riding a jet ski at a tourist-trap holiday destination called Fun Island — and also busting out the line "see ya later, chum", which lands with such a sense of self-satisfaction that it feels like the entire reason that the movie even exists — but such gleeful preposterousness is about as common as a herbivore with a meg's massive chompers. Again based on one of author Steve Alten's books — he's penned seven so far, so more flicks are likely — Meg 2: The Trench doesn't just want to ape the Jurassic series. It does exactly that overtly and unsubtly from the outset, but this film is also happy to brazenly treat multiple movies from a few decades back as fuel for its choppy antics. When the feature starts, it's 65 million years ago, dinosaurs demonstrate the cretaceous period's food chain, then a megalodon shows who's boss from the water. Obviously, life will find a way to bring some of this sequence's non-meg critters into the present day. Next comes a dive in The Abyss' slipstream, before embracing being a Jaws clone again — even shouting out to Jaws 2 in dialogue — but with a Piranha vibe. Before it's all over, Meg 2: The Trench also flails in Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus' direction, just with a visibly larger budget. Leading the charge on-screen is Statham's Jonas Taylor, who also scores an early eco-warrior Bond stint. When his character is reintroduced, he's on a container ship in the Philippine Sea taking down pirates that are dumping radioactive waste. His next stop is the Oceanic Institute run out of Hainan in China, where the world's only megalodon in captivity lives — and where Jonas' friend Jiuming (Wu Jing, The Wandering Earth), uncle to teenager Meiying (Sophia Cai, Mr Corman), claims that he has the creature called Haiqi trained. Viewers of the first film might remember that oceanography runs in Meiying's blood, but her mother has been killed off between movies because Li Bingbing (Transformers: Age of Extinction) didn't return for the second production. Hence Jiuming's arrival, and also Taylor playing father figure to a kid he forbids from accompanying him on his latest deep-dive research trip. Meiying stows away, naturally. Off-screen, British filmmaker Ben Wheatley makes the leap to the Hollywood action fold with Meg 2: The Trench, a move that isn't as wild as it initially might seem — just like everything in his big-budget B-movie. Wheatley knows black comedy, with his 2012 film Sightseers an absolute masterclass in it. With High-Rise and Free Fire, he knew how to bring a spectacle, too. Alas, the director that also crafted Down Terrace, Kill List, A Field in England and Happy New Year, Colin Burstead, flitting between the dark and the trippy along the way, plus thrillers and dramedies, is saddled with a script that couldn't be more routine. Explaining his approach to problem-solving, including while submersed 25,000 feet below sea level in the Pacific, Jonas tells Meiying that "we do what's in front of us, then we do the next thing". Was that returning screenwriters Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris' own mantra as well? Whatever is in front of Jonas, and audiences, usually involves a meg. When he descends into the titular ditch with Jiuming, Meiying and their team — among them is The Meg alumnus Page Kennedy (The Upshaws) as DJ, the forceful comic relief who has definitely seen Jaws' sequel — of course oversized sharks that died out millions of years ago IRL are lurking. When Jonas finds a rogue mining outfit pilfering the deep, of course stopping its ruthless leader Montes (Sergio Persis-Mencheta, Snowfall) becomes all the more complicated with megalodons as a constant threat, too. Wheatley wrings what tension he can out of a bottom-of-the-ocean walk in Iron Man-meets-RoboCop suits as hungry creatures linger, and also out of his riff on The Thing, Alien and every horror film set in an isolated space when Meg 2: The Trench's heroes get to the miners' base. What he can't do is make the movie's various contrived parts resemble a coherent whole, skew engagingly campy or feel like anything more than a knockoff of so many other flicks in The Meg's clothing. Another feat that Wheatley's turn at the franchise's helm fails to bite into: convincing special effects. While viewers don't go to a film that has basically swapped "you're gonna need a bigger boat" for "we're gonna fight a bigger shark" for the realism, Meg 2: The Trench's CGI is distractingly subpar. Anything busting out dinos not just post-Jurassic Park, but after Prehistoric Planet and its second season, is always going to struggle if their critters can't wow. Although the megs hardly fare any better, frequently focusing on a big fin sticking out of the water still remains as helpful a tactic as it did when Steven Spielberg defined the shark genre. Getting audiences terrified, perturbed or even just a little on-edge, though? Even when the obligatory jump-scares pop up, no one is leaving this flick afraid to go into the water. Whether he's starring in several Guy Ritchie films, turning The Transporter into a franchise, making a couple of Crank and The Mechanic movies, or showing up in six Fast and Furious-related entries so far, Statham does love repeating himself. Meg 2: The Trench doesn't ask him to do anything more than he did the last time that he faced sea-dwelling fears — but even he's just going through the motions. The rest of the cast, returning and new alike, are as disposable as anyone enjoying a dip to a meg. As trusty offsider Mac, Cliff Curtis (Avatar: The Way of Water) leaves the biggest impression among an ensemble that also spans Skyler Samuels (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries), Melissanthi Mahut (The Sandman), Sienna Guillory (Silo) and Whoopie Van Raam (Counterpart). Not that anyone is required to try, but no one can stop Meg 2: The Trench's most apt line from proving oh-so-true: "this is some dumb shit".
Prepare to step inside the mind of a cinematic genius. It's a big call, sure, but it's true when it comes to David Lynch. No one makes movies or TV shows quite like the man who brought us Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and a little series called Twin Peaks, and we mean no one — no matter how hard anyone else keeps trying. Don't just take our word for it, though. At Cinema Nova's LYNCHPINS: Essential David Lynch, film lovers can experience his movie marvels for themselves. The Carlton venue is diving into the director's distinctive audiovisual catalogue, screening six of his features on various dates and at different times throughout August and September. On the agenda: Eraserhead, the film that started it all and still has no equal in the mindblowing stakes; Lynch's moving, thoughtful and eight-time Oscar-nominated The Elephant Man; the twisty thrills (and ace 90s soundtrack) of Lost Highway; and Inland Empire, aka the flick the director famously wanted Laura Dern to win an Oscar for so badly that he campaigned on Hollywood Boulevard with a live cow, showing here in a fully restored version. Then there's two Kyle MacLachlan-starring stunners: Blue Velvet, which will ensure that you'll never look at white picket fences the same way ever again; and Twin Peaks' exceptional horror sequel/prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. BYO damn fine cup of coffee to the latter. Each film in the LYNCHPINS: Essential David Lynch lineup opens on a Thursday, then treats viewers to daily sessions.
Thirteen years ago, Korea's cinema standouts scored their own showcase Down Under, with the inaugural Korean Film Festival in Australia debuting in 2010. Since then, the festival has kept returning — and expanding — to celebrate both the latest and greatest flicks that South Korea has to offer. It was playing Bong Joon-ho films before Parasite swept the Oscars. It was revelling in Korean thrillers prior to Squid Game becoming an international success, too. It loved Korean genre fare before Train to Busan as well. And, KOFFIA will keep the nation's must-see titles in Melbourne this spring. 2023's festival has a date with ACMI from Thursday, September 7–Monday, September 11. Across five days, it'll endeavour to give audiences a new Korean favourite, or several, from a selection that spans everything from murder-mysteries and detective dramas to revenge thrillers and musicals. There's no such thing as a standard Korean film, which is true of every country's movie output; however, this national cinema is mighty fond of twisty tales. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that Confession and Gentleman are both on the 2023 bill. The first is a locked-room mystery with an IT company CEO suddenly finding himself the prime suspect, while the second involves a private detective agency's head honcho being falsely accused of a crime. Also on the lineup: The Devil's Deal, which sees a political candidate disqualified, then out for revenge; and The Night Owl, about an acupuncturist who is blind in daylight, can see clearly at night, and witnesses a tragic event one evening. The latter opens the festival, and the directors of both films — The Devil's Deal's Lee Won-tae and The Night Owl's An Tae-jin — are coming to Australia for KOFFIA. Elsewhere, comedy 6/45 hits the Korean Film Festival after proving a box-office smash at home, focusing on soldiers from both North and South Korea finding a windfall; Hero heads back to 1900s Korea to hone in on independence activist Ahn Jung-geun's plight battling Japanese colonial rule; musical drama Life Is Beautiful sees a husband trying to locate his wife's childhood sweetheart; and Next Sohee, which played Cannes 2022, is all about an exploitative work situation. Or, the standouts also include Switch, where a celebrity wakes up one morning to discover that he's living a completely different life — and romance Nothing Serious, about an aspiring novelist who writes a sex column.
Before it busts out licking lucky cats, K-pop-style Cardi B covers, cocaine enemas, threesome injuries and intimate tattoos, Joy Ride begins with a punch. For most of the movie, Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park, Beef) and Lolo Chen (Sherry Cola, Good Trouble) are nearing 30, travelling in China and going on a wild journey in a gleefully raucous comedy. In the 1998-set prologue in White Falls, Washington, though, they're five-year-olds (debutants Lennon Yee and Milana Wan) first meeting, being taunted by a racist playground bully and responding with the outgoing Lolo's fist. Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon screenwriter Adele Lim uses her directorial debut's opening scene not just to start a fast and firm friendship, but to establish the film's tone, sense of humour and, crucially, its willingness to fight. Joy Ride will ultimately get sentimental; however, this is a movie that beats up cultural prejudices and stereotypes by letting its four main female and non-binary Asian American characters grapple with them while being complicated and chaotic. Hollywood should be well past representation being such a noteworthy factor. That should've happened long before Bridesmaids and Bachelorette gave The Hangover's template a ladies-led spin more than a decade ago, and prior to Girls Trip spending time four Black women on a raucous weekend away six years back. Reality proves otherwise, sadly, so Joy Ride openly addresses the discrimination and pigeonholing slung Audrey, Lolo, and their pals Kat (Everything Everywhere All At Once Oscar-nominee Stephanie Hsu) and Deadeye's (comedian and movie first-timer Sabrina Wu) ways — and in Audrey's case, after being adopted as a baby by the white Sullivans (The Recruit's David Denman and Bridesmaids' co-writer Annie Mumolo), internalised. With its booze- and sex-fuelled antics, Lim's film could've simply been formulaically entertaining, just with Asian American characters in Asia. It certainly doesn't hold back with its raunchy setpieces. But it's a better and more thoughtful feature because it engages with the diasporic experience; "I'm just a garbage American who only speaks English," Audrey chides herself, which the picture she's in unpacks. The full Joy Ride equation, then, also treads in The Farewell and Everything Everywhere All At Once's impressive and rightly acclaimed footsteps. Tellingly, Lim and her co-screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, both of whom boast Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens on their resumes, originally had Joy Fuck Club as their film's working title. Also revealing: that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's production company Point Grey Pictures is behind the movie, after previously giving cinemas flicks like Bad Neighbours and its sequel, This Is the End, The Night Before, Sausage Party, Blockers, Long Shot and Good Boys. Getting culturally specific; dismantling Asian cliches; examining identity, belonging and displacement; being hilariously bawdy: Joy Ride always feels like the sum of these easily spotted parts, but it also always feels genuine. As children, Audrey and Lolo are thrust together due to their shared heritage — "are you Chinese?," the Sullivans ask the Chens (The Midnight Club's Kenneth Liu and Platonic's Debbie Fan) in that introductory sequence, which inspires a shared glance that says everything — but they're a chalk-and-cheese pair personality-wise. Before the young Lolo smacks their tormentor, Audrey is cowering. As adults, Lolo makes sex-positive art riffing on Chinese culture that hasn't yet brought her success, while Audrey is a fast-rising lawyer eyeing a promotion at a firm filled with white men (such as Don't Worry Darling's Timothy Simons). Lolo lives in Audrey's garage, is steeped in her culture and content being herself. Audrey names Mumford & Sons and The National as her favourite bands, and can list Succession characters instantly. As they head to China so that Audrey can close a big deal, with Lolo along for the ride as her personal translator, the latter is excited about seeing family, while the former is guilty of making wary assumptions about what the trip will be like. When Lolo's K-pop-obsessed cousin Deadeye joins them at the airport, it's the first surprise that's thrown Audrey's way. The bickering between Lolo and Kat, Audrey's college roommate-turned- Chinese soap-opera star, over who's truly her BFF — that she easily foresees. This wouldn't be a wild getaway comedy if there weren't more bolts out of the blue coming at Audrey, of course, kicking off with a drink-heavy night trying to get her client Chao (Ronny Chieng, M3GAN) to sign, which leads to a cross-country quest to find her birth mother. Drugs, sex, vomit, a faux band, 'WAP', a distracted basketball team, vagina-view camerawork: that all follows. So does a fateful train ride that's utter pandemonium in a completely different way to Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, and Kat trying to hide her between-the-sheets past from her very Christian fiancé (Desmond Chiam, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Lim weaves Audrey's journey of acceptance and discovery, embracing her background and realising the eager-to-please and assimilate part that she's unwittingly played since childhood, throughout a zippy and brightly shot madcap romp of a movie. And, she largely finds the right balance — including as Lolo refuses to be anyone but herself; the blunt, introverted but caring Deadeye yearns to be liked for being themself; and Kat struggles with knowing how to be true to her real self beyond the demure, polite and dutiful front that she's been putting on professionally and personally. Along the way, Joy Ride revels in a candy-coloured dance number, lets Asian men be ripped and lusted after, and, yes, gets mawkish when it comes time to tie everything up neatly. Sometimes it's sidesplittingly funny, sometimes it's only eagerly trying to be, but it's aptly never happy slipping into one easy category. At their best when Joy Ride is either at its most manic and outrageous, or its weightiest and intelligent, Park, Cola, Hsu and Wu are a dream cast. If the film wants to stick to The Hangover setup by sparking sequels, teaming its core quartet up again and again would be keenly welcomed after this first go-around. Park has the trickiest and straightest role, Cola the brassiest, Hsu the lewdest and Wu the most awkward — and each nails the task while giving the film a fleshed-out, multi-faceted, smart, striving, relatably imperfect crew, and actively dispelling the idea that to be Asian American is to be a monoculture. Indeed, their energy and authenticity, and Lim's behind the lens, sometimes eclipses Joy Ride's jokes — and that couldn't be a better problem to have.
The weather is well and truly cooling down in Melbourne, so if you're looking for a spot to cosy up, Windsor's hawker-inspired eatery is giving you yet another reason to drop by with a new Fired Up lunch menu. Lighting up with an offering all about celebrating flame-grilled eats, the menu will run every weekend from Saturday, May 20. The Singaporean and Malaysian-inspired bites might run to the likes of peanut sauce-topped marinated beef skewers, or mini loaded bahn mi rolls with pork char siu and pickled carrots. Grilled calamari is served with tangy chili and lime sauce, while barramundi is baked in banana leaf with Malaysian sambal paste. The new menu is available from 12pm–4pm every Saturday and Sunday. Apart from eats, the venue is slinging $15 spicy margs and $5 beers from a featured brewer, which will rotate monthly. A lineup of local DJs will be spinning tunes every weekend too, including Lady Langers, Zjoso, DJ Hoxton Fox and Jimmy Pham (Walter Majik). Images: Hawker Hall, supplied.
Pasta and parmesan are one of Italian cuisine's perfect pairings. Eat the former without the latter, and your tastebuds will know the difference. And while sprinkling your spaghetti with fine shavings of hard cheese is all well and good (and delicious), that's nothing compared to devouring a bowl of pasta that has been prepared inside a parmesan wheel. If it sounds like all of your culinary dreams come true, that's because it is — and it's the dish in the spotlight at Cucinetta's returning Parmesan Wheel Week. After a swag of successful previous events in past years, the South Yarra restaurant is bringing this cheesy situation back for a second time in 2023 alone. Why? Other than the perfectly excellent answer "why not?", it's because the eatery is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Once again, this special means serving up the Italian specialty pasta cacio e pepe straight out of a wheel of 24-month Parmigiano Reggiano. And, despite the name, the $36.90 special is actually running across two full weeks. Given that cacio e pepe is a pasta concoction made with parmesan and pepper — think: fancier, tastier mac 'n' cheese — the results promise quite the cheesy meal. The dish will be available at Cucinetta for lunch from 12–3pm and dinner from 5pm–close between Monday, May 22–Sunday, June 4. We'd tell you to arrive hungry, but we're sure that just thinking about it already has you feeling ravenous.
Winter and comfort foods always go hand in hand, but fans of doughnuts should find the start of the frosty season particularly delicious. Each year, to kick off June, National Doughnut Day arrives. And, when the date hits, free round orbs are often on the menu. In 2023, on Friday, June 2, Donut King will be handing out freebies — and keeping Australians happy with their eponymous blend of sweets and carbs. The chain is known for its hot cinnamon doughnuts, and that's exactly what it'll be giving away at every store Australia-wide. Donut King hasn't advised exactly how many doughnuts are up for grabs, and it is a while-stocks-last affair. That said, the brand is intending to serve up a whole heap of its number-one treat to customers in exchange for zero cash, beginning at 1am AEST — if that's when your local store opens — and running through until 11.59pm AEST. The big caveat, other than the first-in-best-dressed rule: there's a limit of one free hot cinnamon doughnut per person. Also, you do have to hit up a Donut King shop in-person, with the giveaway not available for deliveries. To snag yourself a freebie, folks in Melbourne can make a date everywhere from Northcote and Sunshine to The Pines and Southland Westfield. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Donut King (@donutking_au)
Across two seasons in 2016 and 2018, Fleabag was the only dramedy that mattered. If you weren't watching Phoebe Waller-Bridge's smash hit, you were hearing all about it from everyone you knew. If you were watching it, you were then rewatching it — and, of course, telling all of your friends. But before it was a hit TV series, Fleabag was a one-woman theatre show. That history behind Phoebe Waller-Bridge's award-winning series isn't new news, of course. As the television version of Fleabag kept picking up accolades — a BAFTA for Best Female Performance in a Comedy for its writer/creator/star; Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series; Best Actress and Best Television Series Golden Globes; and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series among them — that past was well-known. But if you haven't seen the OG stage production, a recorded version of that stunning performance is coming back to the big screen in Melbourne. The story remains the same, charting an incredibly relatable tale of trying to balance work, life, love and the like. When it was playing theatres from 2013–2019 after premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Fleabag was just as applauded. And, as plenty of hit UK productions are, it was filmed by NT Live, then beamed into cinemas. It's that recording that's heading to picture palaces again from July 13, complete with Waller-Bridge stepping through the story of Fleabag's titular character. Captured at London's Wyndham's Theatre, it initially started doing the rounds for filmgoers in 2019. Indeed, that debut silver-screen stint broke box-office records. If you're unfamiliar with the TV show, let alone the theatre production before it, Fleabag's existence is perhaps best described as chaotic. Friends, family, job interviews, keeping a guinea pig-themed cafe afloat — they're just the beginning. The idea behind it came at one of Waller-Bridge's pal's storytelling nights, as a challenge to create a character for a ten-minute slot. Images: Matt Humphrey.
David Lynch's films and television shows should never be far from a screen, but it's been 17 years since his last new movie and six since he brought back Twin Peaks. Thankfully, the inimitable filmmaker is a favourite of retrospective programmers. Lynch's work isn't always gracing a cinema somewhere around Melbourne, but it's rarely far away in all of its wild and wonderful glory. Movies don't get much more Lynchian than Mulholland Drive, which is the latest of the director's masterpieces to get a-flickering again, this time at The Capitol on Tuesday, July 18. This shimmering neo-noir is showing as part of the latest entry in The Best Films You've Never Seen series, this time badged A Night of Surrealist Cinema. Hopefully you have indeed watched this Los Angeles-set tale starring Naomi Watts as a wide-eyed aspiring actor, and hopefully you've even caught it on the silver screen — but whether you have or not, this is a golden opportunity. It's the film that scored Lynch his third Best Director Oscar nomination, plus a Best Director win at Cannes. In dreams, it lingers long after you've seen it. And, heading along to this 6.30pm session will only cost you $10. Something that you genuinely mightn't have seen before is on the bill with Mulholland Drive: Maya Deren's experimental avant-garde 1943 short Meshes of the Afternoon. Both titles were named in the top 20 in the recent British Film Institute Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, if you need any more motivation. [caption id="attachment_905946" align="alignnone" width="1920"] NAGC/FMC[/caption]
The idea behind The Lume was always a stunner, giving Australia its first permanent digital-only art gallery. When the Melbourne venue started welcoming in patrons in 2021, it lived up to its immersive, multi-sensory promise, initially with a spectacular Van Gogh exhibition that let visitors feel like they were walking right into the artist's work, and then with the French impressionism-focused Monet & Friends Alive. The latest showcase set to grace the site's agenda has those past shows beat, however, heroing First Nations art and music. On display from Friday, June 23, Connection features more than 110 Indigenous visual and musical artists in a dazzling fashion. At this Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre gallery, the art gracing its walls towers over patrons, with the space filled with large-scale digital pieces. And Connection is full thanks to more than 550 works — digitals and originals alike. Earning some love: art by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Tommy Watson, Anna Pitjara, Lin Onus, Sarrita King, Kate Constantine, Wayne Qulliam, Clifford, Gabriella and Michelle Possum Nungurrayi, and many more, in a walk-through exhibition that presents its pieces through the themes of land, water and sky Country. Their work is scored a soundtrack by Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Emily Wurramara, Gurrumul, Alice Skye, Baker Boy and others, plus composers such as William Barton. Grande Experiences, the company behind The Lume and its touring exhibitions — Van Gogh Alive made its way around Australia, plus Monet in Paris from June — says that Connection boasts the largest representation of First Peoples art and culture ever assembled. It spans over 3000 square metres, and its remit is just as sizeable: highlighting pieces by past and present artists, and surveying the entire country and Torres Strait. Shining a spotlight on emerging talents while showing their work alongside their inspirations is another key mission. If it sounds familiar, that's because a smaller version premiered at the National Museum of Australia in 2022, with Grande Experiences joining forces with the Canberra gallery. Connection also benefits from an advisory panel featuring Constantine, Quilliam, King, Aboriginal art specialist Adam Knight, the National Museum's lead Indigenous curator and academic Margo Ngawa Neale, arts executive Rhoda Roberts AO, and designer and film producer Alison Page. Updated: Thursday, October 12.
Spinning tops at the ready — it's time to enter the dream within a dream that is Christopher Nolan's filmography. With Oppenheimer, the British writer/director's 12th feature, on its way to the big screen in July, Pentridge Cinema is dedicating its regular Palace Encore! retro screening program to his flicks for two action-packed months. Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet — they're all on the lineup, with the season running from Friday, May 12–Friday, July 14. Largely, the sessions take place at 6.30pm on Friday nights and cost $10 for Palace members and $15 otherwise, but there is one big exception: a day-long marathon of The Dark Knight Trilogy (aka Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) from 11am on Saturday, June 17, where you'll pay $25–30 for grim caped-crusader antics. At Beyond the Infinite: The Influences and Films of Christopher Nolan, as the program is called, there's another dream layer to plunge into as well. Palace is also celebrating the films that've left an imprint on Nolan and his work, which opens up the door to a couple of other masterpieces. Everyone should see Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey on the silver screen at least once. The same goes for Ridley Scott's OG Blade Runner, too. And, also on the ten-week bill is a jump back almost a century with 1927's highly influential German expressionist gem Metropolis.
Whether you're planning a fun day out with mum, or you just fancy spending a Sunday admiring flowers, stocking up on plants and scoffing freshly-baked scones, this one's for you. The National Trust of Victoria's annual Botanica Festival descends on the gorgeous Rippon Lea Estate with a jam-packed program on Sunday, May 14. A lush celebration of nature and gardening, the fest has something for all kinds of punter. There's the openair market where you'll be able to shop a huge range of locally-made wares, as well as roving entertainment running right through the day and an exhibition courtesy of the Bonsai Society of Victoria. Meanwhile, green thumbs can get their kicks browsing the very affordable pre-loved gardening book sale, scoping out stunning floral displays and adding to their foliage collection with a spin through the plant sale. The latter will feature greenery propagated by the estate's own gardeners. Once you've worked up an appetite, you'll find a globe-trotting array of food trucks to tickle your fancy, while Edenvale pours tastings of its alcohol-removed vino. And of course, you can't leave without dropping by the verandah to tuck into some classic CWA scones with lashings of jam and cream.
There probably aren't too many raging 100th birthday parties pencilled in your diary right now, but here's one you'll want to make room for — Abbotsford institution The Terminus has clocked up a whole century of life and you're invited to raise a glass in its honour. While the building itself is even older, the Victoria Street boozer officially started life in its current iteration in 1923, debuting its name and that famed green paint job. And on Thursday, March 23, it's celebrating its 100th anniversary with a free soiree for all its fans. The birthday fun kicks off at 4pm, with the first 100 punters through the door to score a commemorative stubby cooler and a complimentary tinnie of Stone & Wood. Then from 6pm, they'll be firing up the hot plates for a free barbecue dinner in the beer garden. Meanwhile, the acoustic tunes will be flowing through the afternoon and the bar will be stocked with all the usual suspects to keep the party rolling on till late. Plus, the Termo team will be giving away a stack of free merch t-shirts on the night. Entry to the party is free and you can book a table if you want to guarantee a spot. [caption id="attachment_893424" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tofu Studio[/caption] Top image: Tofu Studio
You might not currently be lounging on a beach in the Caribbean sipping pina coladas, but that doesn't mean you can't capture some of that big holiday energy right here at home. Rum aficionados will find themselves in cocktail heaven this month, when Whitehart hosts the next instalment of its much-loved I Hart Rum festival. Across two sessions (12pm & 4pm) on Sunday, March 19, the CBD container bar will be transporting punters to the tropics with a big day of rum and entertainment. More than 25 distilleries will be showing off their creations for you to sample, with the full lineup totalling 80-plus different varieties of rum, sourced from near and far. There'll be a swag of Caribbean-style cocktails being shaken and stirred, and tasting experiences galore to sip your way through. You'll also be able to wet your whistle at Fever Tree's dedicated highball station, load up on knowledge and skills at one of the free masterclasses, and sit in on an Australian rum distillers panel, all while listening to the afternoon's guest DJs. Fittingly, The Real Jerk food truck will be there slinging its signature Jamaican eats. And if you sip something you love, a pop-up bottle shop will be stocked with an array of rare and unique rums to take home.
The returning Fantastic Film Festival Australia isn't just about celebrating cult-classic movies. This cinema showcase is one of several in Australia that wears its love for the weird, wild and wonderful — the strange and surreal, too — on its screens, and that means going heavy on the latest flicks that fit that description. But when the Melbourne event includes beloved retro titles on its lineup, it usually does something special with them. So, in 2023, as part of its just-announced program, it has particularly attention-grabbing plans for Zoolander and the OG Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie. Ben Stiller's comedy about the world of modelling might be all about donning clothes, but FFFA's session of the film is going in the opposite direction, joining the fest's growing spate of nude screenings. The event debuted the concept in 2021, then brought it back in 2022 for the 25th anniversary of The Full Monty. Now, patrons are asked to wear nothing but their best blue steel look — or magnum if they prefer — while watching a really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking movie. Clothes are required at FFFA's showing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but don't worry about eating pizza beforehand — you'll be able to smell it during the session. The fest is going with a scratch-and-sniff experience, in what it's calling Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Stink-O-Vision and will be a world-premiere. As you watch Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael (and Sam Rockwell in a blink-or-you'll-miss-it part), you'll be told to scratch a card at certain moments to get smelling. Some scents will be tasty. Some definitely won't. Running from Friday, April 14–Sunday, April 30 at Lido Cinemas in Hawthorn, FFFA's 2023 bill also features a 2K restoration of Takashi Miike's Audition, but mostly it's serving today's fresh flicks that'll be tomorrow's cult favourites. Opening the fest is Polite Society, about a martial artist-in-training endeavouring to save her sister from an arranged marriage — and a hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Closing it: LION-GIRL, a futuristic, post-apocalyptic sci-fi film about saving humanity (aren't they all?) that boasts character design by manga artist Go Nagai. Elsewhere on its 2023 program, Fantastic Film Festival Australia will screen the 1997-set Zillion, the highest-grossing film in Belgium in 2022, which tells of a computer whiz who creates the biggest discotheque in the world; Evil Dead Rise, the latest title in the ongoing zombie franchise, and prime fodder for a midnight slot; and Holy Shit!, which is completely set in a portaloo rigged with explosives. Or, there's a movie that FFFA is calling An Untitled and Perfectly-Legal Coming-Of-Age Parody Film — it isn't naming it because it was surrounded by controversy at its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, but you can easily work out by a quick online search, especially if you're fond of comic-book characters. It'll screen with the director in attendance, in what'll be one of its rare public showings so far. A number of Australian efforts are also on the lineup, starting with Rolf de Heer's The Survival of Kindness, which recently proved a hit at the Berlin International Film Festival. There's also Beaten to Death, a new-wave Ozploitation thriller set in remote Tasmania; the giallo-style Blur, about an investigation into a strange entity; and The End of History, about Australian techno producers Darcy and Pat as they chase their creative dreams in Berlin.
Things have already been heating up in the kitchen at Prahran's Firebird this year, with celebrated Sunda alum Nabil Ansari joining the crew as Head Chef. But they're about to get even more fiery during Melbourne Food & Wine Festival when this rising-star chef hosts a two-night dinner series dedicated to the Southeast Asian and Indian flavours of his heritage. Held across three nightly sittings (5.45pm, 7pm, 8.15pm) from Monday, March 27–Tuesday, March 28, the six-course feasts will make a hero of Firebird's famed custom wood-fired grill. Brought to life over charcoal and showcasing a clever mix of flavours, the menu's set to feature punchy plates like duck samosas paired with a medjool date chutney, smoked scallops done with salmon roe and yellow coconut curry, and a slow-cooked lamb clay pot biryani. Tickets to Ansari's dinner come in at $150, which also gets you a cocktail on arrival. Firebird's usual drinks list will be available if you fancy adding on any further bevs, too. Images: Carmen Zammit.
It took 30 years, plus a warp pipe from live-action to animation, but Super Mario Bros finally gained a cinematic mushroom. While these are peak product-to-screen times — see also: The Last of Us, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, Tetris and Air, plus the upcoming Barbie, BlackBerry and latest Transformers flick — Nintendo's plumber siblings were long flushed out of movies thanks to their underperforming first outing. 1993's Bob Hoskins (Snow White and the Huntsman) and John Leguizamo (Violent Night)-starring film, the first-ever live-action video game film, isn't terrible. It followed its own dark path and hit its own wild blocks, something that stands out even more now that slavish obsession to intellectual property and franchise-building is king. If 2023's The Super Mario Bros Movie is a response to its predecessor, it's a happily dutiful one, doing its utmost to copy the video game. The strongest feeling it inspires: making viewers want to bust out their old NES or SNES or Game Boy, or emulators of any of them, or Nintendo's current Switch, and mash buttons as the red-capped, moustachioed, overalls-wearing Mario. These are also peak product-to-screen-to-purchase times; selling more Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros games is a clear and obvious aim of The Super Mario Bros Movie. To do that, the film truly is as enthusiastic about recreating its various source materials as Mario has been about collecting coins, completing levels and saving Princess Peach since way back in his 8-bit days. Under directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, creators of Teen Titans Go!, the animation looks like it's been ported straight from the console — a feat that's hardly unexpected given that it's all shiny pixels. It's also unsurprising due to Nintendo's recent success in mirroring the games IRL in Universal's Osaka and Hollywood theme parks. The Super Mario Bros Movie will help sell more tickets to those, too. In those impressive images, Italian Americans Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt, Thor: Love and Thunder) and Luigi (Charlie Day, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) essentially find themselves in the Super Mario Bros version of The Wizard of Oz. Like the 90s flick, they're also transported to another realm where a villainous creature lusts for power— Bowser (Jack Black, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood) here, with an army of the turtle-like koopas doing his bidding. A sewer flood whisks Mario and Luigi out of their own world, after they try to fix it to drum up customers for their plumbing business. On the other side of the tunnel, Mario lands in the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi ends up Bowser's prisoner. Cue a quest, including along the rainbow road, to reunite the brothers, stop Bowser and keep him away from Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Menu) — who definitely isn't a damsel in distress, but the target of Bowser's obsessive affections. Screenwriter Matthew Fogel (Minions: The Rise of Gru) has kept The Super Mario Bros Movie's story slight, just as Horvath and Jelenic ensure that the tone stays light. Still, while it might star Pratt, there's no The Lego Movie-level smarts, satire and hilarity on offer. Instead, the fun-enough picture is packed with as many nods to the games as it can possibly fit in — and to as many games as it can manage. It's been four decades since Mario Bros initially hit arcades, spinning off from Mario's 1981 introduction in the first Donkey Kong, so there's much to reference. The film brings in the big gorilla (Seth Rogen, The Fabelmans) and his simian pals (Wednesday's Fred Armisen voices Cranky Kong). It gets speeding along that beloved rainbow road, with shells flying and Mad Max: Fury Road coming to mind. The list goes on and cuts far deeper than the obvious; it isn't accurate to say it's full of Easter eggs, though, because it's simply a Super Mario Bros movie stacked with attention to Super Mario Bros detail. Released beforehand, but still a sight to see within the complete flick, Mario's arrival in the Mushroom Kingdom and his introductory tour by the mushroom-headed Toad (Keegan-Michael Key, Schmigadoon!) is a visual treasure trove. When Peach has him prove he's up to the Bowser-battling mission by hopping through an obstacle course that mirrors Super Mario Bros' levels, it's also spot on. Before that in Brooklyn, rushing to a job gets the side-scrolling treatment — and it's an entertainingly playful touch. Nintendo composer Koji Kondo's famous tunes are worked and interpreted by composer Brian Tyler (Scream VI), too, and well. Of course, a game-to-movie effort can't just splash around familiar sights and sounds, actively court nostalgia, and call it all a film. This one doesn't, but the plot remains noticeably thin, including in its siblings-stick-together theme. It's also indebted to the Minions franchise in much of Bowser and the Koopas' storyline. That's animation house Illumination cribbing from itself, given it's behind Despicable Me and its sequels and continues, and now this. If the bright, bouncy, vivid and immersive imagery is The Super Mario Bros Movie's main power-up, which it is, it's still no invincibility star. Neither is the fast pace, aka the default mode for most family-friendly animated fare that isn't made by Pixar, Studio Ghibli or Wolfwalkers' Cartoon Saloon, and where the key focus is on throwing constant chaos at kids so that they don't get distracted. And when the stock-standard needle-drops start, because every all-ages-friendly movie has to jam in recognisable songs like 'Holding Out for a Hero' and 'Take on Me' like it's a jukebox musical — a lazy and grating genre staple that won't go away — there's basic Spotify playlist vibes. It might've sparked the Gentleminions fad among cinemagoers who grew up watching yellow babbling critters, but Minions: The Rise of Gru did the same. Cosplaying in red or green outfits to The Super Mario Bros Movie, which'll happen seeing that all things Mario are that adored, won't patch over the template at work here either. Although it doesn't seem like it when the picture presses start, Horvath and Jelenic are well-aware that they can't have Pratt let's-a-going his way through the film with a stereotypical accent, and don't. They're also comically knowing about it. That said, his casting is neither a coin box nor a banana peel — but his co-stars are winningly chosen. The expressive and energetic Day helps make the case for a big-screen Luigi's Mansion outing to come next. Taylor-Joy gives Peach pluck and determination, on par with the script's commitment to make the character anything but someone who needs rescuing. Key is lively and squeaky, Black growls and pines for Peach with Tenacious D-style glee and Rogan is audibly having a ball. And, while this can't be said about the bulk of this endearingly loving but supremely by-the-numbers film, that's something that The Super Mario Bros Movie delivers but the games can't.
There's no shortage of heartbreak in Till, a shattering drama about the abduction, torture and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. Clemency writer/director Chinonye Chukwu tells of a boy's tragic death, a mother's pain and anger, and a country's shame and trauma — and how all three pushed along America's 20th-century civil rights movement. Heartache lingers in the needless loss of life. Fury swells at the abhorrent racism on display, including in the justifications offered by the unrepentant perpetrators. Despair buzzes in the grief, personal and national alike, that hangs heavy from the second that Emmett is dragged away in the night. Fury seethes, too, because an atrocious murder like this demands justice and change, neither of which was ever going to be easy to secure given the time and place. Indeed, the US-wide Emmett Till Antilynching Act making lynching a federal hate crime only became law in March 2022. Heartbreak builds in and bursts through Till from the outset — and in sadly everyday situations. Emmett, nicknamed Bo by his family, is played as a lively and joyful teen by the impressive Jalyn Hall (Space Jam: A New Legacy). He's confident and cheery, as his mother Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler, Station Eleven) has lovingly raised him to be in Chicago. But even department-store shopping for a trip to the Deep South is coloured by the threat of discrimination. So, as his departure to see relatives gets nearer, Mamie utters a few words of advice. She's stern and urgent, trying to impart to him the importance of adhering to Mississippi's unspoken rules. She implores him not to do anything that could be construed as looking at white people the wrong way, to apologise profusely and instantly whenever he has to, and to heed the different set of norms. "Be small down there," she says — and it's one of the movie's many crushing moments. More devastation follows, in a film that wouldn't need to exist in a better world but is essential viewing in this one. While stopping at a grocery store in the sharecropper town of Money, Emmett talks to white shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett, Cyrano) — a fateful incident with specifics that've long been disputed since, as seen in infuriating testimony in the feature's later court scene. Chukwu depicts Emmett being chatty and charming, commenting that Bryant looks like a movie star. She responds by heading outside to get a pistol. Emmett's cousins and friends are frightened, a reaction that proves well-founded when Bryant's husband and brother-in-law arrive at Mamie's uncle's (John Douglas Thompson, The 355) door a few evenings later. The next time that the film's central teenager is seen, he's a horrendously beaten and barely recognisable corpse. Scripted by Chukwu with producers Keith Beauchamp (director of 2005 documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till) and Michael Reilly, Till isn't called Emmett or Bo, and isn't just the murdered boy's story — because Mamie was determined to make her heartbreak mean something. Accordingly, the movie devotes much of its running time to the aftermath, as Emmett's mother turns unspeakable sorrow into two quests: to try to hold the culprits responsible and to do whatever she needs to stop this from occurring to anyone else. Chukwu's film is sincere and clear-eyed about Mamie's courageous fight and the fortitude it takes, but it never veers away from the loss and hurt behind it. This is a portrait of a woman who became an activist icon, and also an ode to someone who was committed to ensuring that her boy's senseless killing wouldn't be excused or forgotten. When Till does see Emmett again after he's ripped from his family, the feature is careful — but also faithful to Mamie's actions. Chukwu smartly and sensitively chooses not to show the violence that Emmett was subjected to. When farmhand Willie Reed (Darian Rolle, Hard Drive) hears screams from a barn, it's deeply chilling without anyone needing to witness a single blow. And Mamie's cries when she greets her son's coffin are unsurprisingly hard to shake. But America and the globe were confronted with exactly what this crime looks like when Mamie insisted on holding an open-casket funeral, a move that Till both dramatises and copies. Chukwu is still restrained, however, never making a spectacle out of Emmett's maimed face and body. And, she's aware that watching how Mamie and others respond to the bludgeoned boy — seeing their faces crumple in distress and torment, as they naturally do — is equally as powerful. In fact, Chukwu and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski (Archive 81) can barely bring themselves to peer away from Deadwyler, who stuns in frame after frame. With both subtlety and potency, she's the picture of nervous, protective worry even before Emmett leaves — a venture that Mamie is against but her mother Alma (Whoopi Goldberg, Harlem) believes will help him know his roots — and, when he's away, conveys the motherly fear that something awful will eventuate in every look and gesture. Then, when the worst does come, Deadwyler is phenomenal in showing how Mamie summons up strength from enduring such horror. Till is a film of mourning, but it's also a movie about galvanising that mourning. While awards bodies have been woefully inconsistent with recognising Deadwyler's exceptional performance, with the BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild offering nominations but the Golden Globes and Oscars overlooking her entirely, this is a haunting portrayal. The only Black woman employed by the US Air Force's Chicago office when Till begins, as well as a widow and a single mother, there's more to Mamie than living every mum's nightmare and crusading afterwards — and although that isn't the focus of Chukwu, Beauchamp and Reilly's screenplay, Till finds ways to layer in crucial detail. How rich the film appears, especially when it's observing Mamie, Emmett and their modest but happy life in its opening chapter, is a particularly pivotal touch. Amid the dread that Mamie patently feels about Emmett's trip, and the foreboding the audience shares as well, there's such warmth radiating from the screen early on. There's such vibrance, too, because that's the existence she had worked hard to give to her child — one she knows likely wouldn't have been possible in the south. In that and every way it can be, Till is a film about love first and foremost, even when its true tale is so heartbreakingly and irrevocably altered by hate.
Punching has never been what matters most in the Creed movies, no matter how fast and furiously fists frequently fly. One of the key things that's always set this boxing franchise apart — with its first instalment landing in 2015 and sequel Creed II hitting in 2018 — is its focus on character and emotion first and foremost, including favouring both above going round for round in the ring. Blows are traded, obviously. Bouts are fought, bruises inflicted, bones broken and titles won. But the Creed saga has kept swinging again and again, leading to latest instalment Creed III, because it's still about its namesake, who he is as a person, and his feelings, demons and conflicts. When you have Michael B Jordan (Just Mercy) leading a series — even when it's a part of the broader Rocky series, or perhaps especially when that's the case — you give him the room to dig deep. You also give him weighty material to bear, as well as the space to bare Adonis 'Donnie' Creed's soul. Jordan gives himself that room, weight and space in Creed III, in the actor's first stint as a director. Notching up a ninth chapter for the overall saga that dates back to 1976's three-time Oscar-winner Rocky, this is also the first film to sport either that character or Creed's moniker but not feature Sylvester Stallone on-camera — or his involvement beyond a producer credit. Creed III is all the better for Rocky Balboa's absence, despite Stallone turning in his best performance yet in the initial Creed film. Understanding what it means to move on and openly unpacking what that truly entails is something else this franchise-within-a-franchise has long gotten right. So, Donnie has moved on from struggling with his father's legacy, and from his need to live in the past. He has another date with history, but Jordan and screenwriters Keenan Coogler (Space Jam: A New Legacy) and Zach Baylin (King Richard) — with a story also credited to the original Creed's director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) — aren't just mindlessly repeating the series' pattern. Creed III begins by going back to where Donnie's story started on-screen — actually, by venturing even further back, meeting him as an idolising teen (Thaddeus J Mixson, The Wonder Years). It's 2002, he lives in a group home, and the slightly older Damian 'Dame' Anderson (Spence Moore II, AP Bio) is a best friend as close as a brother, his mentor, and also a boxing prodigy. But a night showered in glory turns traumatic and violent, ending with Dame being incarcerated for the best part of two decades. Jump to the film's present, where Donnie has thrown in the gloves but remains tied to his chosen sport thanks to his Los Angeles boxing gym, plus managing a stable of champions and hopefuls. Jump, too, to Dame (Jonathan Majors, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) resurfacing fresh out of prison, wanting not just to reconnect but a title shot. The Rocky and Creed world sure does love an underdog. That's Dame, with only adolescent boxing achievements on his resume, but a certainty that he should challenge Donnie-managed reigning victor Felix Chavez (IRL pro boxer Jose Benavidez) for the belt. Even with plenty of its attention floating like a butterfly to the past, and stinging like a bee in what it sees, the movie wouldn't progress from there, of course, if its titular figure could himself resist the little guy — in the sport's hierarchy, not in stature. A hallmark of all things Rocky and Creed has always been giving the up-and-comer a go, as happened with Balboa and as he provided Donnie. So, true to the template but never only making itself about that tried-and-tested template, Creed III follows suit. This threequel-slash-ninequel isn't handing over the spotlight to its latest contender, though, no matter how magnetic and compelling Majors reliably proves (see also: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Da 5 Bloods, Lovecraft Country and The Harder They Fall). He's Hollywood's current go-to for new villains in third efforts, and impressively so — particularly against the fellow heavyweight acting talent Jordan — but it's a touch unfortunate that Creed III drops in such short succession after the third Ant-Man rather than giving his efforts in both time to breathe. Inevitably, getting Jordan and Majors facing off in the ring, and getting Donnie back in the ring to do so, is a matter of when not if. The script obliges after Dame plays nice with Donnie's musician spouse Bianca (Tessa Thompson, Thor: Love and Thunder) and daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent, The Resident), who is deaf, but turns on his childhood pal on dime when he gets a taste of success and years of festering resentment bleeds out. Jordan directs with tension, intensity, energy, heft and a welcome willingness to get trippy with fight scenes, as aided by cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau (The Many Saints of Newark) — and with pace to the requisite training and match montages, with help from editors Tyler Nelson (The Batman) and Jessica Baclesse (Breakwater). Creed III is visually and viscerally immersive and engaging; in the process, Jordan also crafts a movie that plots a showdown between hard work and entitlement. In one corner sits someone committed to the toil, and to earning his rewards. In the other lurks a force driven by believing he's owed, that his wins must be someone else's losses, that his enemies must suffer for him to be happy, and by spite and revenge. The Cooglers and Baylin layer in genuine and complicated reasons for Dame's bitterness towards Donnie, but never justify his unhealthy way of handling his emotions — something that the Creed films have spent two prior instalments working through with his target. If a long-held grudge linked to childhood events sounds familiar, especially with Jordan involved, that's unsurprising. So should a suddenly arriving antagonist desperate to settle a score with someone enjoying power and prominence, plus duels over a throne of sorts. Jordan sparred through them all in Black Panther, which Ryan Coogler helmed after the first Creed (the pair's third collaboration, after 2013's exceptional Fruitvale Station before both). That leaves Creed III moving on from the Italian Stallion by following in footsteps other than its own franchise's — but still following in footsteps. It asks similar questions about masculinity, strength and heroism as Black Panther. It thrives on the dynamic between its two warring men, and on the performances the actors behind them give, too. It nods towards a different future for the saga as Wakanda Forever does as well. Also, it doesn't pack as hard a punch lingering beneath that shadow; Creed III is no knockout it's still a worthy bout.
Melbourne's been busy reminding us that summer is well and truly over, yet we forecast a scorcher in the inner-north this weekend. On Saturday, April 1, Welcome to Brunswick is firing up for the return of its tongue-numbing Hot Sauce and Chilli Festival. The day's main event is the infamous Hot Sauce Taste Challenge, where a bunch of brave punters will consume some of the world's fieriest condiments in ascending order of burn. If you're game, simply sign up on the day — but be warned, you'll need to sign a waiver. Meanwhile, the bar will be pouring chilli lager on tap, plus shaking up plenty of spicy margaritas. Thirst quenched, you can stock up on fiery pantry staples with a scoot around the boutique hot sauce market, sampling and purchasing sauces from a wide range of local brands. You can nab yourself some 'Hot For Brunswick' merch, too. Of course, there'll also be a swag of spicy food truck menu items to sink your teeth into, in case you love to linger in the burn. Entry to the festival is free and walk-ins are welcome, otherwise you may be able to nab a table by booking online.
A South Melbourne favourite is in a bit of a pickle and it's asking for your help. Coming off the back of some particularly tough times, the duo behind The Pickle & The Patty are rallying the troops, inviting pickle-loving Melburnians to throw a little extra support behind their upcoming Save the Pickle Pity Party. Taking over the diner from 11.30am on Saturday, April 1, it's set to be an all-day affair, starring loads of specials and exclusive menu additions. You'll find $9 cheeseburgers, all tap brews priced at $10 a pop and something dubbed the Hangover Walking Taco — a serve of Mi Goreng-flavoured crisps elevated with chopped cheese-style beef, a peanut butter drizzle, blueberry jam, bacon and jalapeño. If you fancy digging a little deeper, there'll be a ticketed feasting series running throughout the day. Nab a $58 ticket to enjoy a set menu filled with surprises and quirky twists, as well as a unique drink to kick things off. While there, you'll be able to help out the venue's fundraising efforts by snapping up The Pickle & The Patty merch, plus signature products ranging from pickles to hot sauce. There'll even be a silent auction the team is labelling "quirky, weird and wonderful".
A cinema plays a key part in Twisters. Frankenstein flickers across its screen, but mother nature proves not only more of a monster, but also an audience member worse than folks who can't manage to spend two hours in a darkened room without their phones. There's a knowing air to featuring a picture palace in this disaster-flick sequel from Minari director Lee Isaac Chung and The Boys in the Boat screenwriter Mark L Smith, reminding viewers how deeply this genre and this format are linked. Almost three decades ago, as co-penned by Michael Crichton fresh off Jurassic Park's mammoth success, 1996's Twister packed movie theatres worldwide to the tune of nearly half-a-billion dollars, doing so with a spectacle. No matter if its sequel reaches the same heights at the box office globally, it too delivers better-on-the-big-screen sights, chief among them Chung and cinematographer Dan Mindel's (Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker) naturalistic imagery. For those unaware going in that the filmmaker behind six-time Oscar contender Minari — a helmer who received a Best Director Academy Award nomination for his gorgeous and heartfelt work, in fact — is also steering Twisters, it isn't hard to guess from its look, including in its opening moments alone. The movie begins with storm chasers doing what they enthusiastically do. It also kicks off with a horror turn of events thanks to a tornado that exceeds their expectations, and with the crew's survivors afterwards struggling with trauma that'll later drive them forward. In these scenes and beyond, this isn't a picture of visual gloss and sheen, as witnessed right down to its lighting. Twisters remains polished, of course. It also can't tell its tale without CGI. But a choice as pivotal as valuing a genuine aesthetic tonef over a gleaming one has a massive impact. Usually gifted at reading where a whirlwind is headed, hailing from Tornado Alley and introduced with her college pals attempting to demonstrate that her passion project can tame superstorms, Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Where the Crawdads Sing) makes it out of the Twisters' first big tempest alive. Five years later when the feature swiftly picks up, she has swapped field work for sitting behind a New York desk as a meteorologist, however. Then her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos, Dumb Money) tracks her down with a proposal: return to Oklahoma by his side, with his business using portable radars to scan the squalls. She's hesitant — her efforts to avoid going home have been keenly felt by her mother (Maura Tierney, The Iron Claw), too — but eventually agrees to lend her skills in predicting tornado paths to Javi's team for a single week. As Kate quickly learns, wild swirls aren't just associated with the weather when she's back rushing after gales with the wind literally in her hair. Javi's ultra-professional squad has a fierce rivalry with cowboy-style "tornado wrangler" Tyler Owens (Glen Powell, Hit Man) and his ragtag posse of offsiders, who YouTube their every move, have a hefty online following as a result, sling merchandise with his face on it, seem as cavalier as anyone can come and are eager to discover if they can shoot fireworks into a storm. If it initially appears as if there's an experts-versus-amateurs, experience-versus-influencers battle at the heart of Twisters, Chung and Smith never skew that simplistic. Rather, one of their themes is valuing knowledge but not gatekeeping or snap judgements — and, as its debut twister reinforces from the outset, recognising the importance of diving beyond first perceptions. Vortexes wow, threaten and devastate. Opposites-attract type characters do exactly that. Not everyone's motives are what they might seem. Personal histories demand overcoming as much as the gusty uproars spiralling around America's centre. Those expected plot mechanics don't play out perfunctorily, though, for a few reasons. The story behind the script is credited to Powell's Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, who was previously eyed to helm here — and while there's a few familiar beats evident in the last flick in cinemas boasting his involvement and this one, a different need for speed pulses through, as well as a different contemplation of soaring versus being grounded. In what shouldn't feel like such a rarity for a disaster film but does given where the genre typically heads, Twisters also cares about its figures, the sense of awe that gets them bounding into danger, the clash between the environment and those who live within it, the effect of climate change, the human toll that tornadoes wreak, the communities affected and intimate stories set shaped by America's landscape. While Twister isn't the only movie that springs to mind when thinking about Helen Hunt (Hacks) and the late Bill Paxton (The Circle), it's up there with the instant selections. Edgar-Jones, Ramos and Powell each enter Twisters on recent rolls of standout roles that respectively cover Normal People, In the Heights and Anyone But You, and all add this to their list of memorable parts. Matching Chung's approach and visuals, there's an earthiness and sincerity to Edgar-Jones' performance as the movie's haunted and wounded action hero. Ramos, as innately charming an on-screen presence as Powell, ensures that his complicated character is always empathetic. Dialling up the swagger, then the charisma and thoughtfulness, Powell equally navigates a textured arc with confidence. Albeit in support — and adding flavour as a group more than individually — the film's savvy casting also extends to The Crowded Room's Sasha Lane, Love Lies Bleeding's Katy O'Brian, Nope's Brandon Perea, Pantheon's Tunde Adebimpe, Totally Killer's Kiernan Shipka, Bad Sisters' Daryl McCormack and Pearl's David Corenswet. Making certain that Twisters' spinning furores don't blow its people, their emotions and their everyday lives away — including when that's a grimly inescapable element of the narrative, because disaster movies always have a body count — still requires those tempests to thunder with full cinema-shaking sound and fury. Getting personal here isn't a case of skimping on effects, then, even if cows don't fly this time. Instead, Chung adds his clear affection for character, for seeing his main players react to the wonders around them Spielberg-style (the iconic The Fabelmans filmmaker is an executive producer), and for portraying the US terrain so routinely ravaged by the weather to digital and practical wizardry that values the sensory and intense (as also aided by editing from Terilyn A Shropshire, The Woman King). No one wants a storm to strike twice, but this franchise has achieved it — and as gets yelled within its frames, does its utmost to notch up another feat. "We've gotta get everyone into the movie theatre," it shouts; that's exactly where this flick is a sight to behold.
Listen up: Listen Out is back for its 11th year and it isn't slouching on the lineup front. The bill for the touring festival boasts 21 Savage, Skepta, Tyla and Flo Milli among its hip hop and R&B names. On the electronic side, John Summit and Sub Focus feature. Yes, the list goes on from there. Fans of 21 Savage, Tyla and Flo Milli — and of Teezo Touchdown, Jessie Reyez and Jazzy, too — should be especially excited. When they each take to Listen Out's stages at Caribbean Gardens in Melbourne on Friday, September 27, they'll be hitting the country for the first time. Among their company, Lil Tjay, Lithe, Folamour, The Blessed Madonna, Cassian and Disco Lines are just some of the fellow acts that'll have festivalgoers dancing. 2023's fest was Listen Out's most successful in terms of ticket sales ever, and the crew behind it are hoping to continue that trajectory. Something that might help: turning the fest into a 16-plus event, age-wise, which is a first for 2024. As the roster of names on the lineup demonstrates, the festival's focus is staying true to its niche, filling its stages on electronic and hip hop artists — both international and local talents, too. Listen Out 2024 Lineup: 21 Savage Skepta Lil Tjay Tyla Flo Milli Jessie Reyez Teezo Touchdown Lithe John Summit Sub Focus Folamour The Blessed Madonna Cassian Disco Lines Jazzy Koven Conducta A Little Sound Ben Gerrans AK Sports Foura B2B Tom Santa Miss Kaninna Djanaba Soju Gang Melbourne only: Yo! Mafia Sixten Kelly T J-OK Top images: Jordan Munns and Sam Venn.
Melbourne is blessed to host stacks of booze-filled festivals — either championing wine, beer, sake or gin. But the new Botanica Spirits & Food Festival is going after all the hard liquors, with over 20 Australian distilleries taking part this year. To get involved, you just need to book one of the four-hour slots at Timber Yard on Saturday, August 17 or Sunday, August 19, and then get ready to drink. You'll be sampling award-winning gins, vodkas, rums, whiskeys, liqueurs, and more during your four-hour session, perhaps also buying a few bottles to take home at the end of it. A bunch of food trucks and stalls will also be set up in the yard, helping you line your stomachs with plenty of tasty treats. Most notably, the 100% indigenous-owned, women-led and LGBTQIA+ Mabu Mabu will be on site during both days, serving a few Aussie delicacies. This includes native pepperberry-fried crocodile with crispy saltbush and pulled kangaroo nachos with desert lime guacamole. The $60 Botanica Spirits & Food Festival ticket gives you access to these food trucks, plus four hours of tastings, entry to talks and masterclasses, a tote bag and your own glass. Live music will also feature throughout the weekend, so be sure to take some time relaxing out in the yard with drinks and eats in-hand — let's just pray for good weather.
Cannoleria dreams up a fun new flavour every week, but the team is taking it to the next level later this month, teaming up with the legendary American Doughnut Kitchen to create a hot jam doughnut-inspired connolo. Both Cannoleria and American Dougut Kitchen sell their sweet treats at Queen Vic Market, but lining up for both cannoli and doughnuts can be a real chore — especially as the American Doughnut Kitchen has long-ass lines down the road every weekend. Too often, punters have to choose one or the other. Thankfully, from Friday, September 20–Thursday, October 3, you can get a mash-up of both iconic eats from any of Cannoleria's stories — at Queen Vic Market, South Melbourne Market, Preston Market and Lygon Street. For the collaboration, a doughnut- and jam-infused ricotta is piped into a crunchy pastry shell, and then garnished with crumbled doughnuts. These bad boys will go for $6 each, three for $15, and then any additional cannolo on top of that costs $5 a pop. "We can't wait for everyone to try this Flavour of the Fortnight," shares Co-Owner and Chef at Cannoleria Dario Di Clerico. "The Cannoleria team have wanted to work with the iconic American Doughnut Kitchen for a while, and we are so excited that the collaboration is nearly here. "When we were planning the flavours, we all thought about how doughnuts are perfect for the [AFL] Grand Final and that people will love the cannoli, and so we decided to make it a Flavour of the Fortnight that covers the big game."
Watching a film by French writer/director Bertrand Bonello can feel like having a spell cast upon you. In movies such as 2016's Nocturama and 2019's Zombi Child, that's how magnetic and entrancing his blend of ethereal mood and dreamy imagery has felt. So it is with The Beast, too, another hypnotic feature that bewitches and also probes, because none of these three Bonello flicks ask their viewers to merely submit. Rather, they enchant while raising questions about the state of the world, whether digging into consumerism and anarchy, hierarchies of race and class, or the role of humanity in an increasingly technology-mediated society. The latter is the domain of the filmmaker's loose adaptation of Henry James' 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle — a take that, as its author didn't and couldn't, perceives how the clash of humanity's emotions and artificial intelligence's data-driven analysis is fated to favour the cold and the calculating. In 2044, the very fact that people are guided by their feelings has rendered them unsuitable for most jobs in The Beast's AI-dominated vision of the future. Played with the mastery of both deeply conveyed expression and telling stillness that's long characterised her performances, Dune: Part Two, Crimes of the Future and No Time to Die's Léa Seydoux is Gabrielle, who is among the throngs relegated to drone-like drudgery in this new world order. To shift her daily reality, where she reads the temperature of data cores, she only has one path forward: a cleansing of her DNA. It involves spending sessions immersed in a black goopy bath to confront her emotions and past, a procedure that she's told will rid her of her trauma and baggage. Crossing paths with Gabrielle at the treatment centre, Louis (1917 and True History of the Kelly Gang's George MacKay) has the same choice. Bonello begins The Beast with the opposite of stolidness, with green-screen acting as Gabrielle reacts to directions uttered her way by an off-screen voice, and with her eyes widening and voice screaming at a monster who'll be added in the post-production process. It's a stunning introduction. Seydoux is transfixing from this moment onwards, but the entire range of her portrayal from cool and collected to uncertain and then terrified is captured in mere minutes. Bonello also thrusts fear, a key theme of James' book and this picture alike, to the fore — as well as the notion of being petrified of something intangible. The scene recognises that that which makes our blood run cold doesn't always exist, and queries how we make the panic in our heads and hearts feel real. It also turns Gabrielle into a doll behaving at someone else's behest, revealing a motif that'll continue to pop up while examining how much agency we have when imagined nightmares can so easily control us. The Gabrielle that starts off the movie isn't and is the Gabrielle going all Under the Skin-meets-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2044. Wafting around a surreal atmosphere that recalls David Lynch's Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire as well, The Beast flits between parallel Gabrielles in different times, as she does while submitting to purification. Sometimes she's the Gabrielle of the feature's present. Then, she's a past-life Gabrielle in France in 1910. Rounding out the trio: another prior version in 2014 in Los Angeles. In the 20th century, the character is a pianist whose husband owns a doll-making factory. In the early 21st century, she's an actor and model housesitting a gleamingly lavish mansion while doing the audition rounds to get noticed. Louis dwells in all three as well, orbiting around her — as a romantic option who isn't afraid of pursuing a married woman in the Belle Époque era just before the Great Flood inundated Paris, then a misogynistic 30-year-old virgin broadcasting his lifted-from-actuality diatribes online in the 2010s just as the La Habra earthquake hits, then a man drawn her way and facing the same haunting feel-or-thrive dilemma that has Gabrielle in a tub. In The Beast in the Jungle, the tale's namesake is the lurking belief pulsing through James' protagonist that calamity awaits. 1910's Gabrielle has confessed the same concerns. The novel and the film each plunge into a potential self-fulfilling prophecy, then: if we expect doom and gloom, and we base our decisions upon its arrival, do we destine ourselves for it? In response, a seize-the-day message washes through the two iterations of this story; however, the timing that Bonello uses for his triptych's chapters gives The Beast a telling push and pull. One person's catastrophising is another's being prepared — and, as existence today means grappling with the sci-fi dystopian notions of AI and climate change becoming real, the filmmaker, who co-scripts with Benjamin Charbit (Spirit of Ecstasy) and Guillaume Bréaud (Eat the Night), sees that seeming irrationally wary of the possible worst-case scenario doesn't preclude a life-altering disaster from happening. Bonello doesn't just want to observe The Beast's recurring loops — like dolls, pigeons and telling fortunes as well as 'Evergreen' by Roy Orbison repeat — but to make the emotions that spring, as well as the battle with even having them, seep into his viewers. Not just Seydoux but Mackay are excellent choices to make good on this aim, each gifted at a very particular task: relaying the full swell and swirl of feelings that comprises every variation of Gabrielle and Louis human for better and for worse, and also makes them distinct, while spying the echoes between them in each era. Around his two leads, production design, costume design, hairstyling and makeup are crucial. The film veers from period romance to psychological thriller and then sci-fi horror across its trio of intertwined parts, and every craft choice — Josée Deshaies' (Passages) lingering cinematography included — enforces the distinction. And yet, Seydoux and Mackay could've unleashed their potent performances solely against green backgrounds with the same look throughout and had the same impact. To watch The Beast is to experience the premonitory unease, and the back-and-forth between the hope of joy and the dread of the unknown, that colours its tales within tales and its hops from genre to genre. This is a film with chaos and change at its core, but that spots the anchors and emotions that remain the same no matter what portrait of life is unfurling. First with android doll Kelly (Saint Omer's Guslagie Malanda, also exceptional), 2044's Gabrielle frequents a hidden-away nightclub where the theme cycles between a specific year night by night. One evening, it's 1972. Another, it's 1980. On yet another, it's 1963. There Bonello goes, finding a way to distill his film down to its essence yet again, as his opening sequence does — because what is navigating being alive and falling in love if not never knowing what any given day or night will bring, regardless of the time or impending ruin, then trying to face that fact? If technology steals that truth away, The Beast posits, our nature is conjure up a way to take solace in it anyway.
Commune Group (Firebird, Moonhouse, New Quarter, Tokyo Tina, Hanoi Hannah and Studio Amaro) is helping hungry folks out this month by giving diners gift vouchers worth 25% of their total bills. Yes, a simple 25% discount would be easier, but let's not be greedy while Melbourne hospo businesses are struggling. Instead, this offer allows you to have more nights out while saving a few bucks. And the venues aren't totally screwed over in the process. [caption id="attachment_959167" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tokyo Tina[/caption] All you've got to do is dine in at any of its restaurants between Monday and Thursday in June — excluding Studio Amaro — and then send a photo of the bill to the team via Commune's online portal. You'll then get a voucher that you can use at any of its other sites — again, not including Studio Amaro. Most of these spots are ideal for group bookings, having great set menus and buzzing vibes. We're also huge fans of New Quarter's unlimited noodles special — one of the best bottomless food deals in Melbourne. So, gather a bunch of mates together for a night out this month and score a big gift voucher to use for your next group hang. [caption id="attachment_936366" align="alignnone" width="1920"] New Quarter[/caption]
To Valhalla, George Miller went: when Mad Max: Fury Road thundered across and shone upon the silver screen in 2015, and it did both, it gave cinema one of the greatest action movies ever made. It has taken nine years for the Australian filmmaker to back up one of the 21st century's masterpieces with another stunt-filled drive through his dystopian franchise — a realm that now dates back 45 years, with Mad Max first envisaging a hellscape Down Under in 1979 — and he's achieved the immensely enviable. Fury Road and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga's white-hued, silver-lipped war boys pray to gain entry to a mythological dreamscape just once, but Miller keeps returning again and again (only 1985's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, in a now five-film series that also includes 1981's Mad Max 2, is anything less than heavenly). "The question is: do you have what it takes to make it epic?" Miller has Chris Hemsworth (Thor: Love and Thunder) ask in Furiosa as biker-horde leader Dementus, he of the post-apocalyptic Thor-meets-Roman gladiator look and chariot-by-motorcycle mode of transport. Returning to all things Mad Max after an affecting detour to 2022's djinn fable Three Thousand Years of Longing, the writer/director might've been posing himself the same query — and he resoundingly answers in the affirmative. An origin story-spinning prequel has rarely felt as essential as this unearthing of its namesake's history, which Fury Road hinted at when it introduced Furiosa (then played by Charlize Theron, Fast X) and made her the movie's hero above and beyond Mad Max (Tom Hardy, Venom: Let There Be Carnage). Discovering the full Furiosa tale felt imperative then, too, and with good reason: Miller had already planned the figure's own film to flesh out her background before her celluloid debut, and that she existed well past her interactions with Max was always as apparent as the steely glare that said everything without words. Now with both Anya Taylor-Joy (The Super Mario Bros Movie) and Alyla Browne (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) playing the lead, Furiosa is an act of seeing how sands shift. Time, terrors and tragedy sweep through Furiosa's life, moulding her into Fury Road's formidable figure — and the grains blasted around by the years, and the trials and tribulations, assist with the shaping. As exceptional as Theron was, owning her time in the role and the film that she was in, Miller was smart to recast with Taylor-Joy rather than deploying digital de-ageing. His new Furiosa doesn't mimic her predecessor, but evolves into her take on the character, including via fierce and anxious eye emoting beneath slicks of grease in a frequently wordless performance. Browne is also excellent, and equally as determined. Furiosa has chosen all of its key talents wisely; in a showcase turn, Hemsworth peacocks and drips evil like he's never had so much fun on screen, while Tom Burke (Living) is commandingly stoic as Praetorian Jack, a war rig pilot and a thoughtful mentor. When Browne begins the film as Furiosa, The Green Place of Many Mothers and the Vuvalini, its matriarchal custodians, are the character's safe haven and guiding forces — blissfully so. But she's resourceful, knowing to sever the fuel line on the bike of roving scavengers to stop them from finding her home. The girl that audiences already know will become an Imperator under The Citadel warlord Immortan Joe (Three Thousand Years of Longing's Lachy Hulme, taking over from the now-late Hugh Keays-Byrne) — and will then secret away his captive wives, each treated as little more than human breeding stock — can't stop the raiders from snatching her up, however. Their hope: impressing the volatile Dementus, who rides across the desert with a teddy bear strapped to him, with living proof that more than the wasteland's dust and savagery exists. Furiosa's world-building first hour spends its time with its protagonist as a plucky pre-teen trying to escape back to her mother Mary Jabassa (Charlee Fraser, Anyone But You) — who is in swift pursuit — and then internalising the trauma of becoming her captor's adoptee as he plots dominance guided by sheer arrogance, entitlement, cruelty and buffoonery (Hemsworth wears his bluster as well as he does red capes, which he amusingly isn't done with in this move away from Marvel). She's still a girl when Dementus and his gang arrive at The Citadel, where she's traded into Immortan Joe's care. Fifteen years pass in Miller and Fury Road co-scribe Nick Lathouris' new narrative, but Taylor-Joy's step into Furiosa's shoes leaves the character no less enterprising and consumed by anger at a world where everything that she loves has been taken from her. Max Rockatansky was a vigilante, after all — and, as shot in Australia for the first time since Beyond Thunderdome, Miller is still making a vengeance story here. "We are the already dead, Little D, you and me," Dementus will tell Furiosa later. This remains a movie where speeding along dirt roads in the vehicular equivalents of Frankenstein's monster — tinkered together road trains ferrying arms from the Bullet Farm and petrol from Gas Town — is an eye-popping high-octane spectacle, but it's also one where pain, grief and, yes, fury run deep. With Aussie accents everywhere, and a sunburnt country that's inching closer to reflecting reality every day baking parched sights into the Simon Duggan (Disenchanted)-lensed frames, Furiosa doesn't forget that it's in a franchise about ecocide, what humanity robs from itself by committing it and what it takes to endure afterwards. Fury Road didn't, either, but by adding more room between the on-the-road chaos, its prequel buzzes and thrums with the urgency and immediacy of survival, and also lets the weight of Furiosa's plight land. With Oscar-winning editor Margaret Sixel (Happy Feet) and costume designer Jenny Beavan (Cruella) both back — the first working with Eliot Knapman (a second assistant editor last time) and whipping up action sequences as frenetic as ever, the second in vintage form — Miller has top-notch help etching stunning sights into cinema history again. Although Furiosa isn't just one long pedal-to-the-metal display, it's still filled with them. A mid-movie 15-minute setpiece is as tremendous as Mad Max flicks get. While CGI leaves bigger tyre marks this time, there's an apt air to the glossier look versus Fury Road's lived-in aesthetics, reflecting Furiosa's journey. The wasteland and its horrors greet her afresh in this film, but they're as caked on as mud when she's an Imperator. It also feels fitting that Furiosa arrives, finally, in a year that sand has already stretched across screens as far as could be seen in Dune: Part Two, and also revenge has fuelled Love Lies Bleeding and Monkey Man and Boy Kills World. Making the vast, primal and eternal feel vivid and shiny and new keeps proving Miller's 00s-era Mad Max wheelhouse — and what a treat, what a lovely treat, it makes for viewers.
Every film is a portrait of ups and downs, no matter the genre. Without change and complications, plus either a sprinkling or a shower of chaos, there's little in the way of story for a movie to tell. In just three features, each hitting cinemas Down Under in successive years since 2022, Macedonian Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski has demonstrated how deeply he understands this fact — and also that life itself is, of course, the same rollercoaster ride. So, when Housekeeping for Beginners starts by jumping between a joyous sing-along and a grim doctor's visit, he lays that juxtaposition between existence's highs and the lows bare in his third picture's frames. He has form: You Won't Be Alone, his folkloric horror film set in 19th-century Macedonia, segued early from new life to a witch's fate-shaping demands; Of an Age, a queer love story that unfurls in Melbourne, kicked off by flitting between dancing and a desperate against-the-clock rush. In You Won't Be Alone, the shapeshifting Wolf-Eateress who chose an infant to be her protege was played by Anamaria Marinca, the Romanian actor who has proven an unforgettable screen presence ever since the one-two punch of 2004's TV two-parter Sex Traffic — which won her a Best Actress BAFTA — and 2007's Cannes Palme d'Or-winning film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Stolevski reenlists her assistance for Housekeeping for Beginners, and also illustrates his awareness of another immutable fact: that the eyes of Anamaria Marinca relay tales all by themselves. Here, they're weary but sharp and determined. They're devoted yet fierce, too. They possess the unrelenting gaze of someone who won't stop fighting for those she loves no matter what it takes, and regardless of how she initially reacts, a path that her social-worker character Dita is no stranger to traversing. That aforementioned crooning comes courtesy of precocious five-year-old Mia (newcomer Džada Selim), her rebellious teenage sister Vanesa (fellow debutant Mia Mustafa) and the charming Ali (Samson Selim, another first-timer), the young man who newly shares their Skopje abode. Everyone, including Vanesa and Mia's mother Suada (Alina Șerban, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn), dwells under Marinca's Dita's roof — with the latter not just cohabitating with her girlfriend and her kids, but turning the house that she inherited into a refuge for those that North Macedonian society frowns upon. Ali is the latest lover of Dita's longterm gay roommate and friend Toni (Vladimir Tintor, Kumovi), hanging around after an app hookup. Young lesbians Elena (Sara Klimoska, Tin Kamp), Flora (Rozafë Celaj, Sophia) and Teuta (Ajshe Useini, yet another newcomer) also call the spot home. Being queer isn't a criminal offence in Housekeeping for Beginners' setting, but both same-sex marriage and adopting children by LGBTQIA+ couples are illegal. In the country's class system, being anything but Macedonian is also hardly greeted with warmth; Dita is Albanian, while Suada, her children and Ali are Romani. This motley crew is navigating each and every day the best that they can together; however, their safe space has grief in its future. It's Suada and Dita who attend the medical appointment at the movie's start, with Suada diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer. Her one wish: that Dita adopt her girls, and also get married to and play happy families with Toni, who is Macedonian, so that Mia and Vanesa will be free of the stigma that Suada has always had to weather as a Roma woman. Stolevski is a plunge-in director — and screenwriter and editor, again taking on all three roles on Housekeeping for Beginners as he did on Of an Age. He dives into lives already in action and motion, crafting films that feel like they're dropping in. Ups and downs have preceded the events that his movies spin into their plots, then, and more will follow after his flicks tap out. Accordingly, he isn't one to spoon-feed specifics and context. The dynamics between his characters in Housekeeping for Beginners are revealed to audiences naturally, as are the setbacks and discrimination they encounter, often as viewers spend time in Dita's always-noisy, always-bustling home. While this isn't a one-location picture — Šutka, the Skopje municipality that's the world's only local administrative area with Balkan Romani as its official language, also features heavily — it is a film where observing its key figures in surroundings both comforting and challenging conveys as much as dialogue. Putting Marinca at the fore, a mix of grace and intensity beaming from her performance as Dita, was always going to rank among Stolevski's best choices in a feature filmmaking career that's already filled with stellar casting (see: Constellation's Noomi Rapace, Bad Behaviour's Alice Englert and Elite's Carloto Cotta in You Won't Be Alone; and also Swift Street's Elias Anton, Eden's Thom Green and Savage River's Hattie Hook in Of an Age). He's also a detail-driven director, making emotions and complexities plain in decisions as simple as the arrangement of people at a wedding and where the camera peers (or doesn't) when someone is speaking. And, again and again, he guides portrayals to match. From Șerban, he gets blistering power, with Suada explosive from the moment that she questions whether her medical treatment is being shaped by her ethnicity. Džada Selim, Samson Selim and Mustafa are all discoveries, too, breathing realism and vitality into the movie's youngest hearts and minds. Roving and intimate cinematography from Naum Doksevski (Sestri) also ensures that watching Housekeeping for Beginners feels akin to stepping inside it — and pondering the same questions that Dita, Suada, Toni, Ali and company each are. As the film that was selected as North Macedonia's Oscar contender in 2024's Best International Feature category (The Zone of Interest won) rides just a sliver of the ups and downs that its characters will face in their days, albeit significant ones, it gets them examining what comprises a family. There might be no such thing as a smooth-sailing journey from birth to death, or a surefire way to avoid heartbreak and loss, for anyone. There certainly isn't within Housekeeping for Beginners, which can also skew darkly comic when it comes to the bureaucratic hoops that require jumping through. But as Stolevski charts in his third movie about yearning for a place to belong, it's the people that you share those travails with day in and day out that makes a household.
The transfixing terrain of Mads Mikkelsen's face has been cast against formidably frosty and inhospitable climes before, weathering mirroring weathering. Sporting a piercing and determined glint in his eye, the Danish acting great has previously surveyed the Scandinavian landscape, too, seeing possibility where others spot peril. It was true in Arctic, in Valhalla Rising and now in The Promised Land: there's no stare as mesmerisingly resolute as his. When Ludvig Kahlen, Mikkelsen's latest character, insists that he can do what no one else has done — to begin with: settling the heath on the heather-covered Jutland moorland and building a colony for the king, a feat considered virtually impossible in the mid-18th century — doubting him isn't a possibility for anyone in the movie's audience. The BAFTA-nominated Another Round star has danced in historical drama territory for his countryman director Nikolaj Arcel in the past as well, with the pair reteaming after 2012's Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair. A different king sits on the throne in this film, Frederick V instead of Christian VII; however, the regal shadow remains inescapable. This time, Mikkelsen and Arcel tell not of a doctor influencing a monarch and a country, but of a soldier aligning his quest for a better future with a sovereign's wish, and learning what it means to chase a dream only to realise that you need something less tangible. Kahlen's attempt to farm land considered barren is equally a battle against entitlement and arrogance thanks to his clash with Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg, Borgen), a cruel local magistrate who contends that the king's land is his own — and feels far enough away from Copenhagen for there not to be any consequences for his claim. A survivalist story, an underdog tale, an eat-the-rich narrative, a fierce repudiation of ill-earned senses of superiority, a journey of discovery: they all fertilise this potent Nordic picture, as do all of the hallmarks of a western. Jutland provides the plains. Kahlen and de Schinkel tussle over their conquering — one with what's best for the community in mind, the other only seeking their own power and glory. Based on Ida Jessen's 2020 book The Captain and Ann Barbara, The Promised Land isn't so simplistic as to make Kahlen the portrait of selflessness. Indeed, this isn't a naive film for a second. Instead, even with renown also on the line for its protagonist, it spies the vast chasm between the illegitimate son of a landowner and a servant who toiled in the military for 25 years to receive the title of captain and is now willing to keep scrapping to secure his lot in life, and the born-to-money and -means pomposity lorded over everyone in reach by someone that knows nothing of hard work, struggle and duty, and only of selfishly getting their own way. (Bastarden aka The Bastard is the movie's original Danish-language moniker.) The year is 1755 when Kahlen petitions Frederick V for the right to make what he can of the moors, a request only granted by the royal underlings because they think that the task is unattainable but it'll appease the king that an effort is being made. On the land itself, doubt also reigns supreme. Only the resident clergyman (Gustav Lindh, The Northman) shows any faith in Kahlen's mission. Finding workers to assist is also virtually impossible due to de Schinkel, who has the county cloaked in fear and its peasants indentured on his own turf. It's illegal for anyone to take on those who have fled the tyrant, but in the married Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen, Carmen Curlers) and Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin, Raised by Wolves), Kahlen takes a chance anyway. While it's also forbidden to enlist the Romani people, who first send the young Anmai Mus (debutant Melina Hagberg) to get pilfering on Kahlen's patch, that's another gambit soon made. Arcel has much to dig through in Anders Thomas Jensen's latest screenplay to star Mikkelsen — see also: Flickering Lights, Adam's Apples, After the Wedding, The Salvation, Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice — especially as de Schinkel keeps throwing his weight around as egotistical manchildren do, and as the ways in which exploitation, classism and racism shape the societal status quo push to the fore. With Kahlen, including as he gets caught between his new nemesis and the latter's Norwegian cousin Edel Helene (Kristine Kujath Thorp, Sick of Myself), the filmmaker makes a crucial storytelling choice, though: rarely peering far away from either Mikkelsen or the Danish scenery. Westerns fix their eyes on faces and frontiers because they're each sights that can unfurl an entire history in a mere look; in this feature's majestic imagery, which spans sweeping vistas and soulful close-ups alike, nothing says more than intently scrutinising its star and his surroundings. As classical as The Promised Land feels in an old-school, they-don't-often-make-them-like-this-anymore fashion — and with the route there proving more of a surprise than the destination as well — there's a slipperiness to Mikkelsen's involvement, too, thanks to a career spent playing everything from Bond antagonists and Hannibal Lecter to The Hunt's persecuted teacher. Even in a film with a clear villain that isn't his character, he isn't in the business of painting solely in black and white. In fact, nor should he when Kahlen can be stubborn, stern, beyond stoic, and quick to cast others aside in the name of settling the hearth and taking potato farming nearly as seriously as in The Martian at almost any cost. Absolutely nothing is formulaic about the feeling and complexity that Mikkelsen brings to a role, including this, one of his best performances — and again and again, he gives the screen the epitome of what a layered and complicated portrayal should be. With Collin and scene-stealing first-timer Hagberg especially, The Promised Land's lead has excellent on-screen company. In smaller but no less pivotal parts, each conveys perseverance and strength to match Kahlen's, as tinted with the added weight of being women, peasants and Romani in a time and place with no care for any of the above. This film's main trio, its makeshift family, inhabit an existence where little sprouts for those beyond the one percent that isn't tended to fastidiously, furiously and like their very being depended upon it. Among its many highlights, stepping reflecting the present bears plenty of fruit for this grand and gripping picture.
When a movie repeats its events through fresh eyes, answers usually follow. But as Hirokazu Kore-eda opts for the Rashomon effect in Monster, using a technique that fellow great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa deployed with one of his famous features, the director that won the Palme d'Or for 2018's Shoplifters refuses to stop asking questions. In this picture, which picked up the Queer Palm at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival — and again sees Kore-eda collaborate with Kazuko Kurosawa (The Third Murder), daughter of Akira, as its costume designer — layers keep mounting. There's no shortage of cinema that stresses how there's never merely one set of peepers to peer through, but in this masterful and moving addition to that realm, from one of the best at conveying empathy that film as a medium benefits from today, each pass in search of the full story builds a case not just for filtering the world through more than what's easy and reactive, but through acceptance and understanding. Kore-eda knows this: that perspectives, just like perceptions, can be misleading, blinkered and blinded. So when rumour proclaims that a new teacher frequents hostess bars, when a boy has tales of being called names by the same educator, when said man points the finger at the kid as a bully to one of his classmates instead and when the two children at the centre of the situation are friends with a cherished bond, a clearcut view is in short supply. This is the first movie since 1995's Maborosi that the filmmaker has only helmed and not also written, but Yûji Sakamoto's (In Love and Deep Water) Cannes Best Screenplay-winning script is a classic entry on the director's resume. Monster is also Kore-eda's homecoming, after making his post-Shoplifters films until now elsewhere — 2019's The Truth in France, then 2022's Broker in South Korea — and it's a stellar return. A blazing building starts the storytelling. Later, monsoonal rain will pour from the heavens. How emotions can go up in flames, burn bright, resemble a deluge, and wash away hurt and uncertainty is seared into Monster's patient frames, then — and with cinematographer Ryûto Kondô (also Shoplifters) doing the lensing, the feature is both alight and saturated with telling imagery. Kore-eda's knack for compassion has always floated through his visuals, in wordless moments where locked eyes say everything and in the way that he bears witness to his characters. Among his unforgettable sights here are the faces of fifth graders Minato (Sōya Kurokawa, Teasing Master Takagi-san) and Yori (Hinata Hiiragi, The Last Man: The Blind Profiler) together, sometimes muddied, sometimes exuberant, often glowing with the kind of being-seen connection that the pair can only find in each other. When the inferno rages at the nightclub where Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama, Migawari Mission) is reportedly a patron, Minato and his widowed mother Saori (Sakura Andô, Godzilla Minus One, and another Shoplifters alum) can spy the orange bursts from their apartment balcony. It isn't the only thing catching her attention of late; her son's behaviour has switched from gentle and shy to withdrawn, and at one point he leaps from her car as she's driving. He sports bruises and injuries. Sometimes, he doesn't return from class. He asks what type of creature — monster, even — someone would be if they were human but with a pig's brain. Saori heads to Minato's school to ascertain what's occurring, deeming Hori responsible. But all that she receives is a throwaway apology with bows, including from the distracted principal Fushimi (Yûko Tanaka, Thousand and One Nights), that only makes her angrier. As edited by Kore-eda himself, as usual, Monster then jumps back to Hori's take — although this isn't a film structured by different vantages in overt ways, such as point-of-view shots, but rather one that steps into the life of a new character or characters with each of its trio of runs through the narrative. Amid an unpacking of Japanese propriety's fondness for not making a fuss, and also a dive into the teacher's out-of-hours life, Hori thinks that he's being made a scapegoat. He's also convinced that Minato is picking on Yori. Then, once that vision has played through, it's time to rewind again into the latter duo's bond as fellow outsiders in their regional lakeside town. With Yori's father Kiyotaka (Shidô Nakamura, Kenshiro ni Yoroshiku) an abusive drunk who has no time for his boy's sensitivity, the two friends regularly abscond to an abandoned train tunnel in the mountainous forest. An escape and a refuge, it feels like a new world for them — and a safe place to cocoon in their chaste pre-teen relationship. Delicate and tender, the yearning score by Ryuichi Sakamoto — his last for a feature, apart from for concert film Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus — embodies Monster from its first moment to its last. From Kore-eda, who is incapable of not telling richly touching and heartfelt tales (see also: Still Walking, I Wish, Like Father, Like Son and Our Little Sister, to name just a few others), that's hardly surprising, and neither is the complexity and immediacy that shimmers through the movie's scenario and characters. He knows struggling souls, and lonely ones. He knows the intricacy that swells within everyone. He knows fractured and makeshift family dynamics just as deftly. Using reverse angles when flitting from Saori to Hori's perspective, and also to Minato and Yori's, he knows how to make plain that we are all affixed to our own views. He's also well-aware that seeing a monster is heartbreakingly simple when that's exactly what you're looking for. Sublime performances equally belong on the list of things that Kore-eda has an expert and exquisite grasp on. It was true in his recent foray into TV with miniseries The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (also excellent), too: his penchant for naturalism is unparalleled in its sincerity. In Monster, Andô is a portrait of nuance even as Saori is furious and devastatingly exasperated. Nagayama turns in a candid portrayal as Hori, and Tanaka simmers with scene-stealing tension through Fushimi's formality. And from Kurokawa and Hiiragi, Kore-eda gets both calm and earnestness from a pair playing misunderstood kids with everything that they have, as well as a new round of marvellous work by child actors for his ever-magnificent filmography.
Move over New York — it's time for New South Wales to be overrun by a simian civilisation. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes doesn't swap the Statue of Liberty for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Rather, it was just made in Australia; this franchise is long past needing to anchor itself in a specific location, but America's west coast is the in-narrative setting. No it-was-earth-all-along twists are necessary, either, as France's famous gift to the US signalled back in 1968 when Pierre Boulle's novel La Planète des singes initially made it to the screen. More than half a century later — plus four sequels to the OG Planet of the Apes, both live-action and animated TV shows, Tim Burton's (Wednesday) remake and the reboot flicks that started with 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes — the saga's basics are widely known in pop culture. The titular planet is humanity's own. In this vision of the future, a different kind of primate runs the show. Since day one, every Planet of the Apes tale has been a mirror. Gazing into the science-fiction series means seeing the power structures and societal struggles of our reality staring back — discrimination, authoritarianism and even the impact of a world-ravaging virus should ring a bell— but with humans no longer atop the pecking order. These are allegorical stories and, at their best, thoughtful ones, probing the responsibilities of being the planet's dominant force and the ramifications of taking that mantle for granted. Not every instalment has handled the task as well as it should've, but those that do leave a paw print. Coming after not just Rise of the Planet of the Apes but also 2014's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and 2017's War for the Planet of the Apes, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes falls into that category. First helmed by Rupert Wyatt (The Gambler), with Matt Reeves (The Batman) taking over for the second two titles, the most-recent Apes trilogy had Caesar (Andy Serkis, Andor) at its centre. Raised by humans before the simian flu devastated the population and evolved apekind, he spearheaded the latter's uprising. That said, Caesar also retained his compassion for homo sapiens, especially as he gleaned how the worst traits in all primates are the same no matter what they're covered in. His time has now been and gone in the franchise. Swapping from one dystopian saga to another, The Maze Runner, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and The Maze Runner: Death Cure director Wes Ball picks up briefly with a farewell to Caesar — but then, for the bulk of the picture, he takes Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes forward through many generations and several hundred years. The influential figure's name is now revered, and his wisdom — but, like humans, apes mould the plights and teachings of historical leaders to suit their own agendas. To some, Caesar is the reason to treat people, or "echoes" as they've been dubbed after losing the ability to speak, with kindness, understanding what the species once was and how it has fallen. For others, particularly of the power-hungry variety, he's the justification for retaining control of the planet by violence and at all costs. But in the peaceful eagle clan, birds not long-ago commanders are the main focus. So, when adolescent Noa (Owen Teague, You Hurt My Feelings), his crush Soona (Cowboy Bebop) and pal Anaya (Travis Jeffery, Before Dawn) leap into the story early, they're collecting eggs to take home, nurture and then rear the hatchlings, one of their community's rites of passage. In a narrative penned by Josh Friedman (Foundation) that nods eagerly to classic westerns, the pursuit of dominance at its most vicious at the hands of a warrior tribe taints young Noa's life quickly. Soon, everything that he knows is gone, sparking a hero's journey to rescue those among his loved ones that he can. When he crosses paths with orang-utan sage Raka (Peter Macon, The Orvill), he receives guidance, including about Caesar's pleas for ape unity. He's also counselled to tamper down his anger at and disdain for the feral human (Freya Allan, Baghead) shadowing his tracks, who he partly blames for his status quo turning to tragedy. Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand, Abigail), the ruler directing a monkey regime of carnage, only has eyes for as much authority and supremacy as he can amass — and so in him, the encampment that he's made where apes enslave apes and his staunchly anti-human ideology, Noa finds a threat. Decades since dressing up actors in costumes to play the series' apes was the norm, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes doesn't just have thematic and emotional realism on its side — it's never been hard to spot the franchise's parallels with reality — but also the verisimilitude gifted by its motion-capture approach (with Wētā FX doing the honours). That's how Serkis inhabited his part, and how Teague and company (everyone except Allan and Ricky Stanicky's William H Macy from the top-billed cast, in fact) follow in his footsteps. Serkis was a special consultant on the production, aiding the actors with their simian performances; the feelings conveyed through their work as a result are deep and affecting. Whether Teague is charting Noa's coming-of-age arc away from blissful naivety, the scene-stealing Macon is making Raka's appeal for empathy resonate or Durand is commanding every second that he's in sight as the hubristic Proximus, their portrayals are rich and insightful. Yes, you could call the performances that drive Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' "human". Painted with pixels over the top, the film's digital fur looks so vivid that audiences can be forgiven for thinking they can touch it — and that combination of naturalistic, grounded and relatable portrayals with special effects that get viewers investing in the movie's animals as animals is potent and pivotal. In a saga that's always been committed to aping the state of the off-screen world, that reflective effect is essential. Ball and his team, cinematographer Gyula Pados (Shazam! Fury of the Gods, plus the last two Maze Runner flicks) among them, also do detail and world-building well, rendering the planet a mix of lush greenery and decaying human relics that equally appears as authentic as CGI can. Their biggest struggle: that there's so much to explore in this new Planet of the Apes beginning that not everything is told as gracefully and clearly as it could be, even across 145 minutes. As with almost everything that hits screens of late, this has been conceived as the catalyst for more to come — and it earns the enthusiasm to keep swinging.
Break out the waffles: Amy Poehler is coming to Australia. If you're a Parks and Recreation fan, nothing less than eating breakfast foods non-stop between now and the end of May will do to celebrate. The actor behind Leslie Knope — and Saturday Night Live legend, and voice of Joy in both Inside Out and Inside Out 2 — has a date with Vivid Sydney, heading to the Harbour City for an in-conversation event that'll see her chat through her career. Inside Out 2 releases in cinemas in mid-June, so it'll receive plenty of focus when Poehler gets talking — so much so that the Sydney Opera House evening that'll be moderated by Zan Rowe will include a 30-minute first-look at the film. But her work spans far and wide beyond the animated Pixar franchise, including to films such as Baby Mama and Sisters, writing the hilarious Yes Please and unforgettable Golden Globe hosting gigs with Tina Fey. [caption id="attachment_793108" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC[/caption] Poehler's session will take place on Monday, May 27, making it one of the early highlights of the festival. It comes after 2023's Vivid Sydney also featured a massive screen-focused in-conversation session, welcoming The White Lotus' Jennifer Coolidge and Mike White.
Michael Mann makes movies like a man haunted. From his 1981 debut Thief to his latest release Ferrari, it's no wonder that his films linger with viewers. Mann's work whirrs with the pursuit of professional greatness, and with the pressures of balancing that relentlessly revving chase with personal ties and desires — quests and woes that aren't his own in his narratives, but always feel intimate. Heat, 1995's Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)- and Al Pacino (Hunters)-led crime-thriller that the filmmaker will forever be known for, has proven a spectacular example for nearly three decades. While the skilled burglar and dogged detective caught in its cat-and-mouse game are both experts in their realms, that doesn't make juggling their on-the-job and at-home realities any easier, cleaner or less chaotic. Using that very notion as its road, Ferrari is clearly the product of the same director. Perhaps Mann is speeding down that exact path after all, then, navigating the complexities of getting a film onto screens — his last was 2015's underseen Blackhat — on a mission to master his favourite themes. Mann has helmed several model features already in Thief, Heat, The Insider and Collateral, with Ferrari a worthy addition to his resume. Wheels spin on and off the track in the elegantly and exquisitely crafted slice-of-life biopic, many literally but others via its namesake's personal life. Based on Brock Yates' book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine, as adapted by screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin (the OG The Italian Job) to cover events in the summer of 1957 only, Ferrari is always hurtling — even when it's as patient as cinema in Mann's hands has ever been. The collision between single-minded goals and the messiness of existing constantly gives his pictures urgency, no matter how steady the gaze and stoic the character. And make no mistake, Adam Driver's (65) gravitas-dripping portrayal of race car driver-turned-sports car entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari (and Italian-accented but speaking in English, just as he did in House of Gucci) is as serious and determined as Mann's protagonists get, too. Sometimes with editor Pietro Scalia (an Academy Award-winner for JFK and Black Hawk Down) crosscutting frenetically like the film is shifting gears up and down, sometimes going for a lengthy drive in Enzo's business exploits and his home affairs separately, Ferrari tracks its protagonist's mission to save his company through racing glory in tandem with steering into his relationships with two women. Duality, a regular Mann obsession, slicks the flick like engine grease; there's two purposes to his car manufacturing, those two loves and two sons, for starters. "Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space at the same moment in time," Enzo explains, but the clashes and contrasts that surround him are hardly as clearcut as physics. Take his approach to death, for instance: over the loss of his son and heir Dino by wife Laura (Penélope Cruz, Official Competition), he seeps heartbreak like he's losing brake fluid, but the idea of tragedy befalling his drivers garners a matter-of-fact reaction, plus a speech about the life-or-death and at-all-costs commitment that his chosen sport requires — and he demands. In the world of Ferrari as a car outfit, financial struggles have both Enzo and Laura — partners in the business as well as in marriage, albeit barely hanging on in the latter — assessing options to keep their Modena factory running. Royalty might covet their vehicles, but Enzo's passion for his racing fleet is as expensive as it is dangerous. "Jaguar races to sell cars. I sell cars in order to race," is his frank description of Ferrari's manufacturing split. Bringing in outside cash from Ford or Fiat is proposed, enabling the company to increase production on its retail vehicles. The picture's choice of year also puts the last Mille Miglia in front of its windscreen, with victory in the twisty race on Italy's public streets — ideally with one of Enzo's drivers (which include River of Desire's Gabriel Leone, Lady Chatterley's Lover's Jack O'Connell and Thanksgiving's Patrick Dempsey) triumphing over Maserati — likely to help Ferrari continue vrooming. 1957 is also when Enzo's second son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese, Santa Lucia) by his mistress Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley, Dumb Money) is to be confirmed. Installed in a house outside of town, his other family remains a secret from Laura; however, as Lina angles for Enzo to let Piero take his surname and Laura frays with mourning, already well-aware that her husband isn't faithful, there's as much tension there as whenever someone has a car zipping and zooming. As Ferrari flings together melodrama and racing thrills, neither gives the audience an emotional or psychological reprieve. Mann doesn't just want to put his viewers in the film's array of driver's seats, but in a state where there's no escape from the stress — to stay solvent, to win, to avoid tearing Enzo's romances apart and inflicting more pain, and to secure his legacy. Mann obviously didn't choose Ferrari's pair of biggest stars based on their appropriate names. And Driver wasn't picked for his penchant for living up to that moniker (see: his stint as a poetry-writing bus driver in Paterson, then his time commanding spaceships in the Star Wars sequel trilogy and 65), either. Still, they're sublimely cast. Not just thanks to his silver locks but due to the intensity of his presence, Driver easily passes for a man who's a year off 60 — so, almost 20 years past the actor's own age — while wearing Enzo's iciness like armour, yet still letting his charisma peek through with Lina and Piero. Despite having a supporting part, Cruz has rarely been better than as the achingly furious and piercingly grief-stricken woman who refuses to let her contributions to the Ferrari name and Enzo's fame, and everything their nuptials and son represented, be pushed into the backseat. Given the Spanish talent's career (her Oscar for Vicky Christina Barcelona, nominations that should've been wins for Parallel Mothers and Volver, and her exceptional work in Pain and Glory, All About My Mother and Jamón Jamón as well), that's no minor feat. Ferrari's immaculate central portrayals are just two of the movie's pistons; Mann's meticulous efforts behind the lens, and at the top of his game again, is merely a third. It'll come as zero surprise to anyone familiar with his filmography that everything is that finely tuned, from the light and shadows imparted by cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (The Killer, and Oscar-anointed for Mank) to Daniel Pemberton's (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) note-perfect score. And when Ferrari gets racing, especially in its centrepiece stretch that stuns and shatters, the heart pumps, nerves are shredded and little else in depicting racing in cinema compares. The only roadblock: the feeling that Mann could've told more of this tale, and about his latest unswerving but divided man, although wanting more of his work simply comes with watching it.
All of the kitchen staples, none of the excessive packaging: that's what's on offer at Mount Zero Olives' returning Zero Waste Warehouse Market. MZO is teaming up with a stack of small businesses for another event dedicated to encouraging sustainable consumption, where you can shop a range of products without unnecessary plastic. Plus, for the extra-organised shoppers among you, there'll be lots of products available to buy in bulk. It's all going down from 9am–2pm on Saturday, November 18, at MZO's Sunshine West HQ. As the name suggests, you'll need to bring your own reusable containers with you to carry your haul. Bags, bottles, jars, buckets with lids — if you can put food in it, seal it and take it all home with you, it counts. Here's what you'll be buying and stuffing into those containers: Mount Zero Olives' olives, of course, plus olive oils, pulses and grains. You can also nab some of Koji & Co's miso and shio koji pastes, Wildlife Bakery's pastries and slow-fermented sourdough, a slew of plant-based fermented treats from Gaga's Gut Loving Ferments and ethical beans from Market Lane. The latter will be pouring complimentary filter coffee to caffeinate your morning's shopping adventures. As if that wasn't sweet enough, locally produced ice cream made with Mount Zero's olive oil will also be available to purchase, courtesy of Mars Gelato.
Edgar Wright's Don't and Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS must be on their way to the big screen soon. With Thanksgiving's arrival, three of the five films teased as trailers in 2007's Grindhouse — and at the time only conceived to exist as those faux trailers — have come to full-length feature fruition. So, the double of Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof didn't just give the world biochemical zombies and a murdering stuntman, but Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun and now Eli Roth's turkey-holiday slasher horror. In this first stint behind the lens since 2021 documentary Fin, plus 2018's vastly dissimilar Death Wish and The House with a Clock in Its Walls before that, the Cabin Fever and Hostel filmmaker knows the right mood: when you're plating up a film that began as a gag ad, leaning into both tropes and a knowing vibe is the best choice for carving a path forward. There's a downside to the joke beginning and happy winking now, though: Thanksgiving sure does love sticking to a tried-and-tested recipe. Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell, both returning from 16 years back and sharing a story credit, have taken to the whole "Halloween but Thanksgiving" approach with the utmost dedication — because it's as plain as a roasted bird centrepiece that that's what they've purposely cooked up. The mood, the nods, the derivation: they don't add up to a new masterpiece, however, genre-defining, cult or otherwise. But there's something to be said for a film that commits to its bit with this much relish, so bluntly and openly, and with the tongue-in-cheek attitude that was baked into the Grindhouse package slathered on thick. And yes, the image that no one has forgotten for almost two decades returns, alongside other signature shots from Thanksgiving's proof-of-concept sneak peek. As they splatter around gore, not gravy, plus guts that don't belong to poultry, Roth and Rendell have given themselves a task: reverse-engineering an entire feature from a spoof trailer that made fun not just of holiday horror flicks, but of Roth's part in torture porn's boom. They're also eager to ensure that their picture locks in its place on the occasion-centric viewing calendar. The raucous Thanksgiving slides in before Black Christmas and New Years' Evil, dates-wise, and joins a roster that also spans My Bloody Valentine and April Fools' Day. This slice of the scary-movie spectrum isn't small, both in general and with past Thanksgiving-themed fare — for the latter, see also: Blood Rage, Black Friday, Blood Freak, ThanksKilling and Boogeyman, and more — but, blatantly angling for sequels as well, Roth and Rendell don't just want to dish up one serving. Thanksgiving could go by Black Thursday, the shopping opportunity that's also been dubbed Grey Thursday and Brown Thursday, because that's when and why its carnage commences. The place is still Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the slasher who'll start offing teens still nabs disguise cues from pilgrims — wearing a John Carver mask specifically, which noticeably resembles not just Plymouth Colony's first governor but V for Vendetta's Guy Fawkes mask — but the 2022-set opening is all about a crushing trip to score bargains. At RightMart, the masses gather when it's traditionally dinnertime, demanding with increasing ferocity to be let inside. The shoving and shouting becomes a stampede after the crowd sees Jessica Wright (Nell Verlaque, Big Shot) and her friends enter early because it's her dad Thomas' (Rick Hoffman, Billions) store. For some, the results are fatal, whether via being caught underfoot, copping shards of glass or getting scalped by trolleys. In adding to the bowl while spooning in pieces from horror classics, Roth and Rendell take inspiration not just Halloween but from Dawn of the Dead — aka that shopping spree gone savage — as well as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. If Thanksgiving was a feast itself, it'd be everything from dark and light meat with cranberry sauce to sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie smashed together in a blender. Here's another mission on Roth's list: crafting killer setpieces and slayings, with the Black Thursday onslaught at the top of the heap. Not every death is inventive, but this movie and its director are all about the audience impact, with endeavouring to incite cheers, screams and laughs their stuffing and seasoning. That said, Thanksgiving is strongest when it's fresh out of the oven, then dutifully works through its recreated offings from the Grindhouse trailer and soon proves content with a stock-standard cat-and-mouse game. The bulk of the flick occurs a year following the RightMart riot, when Jessica and her fellow survivor pals Gabby (Addison Rae, He's All That), Evan (Tomaso Sanelli, Holly Hobbie), Scuba (Gabriel Davenport, Mistletoe Time Machine) and Yulia (Jenna Warren, The Young Arsonists) get tagged in a creepy social-media post. Then a diner employee turns up dead not long after waiting on them, a spree begins, and Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey, Disenchanted) and his colleagues aren't much help. Although biting into consumerism's worst impulses is on the menu, as is satirising the chase for viral fame in these always-posting times, the themes and plot aren't the main course. That status goes to upping the body count with bloodthirsty and grisly enthusiasm. The key thing to be thankful for here is that Thanksgiving's creative forces are patently having schlocky fun, including with their McDreamy casting, practical effects and some visual moments — and they don't ever stomach being subtle about it. Ditching the throwback look hasn't meant scrapping the 70s-esque tone or toning down the revelling in getting gruesome. There's a difference between appreciating how much enjoyment went into whipping up the movie and consistently having more than a by-the-numbers time with it, though. Excited chefs can still cook average meals with sprinklings of flavour, as Roth does. There's also one goal that Thanksgiving threw out with the bones: creating a picture that doesn't make viewers certain that they saw most of the best bits in that years-ago trailer.
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.
Forget taking ride shares and public transport this weekend. Instead, zip between the CBD and South Melbourne within a decked-out supercar thanks to Jack Daniels and the McLaren F1 Racing Team. From Friday, March 22–Sunday, March 24, rev heads (or anyone who just wants a free ride down south) can head to Next Hotel on Little Collins Street to nab some of the available slots. McLaren rides can be booked from 12pm, and it's a first come, first served kind of situation — so be sure to get down a little early if you want to up your chances of getting a lift. Throughout the day, two supercars will be driving together, and each passenger will get a headset so they can chat with their mate in the other car throughout the drive. It's a rare occasion to be chauffeured in a car this luxe, so make sure to soak it all in while you venture down to the Golden Gate Hotel. Once you arrive, you'll lift the car doors open and step out to get a free Jack Daniels cocktail. From there, either head to the F1, into the pub or spend the day roaming around South Melbourne at your own leisure. You don't have to be going to the Grand Prix to get this freebie. Up until 10:00pm each night, there'll also be the option to book a into the CBD – to either Good Heavens rooftop bar or The George on Collins. More JD cocktails will await you at each of these spots, helping with weekend kick-ons.
British and Mediterranean Easter traditions are well-known and celebrated all over Melbourne. You'll find hot cross buns at most supermarkets, bakeries and cafes. Greek Easter egg smashing is well-loved by many who aren't Greek Orthodox. And Italian Colomba is looking like it will soon be as famous as its sibling the panettone. But Brunswick East's Eat Pierogi Make Love is keen to teach Melburnians about Polish Easter festivities. And, of course, it's doing this through food. What better way is there to pique our curiosity than appealing to our appetite? Pop over to the Lygon Street restaurant on either Friday, March 29 or Saturday, March 30 to get a food-filled education. For $149, two people get a traditional Easter soup made with fermented rye flour, smoked meats, and marjoram; a sharing platter loaded with pickled herring, baked pork and beef pate; sausage and sauerkraut pierogis; plenty of bread for mopping up all the sauces and ferments; and a Polish cheesecake. Chef Ola Gladysz is known for her generous portions, but there's always the option to add more a la carte options during the night if you so wish. Our recommendation? As many pierogis as you can manage.
When Hollywood's biggest awards can run for 96 years and only give three female filmmakers its Best Director gong in that entire time so far, it's clear that gender diversity hasn't been big on the cinema industry's priorities for most of the last century. But for eight years now, the Melbourne Women in Film Festival has been doing its part to celebrate women in film, as its name makes plain — and it's back for 2024. Melbourne's movie lovers can head along to ACMI from Thursday, March 21–Monday, March 25. The lineup starts with opening night's WINHANGANHA, which is directed by Wiradjuri artist Jazz Money and dives into archives on First Nations people. From there, Kitty Green's outback-set The Royal Hotel is a blistering highlight, following two Americans in Australia who take a job tending bar at a remote pub. Or, thanks to Satranic Panic, get ready for a mix of underworld mania and conspiracies. Other screening options include documentary Carbon: the Unauthorised Biography, which is narrated by Australian Succession star Sarah Snook; closing night's Memory Film: A Filmmaker's Diary, with Jeni Thornley digging into her Super 8 archive that spans 1974–2003; and shorts programs that tour the world and unearth new talent. Among the talks and workshops lineup, equitable working conditions, how film is linked to the environment and the full lifecycle of cinema from development to distribution all earn sessions.
If summer screams ice cream to you, then there's only one way to start the season: indulging in your favourite frosty treat. That's great advice in general, but gelato chain Gelatissimo has an even better spin on it. Hit up one of its 48 stores around the country from 5pm until closing time and you'll nab $3 scoops. The date: Friday, December 1. The place: at all Melbourne Gelatissimo shops. The offer: creamy gelato for just a couple of gold coins, all to celebrate the official start of the warm weather and indulge in a dessert staple. The deal stacks, too, so you can get a double scoop for $6. Friday, December 1 also happens to be the day that Gelatissimo is releasing its latest limited-edition flavours, which you can try for just $3 a pop as well. Get ready for cookies and cream made with Milkybar, a mint version but made with KitKat and a blue take.
Giving music lovers Splendour in the Grass, Falls Festival, Spilt Milk and Harvest Rock is a massive task and achievement, but that's not all that's on Secret Sounds' festival calendar. This summer, the team is also bringing a lineup led by Flume, Foals and The Avalanches to Melbourne for Heaps Good. To get 2023 started in style, Adelaide scored a brand-new music fest in January, with Heaps Good starting as a one-day, one-city event with Arctic Monkeys headlining. It clearly went well, because Secret Sounds announced back in August that the festival will expand its footprint, taking to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl stage on Sunday, December 31, 2023. [caption id="attachment_918622" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Zac Bayly[/caption] Having Flume and The Avalanches on the same bill is quite the homegrown feat, with Britain's Foals joining them. Also playing Melbourne: Griff, Holly Humberstone, MAY-A, Sycco and Logan. Heaps Good's Victorian stop will score a Basement Jaxx DJ set as well, and SBTRKT is also on the lineup. [caption id="attachment_912808" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dylan Minchenberg[/caption] HEAPS GOOD 2023–24 LINEUP: Flume Foals The Avalanches Griff Holly Humberstone MAY-A Sycco Logan Basement Jaxx SBTRKT Top image: Ian Laidlaw.
There is no better feeling than a crisp sip of cold beer on a late spring afternoon. Pair that with a bite of some of Melbourne's finest eats and you've got yourself a recipe for a good time. And in good news for pretty much everyone, Molly Rose has taken this feeling and turned it into a brand new festival. On Sunday, November 12, the brewery's sprawling beer garden in Collingwood will host a curated lineup of founder and brewer Nic Sandery's top brewery buds from around Victoria and Australia. Here's the best part: each brewery is pairing up with chefs and restaurants to concoct the ultimate beer-food pairing. So, whether it's a tangy brew from Range Brewing met with a spicy bite of a Ca Com banh mi, a sip from Black Arts Brewers and Blenders paired with a sweet treat from T.Cavallaro & Sons Pasticceria, or a dreamy southern Tasmanian combo of Bruny Island Beer Co and Bruny Island Cheese Co, your tastebuds are in for a wild ride. Now, the festival isn't just about indulgence. It's also about treating our home planet right. Thanks to a partnership with Plumm glassware, attendees will swig brews from special festival glasses. At the end, you can either buy the glass for $15 or return it for reuse next year. There's more. Festival tees made by The Common Good Company can only be preordered, which means no more forgotten or unwanted 'free' tees turning into wardrobe waste. Punters can choose from a day session running from 11am–3pm, or a twilight session, running from 3pm–8pm. Tickets will set you back $130, and will include two 150-millilitre beers from six different brewers, along with a food pairing for each. And if you're itching to delve deeper into the beer-food pairing universe, Molly Rose and The Crafty Pint are hosting a masterclass lunch the day before the festival, on Saturday, November 11. Seats cost $150 and are limited, but the experience promises to be unlimitedly delicious.
After six months of filling the bellies of those in the know with delicious Italian-inspired snacks, Freddy's Pizza's sizzling residency at Young Hearts is drawing to a close. And the only way to send off such an ace collab? A rager of a farewell party, of course. Scheduled for Saturday, September 23 — starting at 2pm sharp — this bash is set to be the ultimate see ya later to what's been a stunning run. Think: a nostalgic last school dance, only replace the awkward dancing with limoncello shots and pizzas. Speaking of which, upon arrival, the Young Hearts foyer will welcome guests with a Tommy's Booze pop-up tasting so you can start the evening with a smooth limoncello shot and a fun polaroid snap. The party vibes will be looked after with DJs and a smorgasbord of Freddy's favourites, from cacio e pepe croquettes to chicken cotoletta and, of course, the beloved eggplant sandos. Whether you've been a long-time fan or it's your first time, head down to Young Hearts to say arrivederci Freddy's in style. Entry is free, but you'll need your wallet to enjoy a bite and a drink after the first limoncello shot.
Calling all wine lovers (so basically, everyone). A new event is coming to Collingwood giving you the chance to sample some of the best wines Yarra Valley has to offer, all for free. Into The Valley is a collaboration between the Yarra Valley Smaller Wineries Association and Collingwood's zero-waste cafe Into Coffee. It will take place every Thursday night for three weeks from September 21 and will star wine from 14 of the Yarra Valley's best boutique wineries. Each night will have two tasting slots, 6–7pm and 7–8pm, and will be capped at 50 people, so bookings are essential. And, while the wine tastings are free, plenty of bottles will be available to purchase directly if you happen to find a drop you simply must take home. You'll have the chance to meet the winemakers, learn about their wines and taste some truly unique drops — all while enjoying the company of other Melbourne wine enthusiasts. If you've been hanging to head to the Yarra Valley, or been meaning to expand your palate, this might just be what you've been praying for. With hundreds of wines on offer — from the classics to the boundary-pushing — you might just find your new favourite vino. Hey, you might just find your soulmate. At the very least, you'll find the perfect place to relax and enjoy a glass of wine with friends on a lovely Thursday night in spring.
This Christmas, all you need is love — plus a festive little cabaret that showcases all of the hit tunes from Love Actually. It's the way to celebrate the season when you're not just leaving the seasonal favourite flick on repeat at home. Yep, that's Christmas Actually. Created by the folks behind Rumour Has It and Lady Beatle, Christmas Actually features all of the tracks that've become synonymous with this merry time of year — including Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas Is You', naturally. Songs by Joni Mitchell, Norah Jones, Eva Cassidy, The Beach Boys and The Beatles are all on the bill as well. Belting them out: Libby O'Donovan, Joshua Robson, Stefanie Jones, JD Smith, Stephen Ward, Craig Newman, Ben Kiehne and Fab Omodi. There'll even be more than one nativity lobster, plus a jolly mood and a whole room full of festive cheer. In Melbourne, that room is The Round, where Christmas Actually plays its 2023 season from Friday, December 15–Saturday, December 16. Get excited by revisiting Love Actually's trailer below. 'Tis the season, after all. Top image: Katy Bedford.
If you like music and you like trivia, TV shows such as Spicks and Specks and Never Mind the Buzzcocks likely sit high on your favourites list, with both combining tunes, musicians and questions about them. But in Melbourne on Thursday, November 2, you don't have to confine your music trivia fix to staring at a screen. One of Brisbane's most reliably entertaining evenings out returns to Victoria in the form of Not On Your Rider, the IRL quiz show that's also filled with well-known faces — but staged live, with attendees invited not only to watch but to also play along. This pop-culture delight has been doing the rounds in Queensland for a few years now — and testing its contestants via rounds of questions — and it's making its second trip down south for 2023. For one night only, Melburnians can show off their skills at Brunswick Ballroom. If you're not already acquainted with Not On Your Rider, it takes something that everyone loves, aka flaunting their music trivia knowledge, and dials it up a few notches. Here's how it works: the event is hosted by The Creases' Aimon Clark, and will feature The Grates' Patience Hodgson as a team captain. Also, while the two on-stage teams are always filled with musos, comedians, drag queens and other guests, anyone can buy a ticket, sit at a table and answer questions along with them. This Melbourne go-around's big-name guests: DJ Dooris from The Jungle Giants, Johnny Took from DMA's, Hayley Mary from The Jezabels, Aunty Donna's Mark Samual Bonanno, and comedians Josh Earl and Michelle Brasier. And as for the quiz itself, it's accompanied by chats about the music industry, plus other mini games involving attendees.
There's no shortage of ways to celebrate Halloween, whether scary movies, eerie art, a trick-or-treating stint, playing with Lego or themed mini golf is your thing. Here's a particularly tasty one: getting dressed up in costume and scoring a free Krispy Kreme doughnut. The chain is known for giving away its round treats, including handing out 100,000 of them each National Doughnut Day. For Tuesday, October 31, it isn't locking in an exact number of doughnuts that'll be on offer — but it will give one to everyone who turns up to a Krispy Kreme store dressed for the occasion. If that isn't an excuse to don your spookiest outfit, then what is? To snag yourself a signature glazed freebie, head to your closest Krispy Kreme store in Melbourne — there's nine locations from Chadstone to Collins Street — on Tuesday, October 31 while wearing a Halloween-appropriate costume. You'll receive one original glazed doughnut per person, and you don't have to buy anything else to nab the treat without paying a cent. Of course, Krispy Kreme is hoping that you will be possessed by the Halloween vibe while you're in-store — or beforehand — and treat yourself to something from its themed range. On offer until Tuesday, October 31: four different varieties.
Gather 'round science nerds and art freaks, for we bring you good news — your Friday nights just got a whole lot cooler thanks to Science Gallery Melbourne and its latest exhibition, Dark Matters. Beginning Friday, September 1, the gallery will host a monthly after-dark science party complete with DJs, musicians, drag stars, dancers, and more. The parties, aptly named Friday Night Socials, will be held on the first Friday of every month, and run until November. So mark your calendars and tag your mates because here's the best part — it's all free. Science, art, live music, and free stuff — what could be better? The first of the bunch will be an interstellar odyssey that invites guests to explore the universe through performance art and live music. Headlining the evening will be a special collaboration between Now or Never festival and Liquid Architecture to present a special performance by Indonesian vocal performer Rully Shabara and collaborators. The evening will also feature live performances from DJ Kalyani, Abby Sundborn, and Bendy Ben. But that's not all, as guests can look forward to additional spectacles including installations from Melbourne Uni students and a special appearance from Dark Matters artists Lawrence Leung, Dom Chambers and Vyom Sharma, who will be showcasing their "Mystery Box" illusionist act. Friday, October 6 will see students from the Victorian College of the Arts take over the gallery with a magical array of sonic and performance interventions. While Friday, November 3 will see Melbourne Science Gallery play host to a special night of music and performance art that invites guests to "traverse through the human soul and outer space to contemplate the sheer scale of the universe and how much of our own lives (floating alone in space on this tiny blue planet) remains a mystery to us". Expect "soaring vocal performances, intergalactic records, abject horror and ethereal sounds" as Science Gallery Melbourne mixes "fear and wonder" to create an existential experience not to be missed. Beats small talk at the pub if you ask us. Each Friday Night Social event will run from 6pm to 9pm. Images: Supplied.
