We are all well acquainted with the fascinating leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. Shrouded in mystery, marvelously eccentric and either architecturally amazing or atrocious, leaning towers and buildings are simply fascinating structures, which arouse our amazement and curiosity. However, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is far from being the only leaning tower in the world; in fact, it doesn't even top the list for being the oldest, tallest or having the greatest lean. Here are ten of the most stunning, mystifying leaning buildings from around the world that will be sure to make you look at buildings from a new angle. Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi Granted the title of the world's furthest leaning man-made tower, the recently built Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi boasts of a whopping 35 stories, all leaning at an impressive 18-degree slant. This structural wonder is a 520-foot sleek and futuristic design which requires 49 piles drilled 100 feet into the Earth to maintain its integrity. Qianwei Leaning Tower, China In Huludao City in China's Liaoning Province lies the world's first leaning tower. Aside from it's rich historical background, the Qianwei leaning tower is believed by many to also have the largest lean in the world, yet it is not recognized by Guinness World Records. Leaning Tower of Barceloneta, Spain Situated on Barceloneta Beach in Spain, this iconic tower features four cubes stacked precariously on top of each other at varying angles. Scores of tourists and visitors flock to this beautiful part of the country, not only for the sun and sand, but also to take in the view of this unorthodox building. Leaning Tower of Teluk Intan, Malaysia The Leaning Tower of Teluk Intan, formerly known as just the water tower, is one of the major attractions of this small Malaysian town. Shortly after the construction of the tower the building began to tilt due to the stream of water running through the ground below, which made the foundation soil weak. Neuer Zollhof, Germany Part of the redeveloped port in Dusseldorf, this unconventional building was created by renowned architect Frank Gehry. The three buildings curve and lean in varying directions and are made of different cladding, whether that be white plaster, red brick or reflective stainless steel. Leaning Temple of Huma, India The only leaning temple in the world, the Temple of Huma was built in 1670 on the banks of the Mahanadi at an angle of 17 degrees, and is dedicated to the Lord Shiva. It is said that the construction of the temple came about due to enquiries made because of a milkman's daily ritual of crossing the Mahanadi and offering his milk to the rock which cropped out on the bank, and the rock would miraculously consume the milk each time. Tilting Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank, Italy This eco-friendly building is an architectural feat in its own right as, rather than using shading devices to protect the south-facing walls, the solar passive design instead uses its own floors with the 14 degree tilt. The office also features a myriad of sustainable building strategies to provide comfort and save energy. Leaning Tower of Nevyansk, Russia The mysteries surrounding this Russian tower work to make this ethereal building all the more stunning. No-one knows exactly what the tower/prison/science lab for secret experiments is actually for, when in the 18th century it was constructed, by whom, or the origins of its tilt. Although there are bizarre speculations including crying walls or throwing architects off the balcony, this one is better shrouded in mystery. Gate of Europe, Madrid The twin towers that make up the Gate of Europe are named as such for good reason. These foreboding structures, known as Puerta de Europa, lay at the top of a stone staircase and appear to barricade the city of Madrid. The 114m towers have 26 floors of office space and have fittingly appeared in a number of movies, such as The Day of the Beast. Leaning Tower of Suurhusen, Germany Before the Capital Gate was built in Abu Dhabi, this medieval steeple held the title of the most tilted tower in the world. Located in a village in North Western Germany, the 14th century church was built with oak tree trunk foundations, which rotted in the surrounding marshy land.
Time flies when you're obsessing over a big blockbuster fantasy TV series, as HBO's biggest hit of the past decade demonstrates. This April marks ten years since Game of Thrones first hit screens and became a pop culture phenomenon — broadening the world's awareness of George RR Martin's books, pointing out how often Sean Bean meets an untoward end on-screen and delivering more dragon-fuelled drama than anyone ever knew they needed. Keen to celebrate the occasion like you're in a Westerosi tavern? That's an option, all thanks to a new collaboration between Moon Dog Brewing and Warner Bros Consumer Products. The two have joined forces on a new line of GoT beers, so get ready to sip a Breaker of Chains imperial stout and a Watchers on the Wall imperial white ale. The former features chipotle chilli, vanilla and a chocolate finish, while the latter pairs white chocolate with orange and coriander. Winter might be coming, but these brews will be available this month — so, in autumn — with the Melbourne-based Moon Dog pouring them at its Abbotsford and Preston sites from Friday, April 16. The brewery is hosting a launch party in Abbotsford the day before, then dedicating the weekend of April 16–18 to all things GoT in Preston. An Iron Throne will also be onsite, because clearly Moon Dog couldn't pass up the opportunity to let folks sit on one of the most famous chairs there is. [caption id="attachment_744585" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Moon Dog World, Kate Shanasy[/caption] Lovers of both beer and G0T elsewhere in the country won't miss out on the brews, however, with the two beverages available via the brewery's online store and at craft beer retailers nationwide from Monday, April 19. If you decide to keep some in the fridge so that you can drink it when winter arrives, that's perfectly understandable. And if you're just excited about getting another chance to show your affection for the huge hit series — while you're waiting for the just-announced GOT stage production, and the many TV spinoffs and prequels in the works — that is, too. Moon Dog Brewing's Breaker of Chains and Watchers on the Wall beers will be available from its Melbourne venues from Friday, April 16, and online and in craft beer retailers nationwide from Monday, April 19.
Making a winter date with Dark Mofo always feels like crawling into another world — and, based on the Tasmanian festival's programs over the years, that's the active aim. The Apple Isle's moody and brooding music and arts event takes its cues from its host and organisers, the Museum of Old and New Art, of course, which results in a lineup filled with the surreal, strange, sublime and surprising. In a 2022 bill that includes everything from rainbows to the Chernobyl score played live in an immersive industrial setting, that trend is naturally set to continue. After announcing the first highlights for this year's fest back in March — and revealing that it'll run over two weeks as well — Dark Mofo has dropped its full 2022 program. If a trip south between Wednesday, June 8–Wednesday, June 22 wasn't already on your agenda, it should be now. All up, Dark Mofo 2022 will feature more than 100 artists from 30 countries, and span everything from acclaimed local names hitting the stage to a life-sized doll house that attendees can wander through, all to celebrate the theme 'resurrection'. [caption id="attachment_849626" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Lingua Ignota video still, courtesy of the artist and Dark Mofo, Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] First, the tunes. The Kid LAROI, Japanese cult-favourites Boris and English indie muso Baxter Dury will be doing their thing on the fest's first weekend — with the latter intriguingly described as "comedown disco". Then, the following week, Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle join the bill, as do the return of Hymns to the Dead, Swiss metal band Triptykon doing an Aussie exclusive show, Perfume Genius, and four-day experimental and electronic music microfestival Borderlands. Yes, there's truly something here for everyone. Two big music highlights spring from the realm of film and television: live performances of the scores to 2021's excellent new Candyman and 2019's haunting HBO miniseries Chernobyl. With the first, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe will be playing the sounds that helped make the movie so unnerving. At the second, Emmy-winner Hildur Guðnadóttir (also an Oscar-winner for her Joker score) will team up with Chris Watson and Sam Slater, and all proceeds from the show will be donated to Voices of Children to help Ukrainian children and families. All of the above joins the previously announced Kim Gordon, who'll bust out songs from her 2019 solo release No Home Record, plus Berlin-based composer and producer Nils Frahm playing Music For Hobart. And, Spiritualized, Deafheaven and American multi-instrumentalist Lingua Ignota are already on the lineup, too. [caption id="attachment_849627" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Sabio / Dark Mofo. Image courtesy of the artist and Dark Mofo, Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] That's your ears well and truly taken care of — but Dark Mofo's visual lineup is just as impressive. Lovers of engaging art will want to check out Japanese Australian artist Hiromi Tango's Rainbow Dream: Moon Rainbow, which will feature a healing colour palette to put viewers in a joyous mood. Also a must-see is Hobart-based Sabio's Holy Mother of God: Emergency Doll House, which'll use projection mapping, sculpture and animation to turn a three-storey building into a carnival-style trip through the subconscious. Jónsi from Sigur Rós is on the bill as well, thanks to a multi-channel immersive experience inspired by the recent eruption of Iceland's Fagradalsfjall volcano. And, so is Anger, a performance dedicated to Kenneth Anger's life and work in occult cinema. And, as revealed last month, there'll be pieces by new video media artist Bill Viola and multi-channel video artist Doug Aitken — plus exhibitions focusing on Jeremy Shaw, Fiona Hall and AJ King, and Robert Andrew, which'll all launch at a music, fire and art-filled Mona Up Late shindig. [caption id="attachment_849628" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The Blue Rose Ball. Photo Credit: Dark Mofo/Jesse Hunniford, 2018. Image of Société Anonyme Costume Ball Hadley's Orient Hotel. Image courtesy: Dark Mofo, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] Throw in a heap of Dark Mofo's signature festivities — such as the return of The Blue Rose Ball and its costumed debauchery, the Nude Solstice Swim (because it wouldn't be Dark Mofo without it), the City of Hobart Winter Feast on the waterfront, Night Mass: Transcendence in the In The Hanging Garden precinct and the Reclamation Walk — and yes, this is a huge program. Also popping up again is Memorial, too, which sees people provide the ashes of their loved ones to be placed inside a handcrafted firework that then explodes for everyone to watch. Dark Mofo will run from Wednesday, June 8–Wednesday, June 22 in Hobart, Tasmania. For more information or to buy tickets — with subscriber tix on-sale at 10am on Monday, April 11 and general tix at 12pm on Monday, April 11 — head to the festival website. Top images: Winter Feast, Dark Mofo 2021. Dark Mofo/Jesse Hunniford, 2021. // 3.2, 404.zero, Dark Downtown, Dark Mofo 2021. Dark Mofo/Remi Chauvin, 2021 // Courtesy: Dark Mofo, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
Bluesfest has done it again. The annual event up in Byron Bay looks to have another stellar lineup on its hands, featuring artists from around the world across a diverse range of genres. There's truly something for everyone but if you're unable to schlep up the coast for the Easter weekend then there's no need to fret. Some of the biggest names on the bill are making the most of their trip Down Under by putting on gigs in Sydney and Melbourne, too, meaning April promises to be a bumper live music month across the country. With over 19 artists set to do sideshows this year, we've teamed up with Bluesfest Touring to help you decide what not to miss. Read on to discover seven sideshows that you should nab tickets to, then check out the rest of the sideshow lineup — Buffy Sainte-Marie, John Mayall, The Marcus King Band, Walter Trout, The War & Treaty, The Allman Betts Band, Amadou & Mariam, Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles and Tal Wilkenfeld — on the Bluesfest website. DWEEZIL ZAPPA Sunday, April 12 at Enmore Theatre, Sydney and Monday, April 13 at The Croxton Bandroom, Melbourne Since 2006, Dweezil Zappa has been the driving force behind the touring band whose main aim is to breathe life into the work of his father — avant-garde virtuoso Frank Zappa. Hot Rats, Frank Zappa's 1969 jazz-progressive rock-fusion album, is arguably his best-known work, and Dweezil Zappa is honouring his legacy by touring the record in its entirety. Hot Rats hit the shelves the same year that Zappa was born, so it holds a special place in his heart, and he's said that this is the best version of his touring band that he's ever had. Given previous iterations of his group are Grammy winners, that's some claim. PATTI SMITH AND HER BAND Wednesday, April 15 and Thursday, April 16 at Enmore Theatre, Sydney and Tuesday, April 21–Thursday, April 23 at Forum Melbourne, Melbourne "I really thought that I wouldn't be able to come back, so I'm delighted that I was wrong," Patti Smith told Bluesfest Touring on her impending return to these shores. Smith — poet, author, singer, icon and 'godmother of punk' — has been an inspiration to millions since the release of her debut classic album Horses in 1975 and, despite now being in her 70s, shows no signs of slowing down. Her touring band includes both Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, who have been with her since day dot, plus her son Jackson on guitar. EAGLES OF DEATH METAL Thursday, April 16 at Metro Theatre, Sydney and Sunday, April 19 at The Croxton Bandroom, Melbourne Californian singer-songwriter Jesse Hughes and Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme have been recording as Eagles of Death Metal since 1998. The name comes from a literal imagining of what country-rock stalwarts The Eagles would sound like were they a death metal band. In mid-2019, the band released a record of covers featuring classics from artists as diverse as Guns N' Roses, George Michael and Mary J Blige, all played in EODM's own inimitable style. Their live shows have always been known for their raucous, OTT behaviour, and their Bluesfest sideshow promises to be no different. LARKIN POE Wednesday, April 15 at The Factory Theatre, Sydney and Thursday, April 16 at Corner Hotel, Melbourne Sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell celebrate a decade of performing psychedelic blues rock under their Larkin Poe moniker in 2020. Originally hailing from Georgia but now based in Nashville, as any self-respecting Americana outfit would be, Larkin Poe's close harmony take on roots music has earned plaudits from the likes of Elvis Costello and Keith Urban. Oh, and Russell Crowe, apparently. Dragging blues rock into the 21st century, the duo isn't afraid to throw horns and electronics at a genre steeped in tradition and, in doing so, breathe life into it, while simultaneously creating something vibrant and exciting. Be sure to catch them as soon as Bluesfest draws to a close. MORCHEEBA Tuesday, April 7 at 170 Russell, Melbourne and Thursday, April 9 at Enmore Theatre, Sydney Next year marks quarter of a century of Morcheeba, the downtempo duo who were instrumental in bringing trip-hop to the masses in the 1990s. Led by the sweet vocals of Skye Edwards, the London-based band have released nine albums in their career, cracking the Top 20 twice at the start of the century. Morcheeba must love playing over here — they played Bluesfest and a bunch of sideshows back in 2018. Clearly, we love them playing here, too, because those sideshows completely sold out. If you want an evening of warm, enveloping sounds to set your mind at ease, nab tickets to the show in your city. BRANDI CARLILE Monday, April 6 at Hamer Hall, Melbourne and Wednesday, April 8 at Enmore Theatre, Sydney Alt-country vocalist Brandi Carlile is certainly an artist on the up. She was the most nominated woman at the 2019 Grammy Awards taking home three gongs, including Best Americana Album for her latest record, By the Way, I Forgive You. It's been over ten years since she played in Australia, and she's certainly a bigger draw now than she was then. She's also part of The Highwomen, the country supergroup that features Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris and Amanda Shires, so there's every chance that some tracks from their self-titled debut could also make their way into Carlile's set. [caption id="attachment_753622" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Austin Hargrave[/caption] GEORGE BENSON Sunday, April 5 at State Theatre, Sydney and Thursday, April 9 at Palais Theatre, Melbourne Perhaps best known for the 1980 soft disco hit album, Give Me the Night, soul man George Benson is still going strong after more than 65 years in the business. He can still command a crowd, too — he's had to add a second date to his Sydney and Melbourne sojourns to accommodate public demand. His most recent record, Walking to New Orleans, is a tribute to the music of Fats Domino and Chuck Berry, but surely Benson has now earned the right to be listed among such greats. After all, it's not just anyone who gets their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. To book tickets to these sideshows, and many more — including Buffy Sainte-Marie, John Mayall, The Marcus King Band, Walter Trout, The War & Treaty, The Allman Betts Band, Amadou & Mariam, Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles and Tal Wilkenfeld — visit the Bluesfest website.
Looking to bulk up your closet? Mark this date down in your diary. The Paddington Inn is hosting an exclusive fashion market that will feature clothing donated from some of Sydney's biggest fashion designers and bloggers. Some highlights include clothing from stylist Marina Afonina, designer Kym Ellery and Aje creative force Nadia Fairfax. Also on hand will be a floral pop-up stall with arrangements by the renowned My Violet. Whether you go with the intention of buying a whole new wardrobe or just to browse, you'll be entertained. The Paddington Inn's food and drink are available to shoppers, who can trawl the racks while listening to the tunes of DJs Valerie Yum and Lux Comms.
There are harbour views, and there are harbour views. And Solaré, the full-service restaurant, cocktail bar and Mediterranean-style beach club, boasts some serious harbour views — as one might expect, given that it's housed in a 150-foot classic superyacht which sets sail twice daily from King Street Wharf for long lunches, daybed lounging and sunset spritzes. The experience unfolds across three distinct levels. The Dining Room is a refined, sit-down restaurant built for leisurely progressions; the Terrace Deck lifts the tempo with share plates and cocktails; and the openair Sun Deck nails the beach-club brief with custom daybeds, a panoramic bar and uninterrupted skyline views. Designer Alex Zabotto-Bentley (AZB Creative) leans into 70s-tinged Mediterranean glamour — think sunflower yellows, burnt oranges, teak and green marble. [caption id="attachment_1042022" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jonny Valiant[/caption] In the kitchen, Executive Chef Pablo Tordesillas (Totti's Bondi; two-hatted Ortiga in Brisbane) teams up with Head Chef Nick Mathieson (Bistecca, Otto) on a coastal Italian menu with a seafood focus. The Dining Room runs as a set journey — begin with oscietra caviar over house potato crisps and cultured cream, then roll into snacks like a vinegar- and bottarga-dusted potato scallop with chives, plus deep-sea royal red prawns with finger lime and bisque mayo. Bigger moments include reginette with Moreton Bay bug, crustacean butter and chilli, and market fish with clams, saffron butter, fregola and spring veg. Tables can add a one-kilogram bistecca alla fiorentina as a supplement. Upstairs, the Terrace and Sun Deck are made for graze-and-gather afternoons. Sit back and soak up those views while enjoying Queensland spanner crab tartlets crowned with chervil and salmon roe, a Moreton Bay bug sando with crisp iceberg and cocktail sauce, and spaghettini tossed with spanner crab, tomato, chilli and garlic. Desserts keep the coastal mood: lemon and mascarpone sorbetto is served in a carved lemon, while fior di latte ice cream is finished with an indulgent spoon of Umai Heritage caviar. Venue Manager Mikey Hamilton (Bistecca, The Gidley, Banksii) steers service, bringing big-league polish to the yacht. [caption id="attachment_1042019" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jason Loucas[/caption] Drinks are led by Ed Loveday, who builds a harbour-ready list of crisp Mediterranean wines, lively rosés and seasonal cocktails. Expect aperitivo-leaning spritzes, martinis, margaritas, daiquiris and champagne numbers — plus a martini trolley in the Dining Room for bespoke, tableside ice-cold pours. Art threads through the space, too, with commissioned works by Daimon Downey, Jeremy Kay and Tiarna Herczeg adding sculptural colour and texture between decks. [caption id="attachment_1042020" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jonny Valiant[/caption] Top images: Jonny Valiant | Jason Loucas
What's the best job title in the world? That's hard to say, but Puppy Raiser surely ranks highly. 'Nice work if you can get it', you may well cry, but such a gig does exist — and it exists for a very good cause. Guide Dogs NSW is searching for its new intake of volunteer puppy foster parents who will care for the winter litter of labrador pups destined to be the next generation of working service animals. Volunteers typically foster a guide dog puppy for a year, providing a safe and loving environment as well as basic training, ensuring their fur baby grows up socialised and ready to begin their formal guide dog training just after their first birthday. At the Puppy Raiser Open Day, set to be held at the Liverpool Golf Club on Saturday, June 22, prospective fosterers can learn about what it takes to nurture a guide dog in waiting. There will also be training demonstrations that will reveal firsthand the kind of vital basics successful foster parents will need to teach their pup, including sitting while being groomed, behaving inside the home and walking confidently on a leash. These may sound like fairly standard skills (and they are), but without them, the golden-coated youngsters won't be able to add the extraordinary repertoire of abilities that will one day make them a life-changing assistant for someone with a visual impairment. "We are looking for people that are home most of the time and who are interested in putting effort into training and socialising the dog," said Guide Dogs NSW's Puppy Development Advisor My Lindqvist. "What you get in return is a life-changing experience and knowing that you've positively contributed to your community." Guide Dogs NSW takes care of the usual expenses of pet ownership, including providing food, veterinary access, and flea and tick prevention. A dedicated Puppy Development Adviser is also assigned to every Puppy Raiser to offer guidance and answer any questions. So, if you reckon you have what it takes to bring up a four-legged, wet-nosed superhero, make sure you book a session at Guide Dog NSW's Puppy Raiser Open Day.
While Messina's main jam is usually crafting supremely scoffable varieties of gelato, the brand's love of food extends far beyond the freezer. The cult gelateria has often teamed up with savoury-focused culinary heroes, throwing big ol' food parties. While these tasty pop-ups used to be hosted in the carpark of Messina's Rosebery store, the recent unveiling of a massive new Marrickville HQ means they're on the move, kicking off with a huge two-day collaboration with a pair of local favourites. For the inaugural Messina Eats Locals at the expansive new outpost, the dessert specialist has enlisted the help of Marrickville's own Baba's Place and Whole Beast Butchery, which have pulled together a street food menu that will be tough to pass up. The eats will be available in the Rich Street carpark from midday till late across Friday, May 12–Saturday, May 13. The Baba's Place section of the menu features falafel wraps, chicken skewers marinated in a fermented garlic caramel glaze, and the restaurant's famous taramasalata served with salt and vinegar chips. Or, opt for the huge mixed plate, which boasts two skewers, two lamb chops, two spicy pork kolbas, pickled turnip, Lebanese bread, house toum and a Baba's Place x Messina sauce. Whole Beast Butchery is keeping things a little more simple with one menu item based around a whole pig, which will be spit-roasted over charcoal. The spit will be pulled and placed on a long crunchy bread roll, then topped with house vinegar sauce, cabbage salad and pickles. There will also be key lime pie-lova sundaes made with lime curd gelato, pie crust, baked meringue, whipped cream and lime zest on hand — as well as all of the regular Messina treats from inside the flagship store, which offers 40 flavours of gelato, cookie pies, Messina chocolates and Bavarian cream pies. Both of the participating venues will be serving up their signature drinks as well, with Whole Beast Butchery's lemonade and Baba's Place and DNA Distillery's rakija and tonic cans available to quench your thirst.
We love our friends. Really, we do. But sometimes we just need a little me time. And when the urge for a few solitary hours strikes, one of our favourite things to do is take ourselves out on a little solo lunch or dinner date. But, with many restaurants and bars set up for dates or groups, finding a place to go solito can often be a bit of a challenge, tempting you to get that alone time by skipping lunch with the colleagues to eat a wilted salad at your desk or holing up at home with takeout and a series. To make sure that doesn't happen, American Express has helped us find nine spots, all Amex-accepting, where eating by yourself is both totally acceptable and incredibly fun. Equipped with single tables or bar seating, and with food so good you wouldn't want to share it anyways, these places make solo dining perfectly, deliciously comfortable. Whether you want a quiet break from the office during a particularly hectic day or are on the hunt for a bar you can go to when you don't feel like being with the mates, we've found the perfect place. Bring a book and you'll be well-prepared to linger over dessert and a few glasses of vino. Got yourself in another dining situation and need some guidance? Whatever it is, we know a place. Visit The Shortlist and we'll sort you out.
It's been a long time coming — a casual 18 months, in fact — but the Speakeasy Group's hotly-anticipated Parramatta rooftop bar has finally opened its doors. Located up on the 26th floor of the V by Crown development, Nick & Nora's marks the group's sixth venue, joining a stable that includes hospitality hits like Eau de Vie, Mjolner and Melbourne's Boilermaker House. Pulling inspiration from Dashiell Hammett's novel The Thin Man and its fictional sleuthing characters Nick and Nora Charles, the sophisticated space is an homage to the roaring 30s. Among the venue's features: an opulent fit-out, lavish art deco touches and a whole lot of Champagne. It has room for an impressive 300 people, complete with a sprawling terrace boasting views across the CBD and Sydney Harbour. Even so, you can rest assured that booze isn't taken lightly — the back bar selection runs to a hefty 900 spirits, while climate-controlled fridges are stocked with over 50 Champagnes from the world's most celebrated houses. The cocktail offering is as tight as you'd expect from these pros, with a 30-strong list featuring multiple variations of martinis, sours and Champagne-infused sips. Plus, there's also more delicious mischief in store thanks to the bar's five liquid nitrogen stations. As for the food, expect an offering that holds its own against the plush vibe and ritzy drinks lineup — fine cheese and charcuterie, top-quality oysters and some of the world's best caviar promise an all-round opulent affair. The bar is part of Parramatta's huge V by Crown complex, which features a luxury 72-suite hotel, residential apartments and restaurant Husk and Vine. It's a big opening for the area — and one that looks to really kick off a bar boom. Nick & Nora's is now open at Level 26, 45 Macquarie Street, Parramatta. The bar operates from 5pm–midnight from Mondays to Thursdays, 3pm–midnight on Fridays, and 12pm–midnight on Saturdays and Sundays. Images: Jiwon Kim.
Gone are the days when a lobby was just a lobby. Now, you'll find all sorts of great cafes, wine bars and coffee nooks jazzing up the bottom of office buildings and residential complexes all over Australia. And for Sydney, the latest of these is cafe Lobby Boy, which has made its home in Northpoint Tower, right in the middle of the action of the North Sydney CBD. Spurred by the success of the original Lobby Boy over in Commonwealth Bank's Eveleigh site, this new northern counterpart is once again the work of Ramzey Choker — the mind behind hits like The Grounds of Alexandria and The Grounds of the City. The result of another collaboration with design studio Acme and the Cromwell Property Group, Lobby Boy North Sydney is decked out with rustic timber flooring, soft lighting and splashes of musk pink and deep green. It's a warm and relaxed space, designed to act as a chilled out meeting place for the buzzing Miller Street office block above. From the kitchen comes a contemporary daytime offering, flecked with international influences. You'll spy the likes of a brioche brekky jaffle stuffed with maple-glazed bacon, roast tomato, egg and smoked barbecue mayo, and a brown rice chirashi salad starring tuna tartare, edamame, charred avocado and salted kombu. A ploughman's-style sandwich is loaded with leg ham, cheese, pickles, heirloom tomato and relish, and a lineup of small plates features the likes of Asian-style South Australian mussels, fried school prawns and an heirloom carrot and buffalo mozzarella tart. Of course, coffees are pumping all day. To match, there's a range of shakes and smoothies, and a line of house-made sodas in flavours like Berry Minty and Pine Passion Fizz. Choker and his team also have plenty more big things in the works, including a huge new dining precinct, espresso bar and coffee research lab opening in South Eveleigh next year. So stay tuned for that one. Find Lobby Bar North Sydney on the ground floor of Northpoint Tower, 100 Miller Street, North Sydney. It's open 7.30am–4pm Monday to Wednesday, 7.30am–late Thursday and Friday and 9am–2.30pm Saturday.
Less than ten minutes walking from Kings Cross station gets you to hideaway Italian restaurant Bar Grazie, which opened its doors in September 2022. Bar Grazie has some weight to its name, thanks to the power trio that brought the space to life, starting with Barry McDonald (the man behind the OG Fratelli Fresh). Let's start with the interiors, designed by George Gorrow (co-founder of Ksubi and The Slow). Looking around, you'll notice wood panelling and white walls. It's gentle and welcoming and has just the right amount of lighting. Pick a refreshment from a selection of Italian beers, an impressive roster of Italian and French wines, spritzes and classic cocktails. Opening up the food menu, you're met with a fine selection of Italian choices from head chef Jarrard Martin, whose resume includes Rockpool, Ucello and Mary's Underground. Start light with Sydney rock oysters with yuzu mignonette, or take a denser route with the famed vitello tonnato. Mains follow — there's gnocchi with pine nuts, aged balsamic and brown butter; market fish al caltoccio (cooked in foil) with salsa verde; macaroni with ragu bolognese, and so much more. If you can't decide, don't stress, the team offers three-course set menus from Monday to Wednesday. Or visit on weekends to grab pasta and wine for $30.
Much might be changing at the Museum of Old and New Art in 2024, including giving Dark Mofo a rest for the year and farewelling summer festival Mona Foma for good. But having a party in winter is still on the cards, as the Tasmanian venue confirmed a few months back. The lineup of events keeps growing, in fact, as part of what's now being dubbed a 'Dark Mofo presents' program. On offer from Thursday, June 13–Sunday, June 23: Winter Feast, the Nude Solstice Swim, both Genesis Owusu and Marlon Williams playing live, the Mona Gala, a new exhibition, a multi-storey nightclub and late-night tunes that begin the next morning. [caption id="attachment_950174" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Rosie Hastie, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Dark Mofo 2022, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] "I know we said Dark Mofo would stay quiet, but winter wouldn't feel the same without the chance to feast and frolic during the long Tasmanian nights," said the fest's Artistic Director Chris Twite. "As the chill of winter creeps in, I know we are already longing to feast, dance and swim together. So we're really excited to be able to present these beloved pillars of the festival this June for Tasmanians and all our dedicated Dark Mofo pilgrims." [caption id="attachment_950181" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Sam Stewart. Courtesy of Dark Mofo / DarkLab, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia[/caption] If you're keen to eat your way around a huge midyear food festival on the Apple Isle, Winter Feast will be serving up plenty to tempt your tastebuds. Vaughan Mabee, the Executive Chef of New Zealand's Amisfield in Queenstown, is the the guest chef, teaming up with Mona's own Vince Trim. They'll hero unorthodox ingredients, such as Tasmanian deer and wallaby, wakame furikake, wattleseed and long-spined urchin, in an outdoor pavilion that'll be custom-built for the event. The meats will be fire-roasted onsite, then sliced to order. For dessert, deer also proves pivotal via deer milk ice cream, a signature dessert from Mabee. You won't forget it — it comes shaped like antlers, served in a real deer skull, then topped with 'deer blood' caramel. [caption id="attachment_950183" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Courtesy of Vaughan Mabee and Dark Mofo / DarkLab, Nipaluna Hobart, Lutruwita Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] Also set to be at Winter Feast: 80 stallholders, spanning not only returning favourites, but also 25 new joints from around the state. Standout dishes to look out for include spit-roast pork buns, crispy-fried southern rock lobster sliders, neo-Nepalese goat curry, arancini filled with beef ragu and mozzarella, and mortadella cruller choux pastries, as well as milk and honey doughnuts, mulled wine and smoked beetroot vodka. Yula (mutton bird) will also be back on the menu, while a Tasmanian sparkling wine bar is new for the year. Another change for 2024: making Winter Feast entry free on Sundays. [caption id="attachment_950175" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dark Mofo/Rémi Chauvin. Courtesy Dark Mofo, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia[/caption] If you're most excited about taking a swim sans clothes to celebrate the winter solstice, the Nude Solstice Swim at Long Beach will have a larger capacity than in the past. Elsewhere, Owusu and Williams are each playing gigs at Odeon Theatre on successive nights; the Mona Gala will get everyone partying for the opening of exhibition Namedropping, which showcases 200-plus artistic works about status, perception and trying to look good for others; and Dark Mofo 2021's Night Shift is making a comeback so that you can hit the dance floor, get debauched and make the absolute most of the early hours. Slow Burn, a brand-new event for 2024, is also about staying up late, only opening at midnight at Odeon Theatre's Mezz Bar. At the In the Hanging Garden precinct, Winter in the Garden will get DJs spinning tunes earlier, and also host food and drink pop-ups. [caption id="attachment_950177" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Courtesy of the artist.[/caption] Dark Mofo will return in 2025 as the full usual shebang, but better than ever — not that there's anything usual about the event. "Dark Mofo has established itself as a beacon of artistic exploration and challenging ideas for a decade, immersing audiences in the depths of darkness and the heart of winter," said Twite earlier in 2024. "This year, by taking a fallow year, we are taking a crucial step in ensuring that Dark Mofo continues to be a catalyst for artistic innovation, cultural dialogue, and shared experiences for many years to come." [caption id="attachment_950178" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dark Mofo/Jesse Hunniford. Courtesy Dark Mofo, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_950182" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Courtesy Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_950176" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dark Mofo/Jesse Hunniford, 2021. Courtesy Dark Mofo, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_950180" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Rémi Chauvin. Courtesy of DarkLab, March 2023.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_950179" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jesse Hunniford. Courtesy of the artists and Mona, Tasmania, Australia[/caption] Dark Mofo Presents: Winter 2o24: Thursday, June 13–Sunday, June 16 — Winter Feast week one Thursday, June 13–Sunday, June 23 — Winter in the Garden Friday, June 14 — The Mona Gala Saturday, June 15 — Genesis Owusu Saturday, June 15–Sunday, June 16 — Slow Burn Saturday, June 15, 2024–Monday, April 21, 2025 — Namedropping exhibition Sunday, June 16 — Marlon Williams Thursday, June 20–Sunday, June 23 — Winter Feast week two Friday, June 21 — Nude Solstice Swim Friday, June 21–Saturday, June 22 — Night Shift The Dark Mofo Presents lineup takes place at Mona from Thursday, June 13–Sunday, June 23, 2024. Head to the festival's website for further details, and for tickets on Tuesday, April 16 — from 10am for subscribers and 12pm for everyone else. Top image: Rosie Hastie, 2022. Courtesy of Dark Mofo 2022.
Last year, Single O brought the Australian Aeropress Championship to Sydney. This time around, the roasters will host the mecca of all coffee competitions — the 2018 World AeroPress Championships. The event will take place on November 17, when 60 coffee brewers from around the globe will compete to win the title of best AeroPresser out there. Top-notch coffee isn't the only draw card, either — Single O has again collaborated with leading Sydney chefs on the event's food offering. and this year's theme is something of a world-wide sausage sizzle. First off, Moon Dog will be slinging free tinnies and Cow & the Moon will be scooping pavlova gelato for free, too. For main eats, there's shoyu-glazed hot dogs with wasabi slaw and vegan smoked chilli dogs from Rising Sun Workshop; nahm jim jaew-inspired grilled eggplants and pork sausages from Boon Cafe; and maple and spent coffee from Rocker and LP's Quality Meats. ForeignDub's DJ Blackhawk will provide the tunes while the brewers go head-to-head. After the competition — and your epic feast — head to the Competitor Brew Bar where you can nab a taste of some seriously good cuppas, prepared by the best in the business. General admission tickets will cost you $25, or the $65 VIP ticket gets you access to the pre-party on November 16 — which includes a meet and greet with the competitors at Single O's Surry Hills digs, followed by barefoot bowls at Clovelly Lawn Bowls Club. Images: Carlos Zavala / Alana Dimou.
Feeling uninspired? Stuck on date ideas? Want free booze? Or even, do you like art? We’ve put together a hot list of exhibitions for you to check out this February, from Sydney’s smallest to most well-known galleries.
UPDATE: JANUARY 15, 2019 — Summer in Sydney means many things — beach hangs, ocean pool swims, searing heat — one of them being the abundance of sweet frozen treats. And Devon has just launched another one for you to put on high rotation: bubble tea sundaes. Tapioca pearls, soft serve, taro and bubur cha-cha combine in this limited-edition dessert. Flavours include Matcha Bubble Tea, with roasted green tea, herbal glass jelly and sweet red bean and cheese foam, and the Bobba Gump, with milk tea soft serve, salted milk foam and brownie soil. All are served with a waffle cone and will set you back $10 a pop. They're available at Devon Barangaroo and North Sydney (not Surry Hills) from now until Thursday, February 28. When the foodie gods close a door, they often open a window. Such is the case with Devon on Danks. After two years of serving up 63-degree eggs and 8am soft serve sundaes, the beloved Waterloo café — a spinoff of Devon Cafe in Surry Hills — ceased service in 2016. That's the bad news. The good news is that they added a new member to the Devon family, in Barangaroo. Devon's second digs are located on the corner of Mercantile Walk and Scotch Row at one of Sydney's new food hubs, The Streets of Barangaroo. Of course, it's far from the first big gastronomic get — Anason, Belles Hot Chicken, Banksii, Ume Burger and Rabbit Hole are just a few vendors that are trading in the precinct. Now before you start fretting, that doesn't mean the cafe has ditched its signature menu items — the soft serve with fries and miso salmon with a 63-degree egg remain on the menu. Rather, it's added a bunch of new strings to their bow, including Asian-style tapas and Japanese katsu sandwiches. Bubble tea sundae image: @wheresmy_dang_food.
Marrickville's annual street festival will take over the inner west suburb once again on Sunday, October 21. Over 120 stalls will flood the streets in a full day celebration of live music, local entertainment and international cuisine that champions Marrickville's multicultural community. A massive lineup of local bands and acts will perform across four stages, with the main stage including the likes of Liz Martin Band, The Protesters and Edens March. The Break music competition will return to showcase the best that the region has to offer, and an international stage will put on flamenco performances and African, Greek and Polynesian dance shows. Of course, stalls will offer up fresh produce and a tonne of different food options from local vendors. Expect fried things, big vats of paella, Vietnamese nosh and heaps more. Image: Fiora Sacco.
Perhaps the most accessible swimming pool on this list, a visit to Prince Alfred Park Pool should be mandatory for every visitor to (or resident of) Sydney. Designed by Neeson Murcutt Architects as part of the invigoration of Prince Alfred Park in 2013, a swim here invites immediate invocation of a long, hot Australian summer at the pool. Built cleverly among a 'folded landscape' of native grasses to both protect the green space of this inner urban area and provide swimmers with some protection, the facility is, at once, confined and imposing. Yellow umbrellas and palm trees make this architectural space a little less serious than most, but no less impressive. For the locals of inner Sydney who can't quite muster a trip to the coast for a swim, Prince Alfred Park Pool is an easy alternative. It's the buttercup yellow sun umbrellas that bring the Riviera vibe, as well as the lawns strewn with sunbakers and cute cafe, Meadow, cheerily aiding post-swim recoveries. The facilities nabbed two National Architecture Awards in 2014, and the 50-metre pool is always at that jump-right-in temperature.
If it's true that the things that don't kill you only serve to make you stronger, we can all expect Melbourne's Rising festival to come out fighting fit for its long-awaited premiere run this year. After COVID-19 unravelled its planned 2020 debut, then returned to cancel all but opening night of its 2021 program, the blockbuster citywide multi-arts festival will this year, finally, get its moment. As announced today, Rising is set to descend on Melbourne from Wednesday, June 1–Sunday, June 12. Determined to make this third time a charm, the festival is delivering a hefty, carefully-honed program of art, music and performance. "Overall, we're expecting one million people to experience Rising across 225 events, with over 800 artists involved," festival co-director Gideon Obarzanek tells Concrete Playground. Over 12 days and nights, those artists will transform the streets and spaces of Melbourne into their canvases and stages, serving up a diverse, supersized culture fix to kickstart winter. With borders reopened, a stack more international names have been able to join the bill, too. [caption id="attachment_846653" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The Wilds, 2021[/caption] While the program has evolved and morphed since last year, some of its key experiences are built on return concepts. "The Wilds and Golden Square are the two big pillar pieces," explains co-director Hannah Fox. "But a lot of the content within those projects is new." The Wilds will return to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, this time dishing up a fluorescent-tinged fusion of art, sound and flavour courtesy of renowned New York-based Aussie artists Tin & Ed. It'll play host to performances, quirky large-scale structures, and an ice-skating rink beating to the sound of 80s and 90s bangers. Exceptional eats here include snacks from the likes of 1800 Lasagne and Smith & Daughters, and a 'glowing glasshouse bistro' manned by celebrated chefs David Moyle, Jo Barrett and Matt Stone. [caption id="attachment_846649" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Paul Yore's 2018 work 'It's All Wrong But It's Alright'. Credit Rémi Chauvin.[/caption] Golden Square will again transform a multi-storey Chinatown carpark into a vibrant, sensorial art park, featuring parades, rooftop bars and a compelling site-wide exhibition from artists like Paul Yore, Scotty So, Atong Atem and Jason Phu. Patricia Piccinini's otherworldy exhibition A Miracle Constantly Repeated will continue its popular run, gracing the Flinders Street Ballroom until the festival's end on June 12. Leading audio-visual artist Robin Fox is also creating a mesmerising laser and sound work, Monochord, that will beam one kilometre along the Yarra each night. And, thanks to Keith Courtney, one of the folks behind House of Mirrors and 1000 Doors, a 20-metre-long kaleidoscopic labyrinth will invite attendees to immerse themselves in a playground of mazes and light. [caption id="attachment_846648" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Robin Fox's work MONOCHORD[/caption] Gig-starved music-lovers can expect a smorgasbord of sonic delights throughout the fest, as international names like Moses Sumney, Welsh electro star Kelly Lee Owens and the multi-talented Andy Shauf join homegrown talent including renowned drummer Jim White, Tkay Maidza, Harvey Sutherland and the legendary Sampa the Great. Meanwhile, a diverse program of dance performances will share stories from around the world, with unmissable works from the likes of Stephanie Lake Company, Denmark's Mette Ingvartsen, Indonesian choreographer Rianto and Uruguay's Tamara Cubas. Legendary text-based artist Jenny Holzer will transform a 19th-century building facade with her six-storey projection work I CONJURE, too — and for The Invisible Opera, the constant buzz of Federation Square will be mapped in real-time, creating an immersive multi-disciplinary performance piece. [caption id="attachment_846654" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tkay Maidza[/caption] Jurrungu ngan-ga (meaning 'straight talk') explores refugee detention and the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in custody via a captivating, culture-bridging dance performance by the Marrugeku crew. Plus, the return of the famed Melbourne Art Trams will showcase six trams emblazoned with designs by First Peoples artists, alongside a reproduction of the 1991 tram work by acclaimed artist, painter and sculptor Lin Onus. And, nodding to one of the city's greatest sporting loves, there's the work that has Hannah Fox most excited, Still Lives. "It's a performance we commissioned back in 2020, which is now going to take place in the NGV, in the Great Hall," the festival director explains. "It's essentially two artists, Luke George and Daniel Kok, who are working with five retired AFL players to suspend them in rope bondage from the ceiling… in the form of an iconic mark from the AFL's history. Yeah, I'm very excited for that." Rising will run from Wednesday, June 1–Sunday, June 12 at venues and public spaces across Melbourne. Presale tickets are available from 12pm on Monday, March 21, with regular tickets selling from 12pm on Friday, March 25.
Heading to Marvel Stadium at Melbourne's Docklands usually means watching a game of AFL. Or, you could be hitting up the venue to see a gig. Moseying beneath the space to wander around an underground light show and labyrinth definitely isn't normally on the cards. That'll change come winter, with the city's Firelight Festival returning for 2024 — and, for the first time, bringing the Firelight Labyrinth with it. The fest itself is a three-day affair over the last weekend in June, running from Friday, June 28–Sunday, June 30 at New Quay Promenade, Victoria Promenade and Harbour Esplanade. On the agenda, as in past years: fire performers, fire pits, fire drums, flame jets, fire arches and fire sculptures. There'll also be live music, African drumming, and an array of stomach-warming food and drink options — such as dumplings, smoked meats, paella, churros and hot chocolates. Flame-filled arts — and bites to feast on and beverages to sip while you're enjoying them — aren't the only drawcard this year, though. Cue more than 144,000 lights beaming beneath Marvel Stadium, with the labyrinth sticking around for over two weeks from Friday, June 28–Sunday, July 14. Accordingly, this year's Firelight Festival is also a huge tourist attraction for locals and visitors alike, especially if you want to see a key Aussie Rules venue in a new light — literally. As well as all of those sources of luminousness, the Firelight Labyrinth will feature immersive audio, making the experience an audio-visual maze. While the festival is free to attend — you'll need your wallet for whatever you eat and drink — the Firelight Labyrinth is ticketed, costing $37.50 for adults.
Top-of-class bars and restaurants have been a major focus of the mammoth $60-million renovation of the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth. House Made Hospitality has delivered four new hospitality concepts within the upgraded hotel: earlier in October, the first two venues – Tilda and Bar Tilda – located on the ground floor, were opened to the public and now, two more plush spaces are ready to welcome their first guests. French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant Delta Rue channels the vibrant old-world spirit of Hanoi but with a refined sense of luxury. With seating for 150 diners, plus space for an additional 60 on the sweeping horse-shoe terrace, this impressive restaurant seamlessly blends al fresco charm with indoor elegance. On arrival, guests can visit the intimate champagne bar, where seven by-the-glass sips — from single-village grower champagnes to vintage selections — are on offer. The 390-square-metre dining room's interior design, by Fender Katsalidis, also sets a luxe tone, taking its cues from French-colonial architecture and Vietnamese-style textiles and prints. "In this space, east meets west, vibrancy and structure collide, and there's a magical balance of neutrals and colour," says Karen Morris of Fender Katsalidis. A soft, nature-inspired palette of muted greens and greys counterpoints the verdant wallpaper, designed by artist Kerrie Brown, featuring lush foliage and exotic birds, while seating crafted from solid reclaimed teak with woven rope backs underlines the 1920s colonial era look. On the menu, fresh, crisp, quintessentially Vietnamese flavours take centre stage. Crafted by the hotel's Executive Chef Elliott Pinn, who has formerly overseen the dining offering at House Made's other major dining hub Hinchcliff House, there are some playful flourishes for diners to enjoy, such as the bánh mì trolley, which constructs the crowd-pleasing Vietnamese sandwich tableside to the diners' taste, before it's sliced into bite-sized pieces for easy sharing. Many of the mains are also social affairs designed to share. Guests can get hands-on with roasted duck legs, a whole roasted snapper or a dry-aged steak, accompanied by nuoc cham, rice paper, butter lettuce, and pickles, to create classic Vietnamese wraps. A fresh crab and green mango salad loaded with fresh herbs or a banana blossom salad featuring a textural mix of shaved banana blossom, pineapple, and chilli make for the perfect side dishes. Washing that down is a wine list that skews 70 per cent French alongside a range of local and international fortified and dessert wines. The cocktail list is also French-leaning with some homegrown winks thrown in, such as the French 75 featuring Pommery champagne, Unico Zelo pomelo vermouth, pear eau de vie and finger lime extract. Located on the same level as Delta Rue, Wentworth Bar is a lush terrace watering hole that looks fated to become a top go-to for an inner-city sundowner. Also designed by Fender Katsalidis, the space is sophisticated yet relaxed. Conceived to cater to punters throughout the day, there are a variety of seating options, from low-slung chairs for sun-basking, cocktail in hand, to high tables with stools for those looking to perch for a quick drink and generous seating areas intended for group gatherings. Terrazzo tables and verdant planting centred around an impressive focal point — a mature tree — transport guests far from the urban hustle just five storeys below, while DJ sets keep the good times rolling. The cocktail menu amps up the fun with playful mixes that are easy to drink. A signature will be Wentworth Bar's party cocktails. Priced at $220, they come served in a showstopping glass fountain which holds 12 standard drinks. Get the party started with the Tai Chi Mumma, a refreshing mix of Ketel One vodka, rosé, and prosecco, rounded out with raspberry, lemon, and lychee or the Strawberry Yuzu Spritz - a bright blend of white wine, herbal aperitif, yuzu, and a fruity hit of mango, passionfruit, and grapefruit. Delta Rue and Bar Wentworth open to diners from Friday, October 25. For more details and opening hours, head the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth website. Images: Steven Woodburn
Update: December 11, 2018 — Summer can get expensive. You're splashing out on presents for friends and fam, and the number of parties going on has increased tenfold. So, we're big fans of happy hours during this season — especially when they go for three hours. Bistro Rex has just launched l'aperitif, which run from 3.30–6.30pm every day at the Potts Point restaurant and features $5 wines (white, red and rosé), $5 Young Henrys natural lagers, $10 cocktails — including negronis and a spritzy chamomile number — and a range of $10 snacks. Bistro Rex, the latest French dining room to hit Potts Point, is hard to fault. More than that, it offers a casual alternative to some of Sydney's more theatrical restaurants: an unpretentious space serving timeless French food on simple white plates. The eatery doesn't feel a need to distract diners with design, but the space is still impressive. You're dining in Macleay Street's former Commonwealth Bank building, so there are large pillars between the tables, marble accents, and wood-framed mirrors high on the walls. It's all pretty luxurious — especially with the Chesterfield booths in the corner — but there's more than enough casual seating to balance it out, with rows of wooden tables and a few spots to dine at the bar. Because you're in a French restaurant, order the chicken liver parfait ($21). It's not particularly rich here; instead it's light, creamy, and served with sweet and sour jelly. The scallops with cashew and curry leaf ($26) are silky and complemented by the sweetness of leek on the plate. Chefs Jo Ward and Michelle Powell obviously know what they're doing with seafood, because the market fish of the day (on our visit, it's snapper) is perfect, flaking easily when the cutlery hits and swimming in just the right amount of sauce. The steak frites with Café de Paris ($39) is served spot-on medium-rare and drenched in butter — it's a classic combination, and why would you alter it? Main meals are on the heavier side, so order the Nashi pear salad with celery, chicory and hazelnuts ($16) to lighten things up a bit, and match your dish to a glass off the predominantly French wine list (the front page can be ordered by the glass, carafe or bottle). On the pass there's a single truffle in a glass dome — ask for it to be shaved over anything and everything. . None of the four options on the dessert menu are particularly eye-catching on paper, but all are delicious once they arrive — and are an unexpected highlight of the meal. Skip the cheese course and order the hazelnut parfait with dacquoise banana cream ($14); it's served with a chocolate biscuit shard and topped with banana cream, which balances the sweet and slightly savoury. The apple tarte Tatin ($14) arrives warm, sweet and sticky – there's a refreshing quenelle of choc-mint ice cream on the side. If you're not a dessert person, try the old-fashioned that's been lightly stirred with cold-brew coffee ($14). You could take your parents, friends, love interest or colleagues to Bistro Rex. Come for lunch on the weekend. Come for dinner on a Tuesday. Bring everyone. Order dessert.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas across the country. After months spent empty, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, Australian picture palaces are back in business — spanning both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, comedies, music documentaries, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT Starting in 2013 with The Conjuring, expanding with 2014's Annabelle, and also including The Conjuring 2, both terrible and much better sequels to Annabelle, the dismal The Nun and the formulaic The Curse of the Weeping Woman, The Conjuring Universe now spans eight evil-fighting flicks — and they're all as straightforward as it gets when it comes to battling the nefarious. Circling around real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, the franchise posits that the supernatural exists, darkness preys upon the innocent and its central couple usually has the tools to combat everything untoward. That template remains firmly in place in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. With director Michael Chaves (The Curse of the Weeping Woman) and screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (Aquaman) doing the honours — taking their cues from James Wan, the Australian Saw and Insidious co-creator who helmed the first two Conjuring flicks — it once again serves up the usual bumps, jumps and scares that have haunted this franchise since day one. That said, the third Conjuring flick within the broader Conjuring realm does attempt a few changes. Rather than getting creeped out by haunted houses, it gets spooked by a kid and then a teenager who are both possessed. True to form, bone-shakingly horrific things can't simply occur without some kind of excuse and entity at play. The Warrens (Patrick Wilson, Aquaman, and Vera Farmiga, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) are first tasked with saving eight-year-old David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard, WandaVision) from a demon after his family moves to stereotypically sleepy Brookfield, Connecticut. Their efforts seem successful, even if Ed has a heart attack mid-exorcism, but the evil force they're fighting has really just jumped ship. Arne Johnson (Ruairi O'Connor, The Spanish Princess), the boyfriend of David's sister Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook, NOS4A2), is quickly besieged by strange occurrences. He's soon also covered in blood after stabbing his landlord to Blondie's 'Call Me'. The death penalty beckons; however, the Warrens convince Arne's lawyer to plead not guilty by reason of demonic possession — the first time that ever happened in the US — and then commit to unearthing whatever paranormal details they can to save his life. The trailer for The Devil Made Me Do It teases legal thrills, but in a bait-and-switch way, because this film is barely concerned with Arne's court case. The true tale, which was previously dramatised in a 1983 TV movie starring Kevin Bacon, merely provides an easy setup for souped-up demonic antics and a routine, happily by-the-numbers, never remotely terrifying threequel. Indeed, the fact that more flicks will undoubtably still follow is the scariest thing about the film. Read our full review. LAPSIS 9 to 5 and Working Girl hail from the genre. Everything from Office Space to The Assistant do, too. But films about working in offices, TPS reports and navigating the desk-based daily grind might eventually become a dying breed or a nostalgic retro curiosity. Because art always mirrors life, the gig economy may swoop in and draw the silver screen's focus instead. Sorry We Missed You already has in a resonant warts-and-all manner, and Lapsis now endeavours to do the same via a smart and searing sci-fi satire. There's much to ponder, probe and dissect about the mode of employment that's becoming the status quo, after all, and that isn't bound to change as it spreads and grows. Corporations don't just dictate workers' behaviour during office hours now, supplying a reliable wage and perks such as holiday and sick leave in return. Attempting to monopolise entire fields such as food and package delivery, transportation and caregiving, big companies (you know the ones) hire independent contractors, scrap the benefits, and keep them toiling on-demand or on-call just to earn the bare minimum. This new kind of technology-driven rat race has been normalised, and quickly — and what it means for the labour force, employment, capitalism, corporate greed, class structures and basic human rights demands to be interrogated in thousands of movies as sharp and scathing as this one. In Lapsis and its alternative vision of New York via writer/director Noah Hutton, quantum computing is the next big thing. It requires a network of giant metallic cubes connected via thick black wires, with stringing them together the gig economy's new growth area. It's such an in-demand field and so lucrative for workers, in fact, that cablers can earn thousands of dollars just for a weekend's work. They can also pay off their mortgages within months — if the advertisements spruiking the supposed new employment dream can be trusted, that is. Technology-phobic delivery driver Ray Tincelli (first-timer Dean Imperial) is sceptical, so much so that he won't even use a quantum computer himself, even though they're essential to viewing up-to-date websites and just generally existing in Lapsis' parallel world. But his unwell brother Jamie (fellow debutant Babe Howard) suffers from a pervasive form of exhaustion called omnia, and requires expensive medical treatment. After finding a way into the cabling industry via acquaintance Felix (James McDaniel, The Deuce), Ray's need to make a quick stash of hefty cash quickly overrides his misgivings. Read our full review. BREAKING NEWS IN YUBA COUNTY Celebrity worship is one of popular culture's stupidest side effects. Stars get paid well beyond the average person and live far more lavish lives, but yes, they're people too. And, even if you round up a hefty number of famous faces in the one movie — award-winners and -nominees among them — they can still make absolutely terrible career decisions. Case in point: Breaking News in Yuba County, exactly the type of film that dispels any ridiculous notion that well-known actors opt for better choices than the rest of us. No one has done themselves any favours by featuring in this equally derivative and preposterous mess. No one will by watching it either. Director Tate Taylor might have both The Help and Get On Up to his name, but this addition to his resume sinks lower than The Girl on the Train, Ma and Ava. First-time screenwriter Amanda Idoko pens a script that aims for quirky crime-comedy with a side serving of societal satire, but really just repackages every tired cliche and trope her chosen genre has ever brought to the screen, and every obvious observation about small-town life, middle-aged women and the media as well. Also, every performance seems pitched at a different type of picture to each other — and, even in the silliest cases, none of them gel with the film's perky, almost sitcom-esque aesthetic. Allison Janney (Bombshell) plays Sue Buttons, dutiful wife to local banker Karl (Matthew Modine, Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal). He's inattentive at the best of times, and she's too meek-mannered to say anything — but when she sneakily follows him to a hotel on her birthday, which he seems to have forgotten, their marriage takes a turn. Soon she's telling whoever will listen that Karl has gone missing. Her sister (Mila Kunis, The Spy Who Dumped Me) is a local news reporter, so TV attention follows. But Sue really just wants to be on one particular host's (Juliette Lewis, Music) show, and to elicit the kind of reaction the town has been giving the parents of a missing young girl. That's only part of Breaking News in Yuba County's narrative, though. Karl'x brother (Jimmi Simpson, Unhinged) is trying to go on the straight and narrow to please his pregnant wife (Samira Wiley, The Handmaid's Tale), but his ex-boss (Awkwafina, Raya and the Last Dragon) and her henchman (Clifton Collins Jr, Waves) would prefer otherwise. Jokingly at first, so would his new employer (Wanda Sykes, Black-ish), who is bored of just owning and running a furniture store. The more all of these characters' paths intersect — and those of a local detective (Regina Hall, Little), one of Karl's colleagues (Chris Lowell, Promising Young Woman) and his mistress (Bridget Everett, Unbelievable) as well — the more obvious three things are. Firstly, Idoko has clearly seen To Die For and Fargo more than once. Secondly, her script feels like it was written in the 90s, too, and then barely read again before filming started. And thirdly, this doesn't even approach the same league as its influences, or work as a goofier farce either. BYE BYE MORONS When Bye Bye Morons begins, it's with the kind of overdone setup that hardly screams 'Best Picture winner'. The film did indeed garner that gong at this year's César Awards — and six others as well — and, thankfully, twists its template beginnings into something far more intriguing than it initially seems set to deliver. When hairdresser Suze Trappet (Virginie Efira, Police) is told that she's afflicted with an auto-immune disease that stems from the chemicals she uses at work, and that it'll soon take her life, she's shocked and horrified. She also has unfinished business to attend to, after giving up a baby for adoption almost three decades earlier. That quest brings her into the path of civil servant Jean-Baptiste Cuchas (Albert Dupontel, also the movie's writer and director), who is being replaced by new technology at his paper-pushing job and happens to be staging a suicide attempt when Suze visits the office trying to track down her child. Soon, they're unlikely allies alongside a blind archivist (Nicolas Marié, Knock), and they're all endeavouring to thwart the multiple systems and bureaucracies that have defined and dictated so much of their lives. As its name makes plain, subtlety isn't Bye Bye Morons strong point, but when it finds its heartfelt groove, this French comedy also finds its charm. It helps that Dupontel has cast his feature superbly, including via his own involvement. The See You Up There filmmaker and star turns in a performance that's far more nuanced than the overwhelming bulk of the movie itself, as does the always-watchable Efira — with the pair playing exasperated ordinary folks who leap into outlandish territory not so much out of necessity, but in utter and gleeful defiance of the misfortune-laden cards that the world keeps dealing them. It also helps that, scripting with contributions from collaborating writers Xavier Nemo (Girafada) and Marcia Romano (Losing It), Dupontel fleshes out his characters more than his scenario. In fact, he makes his own on-screen job easier as a result. And, he gives his audience a much-needed anchor amidst all the broad, loose, chaotic and often over-the-top comedy he repeatedly swings in Suze and Jean-Baptiste's direction. Bye Bye Morons isn't short on plot, but when the feature is at its sweetest and most poignant, it's because viewers have become invested in its protagonists, their plight and their connection, rather than the ins and outs of their intertwined crusades. In fact, when the film is at its silliest — and when it attempts to wring easy comedy out of its absurdist and anarchic energy — it's a far less entertaining affair. BREAKING BREAD Food unites us all, or so the oft-spouted rhetoric tells us — and now documentary Breaking Bread does as well. On paper, it mightn't seem hard to demonstrate that every single one of us shares a need for sustenance and a love of culinary delights; however, debut writer/director Beth Elise Hawk doesn't merely explain what we already literally know in our guts. Instead, the filmmaker focuses on Dr Nof Atamna-Ismaeel. Originally a microbiologist, she became the first Arabic contestant to win Israeli's version of Masterchef back in 2014. After that pioneering feat, she set her sights on another: founding the A-Sham Arabic Food Festival in Haifa. Unity is baked into the fest's very existence, with the event bringing together chefs of both Arabic and Jewish descent to cook a range of Levantine dishes, and then share their creations with eager attendees. And, the festival's purpose is never far from view on the plate or in discussions with the participants. The common sentiment: while the conflict in Israel commands the bulk of the attention directed the country's way, that isn't the lived reality for most of the region's residents. Breaking Bread releases in Australia just as headlines again document rising tensions and increasing combat in the area, but Atamna-Ismaeel and her fellow chefs endeavour to espouse the opposite in their delicious-looking meals. The usual food documentary advice applies here, unsurprisingly, because watching on an empty stomach will only get tastebuds watering and hunger pangs grumbling. Hawk isn't above using slow-motion culinary shots that actively attempt to entice salivation, and to use them to pad out the already brief 86-minute feature. That said, every glimpse in the kitchen or at a plate is handsomely filmed, framed and staged, and is never too far away from lively conversation as well. Indeed, the movie's wide range of dishes might whet the appetite, but they're really just the entree. Alongside the engaging Atamna-Ismaeel, the festival's chefs speak through their backgrounds, cooking dreams, experiences with conflict and generational traumas in their own talking-head segments. The doco hears multiple accounts of how the simple act of eating, or of combining different types of food, can and has brought people together, and yet that kind of sentiment will never prove repetitive. Perhaps because of Atamna-Ismaeel's TV background, it's easy to see how a longer project that spent an entire episode or several with these interviewees would provide a satisfying meal — and get its audience thinking even further about the region, food and unity. MINAMATA It has been ten years since Johnny Depp starred in The Rum Diary, openly inviting comparisons to — and happily standing in the shadows of — his role in fellow Hunter S Thompson adaptation Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 13 years earlier. Minamata boasts no ties to the gonzo journalist, but it does initially endeavour to ape Depp's past work; playing a hard-drinking member of the press will do that. This drama draws its details from reality, though, not mere impersonation. Its subject: photographer W Eugene Smith, and his late-career series of snaps in the titular Japanese town. Informed of a story worth his and the world's attention by a translator, Aileen Mioko (Miami, Tezuka's Barbara), who'll later become his wife, Smith (Depp, Waiting for the Barbarians) convinces his Life magazine editor (Bill Nighy, Emma) to dispatch him to capture the results of chemical company Chisso's dumping of mercury in the local water. It's an important story, both for the celebrated Second World War photographer at the waning end of his career and for the movie now telling the tale, although second-time director Andrew Levitas (Lullaby) stages his earnest adaptation of Aileen and Eugene's book in a blunt manner. It doesn't help that his film arrives after the far superior Dark Waters and its own story of corporate poisoning, or that Depp is once again the point focus in a story where his character is a white outsider looking in, as he also was in the woefully misguided City of Lies. As it charts Smith's quest to bring the coastal spot's plight to the world, as aided by activist Kiyoshi (Ryô Kase, To the Ends of the Earth), Minamata does boast one crucial factor — other than its grim real-life basis. Whether seen for the first time or the thousandth, Smith's photos of Minamata residents afflicted with mercury poisoning (or Minamata disease, as the severe neurological condition particular to the town has been dubbed) are nothing short of striking. Indeed, they say so much in their single frames that a movie like Minamata was always going to feel as if it's merely sketching in filler details around these unforgettable images. As a director working with first-timer David Kessler's script, Levitas clearly understands this, and obviously appreciates the weight and importance of Smith's revelatory snaps. Accordingly, the film is as much an origin story for these famous pictures as it is an explainer for the context around them. The most recognisable photo of all — Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath, which depicts mother Ryoko Uemura bathing her daughter Tomoko — understandably garners the most focus. It's here that Minamata is at its most urgent and affecting, but so much that surrounds it proves the antithesis of Smith's shots: derivative and cliched. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on January 1, January 7, January 14, January 21 and January 28; February 4, February 11, February 18 and February 25; March 4, March 11, March 18 and March 25; and April 1, April 8, April 15, April 22 and April 29; and May 6, May 13, May 20 and May 27. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Nomadland, Pieces of a Woman, The Dry, Promising Young Woman, Summerland, Ammonite, The Dig, The White Tiger, Only the Animals, Malcolm & Marie, News of the World, High Ground, Earwig and the Witch, The Nest, Assassins, Synchronic, Another Round, Minari, Firestarter — The Story of Bangarra, The Truffle Hunters, The Little Things, Chaos Walking, Raya and the Last Dragon, Max Richter's Sleep, Judas and the Black Messiah, Girls Can't Surf, French Exit, Saint Maud, Godzilla vs Kong, The Painter and the Thief, Nobody, The Father, Willy's Wonderland, Collective, Voyagers, Gunda, Supernova, The Dissident, The United States vs Billie Holiday, First Cow, Wrath of Man, Locked Down, The Perfect Candidate, Those Who Wish Me Dead, Spiral: From the Book of Saw, Ema, A Quiet Place Part II, Cruella and My Name Is Gulpilil.
Parlour Song is an exercise in suburban surrealism, the stuff of American Beauty and Desperate Housewives. Exploring the tangled web between three neighbours in two couples, the plot swerves between the utterly unbelievable and the eerily relatable. Dale is a lovable larrikin, responsible for a car wash chain and the mental stability of his eccentric friend, Ned. Ned's difficulties stem from a deteriorating relationship with his wife and the absurdity of his belongings consistently disappearing without explanation. The plot thickens as Dale becomes entangled in Ned and Joy's relationship, making it impossible for him to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground. Imagery permeates the script as well as the production, with recurring references to lemons, scrabble and demolition. Carefully constructed soundscapes interact with projected video, turning what could be a tacky YouTube-watching section into a strangely moving experience. Matt Dyktynski channels his stand-up comedy skills in his portrayal of Dale, an often hilarious performance which serves as the linchpin of this production — but the star is the script itself. English playwright Jez Butterworth's reputation precedes him; the twists, turns and tender moments of Parlour Song prove it's all deserved. Image by Patrick Boland.
Cinemas are glorious. There's nowhere better to see a movie. When you're watching a film in the cosy confines of a darkened room, communing devotedly with the projected picture flickering before your eyes, that viewing experience simply can't be beaten. But hitting up your streaming queue instead isn't just for filling time on the couch or catching up on flicks you might've missed on the big screen. And, features that don't get a theatrical run shouldn't be stigmatised by the 'direct-to-streaming' label. Thanks to the ever-growing array of online viewing options, movie buffs can now see more new movies than ever before. Smaller flicks that were never going to reach cinemas, international favourites that would only screen at festivals Down Under otherwise, new releases by big-name filmmakers not getting funding elsewhere: they've all been making their way to us thanks to streaming. In 2022, that online-only roster of features dropped new must-see titles every single month, and came overflowing with fantastic fare. Back in July, we picked the best 15 straight-to-streaming films of 2022's first six months. Now, with a whole year behind us, we've cast our eyes of the entire 12-month period. As a result, we've already sung the praises of some of our overall top 15 straight-to-streaming gems for 2022 — but the very best deserve all the love all the time. Catch up with them from your couch ASAP. KIMI For the second year in a row, Steven Soderbergh has made one of the year's best movies and it has completely bypassed Australian cinemas. Unlike 2021's No Sudden Move, however, Kimi was always destined for streaming. The latest in his series of paranoid thrillers that also includes Contagion, and once again female-fronted as Haywire, Side Effects and Unsane were too, this Zoë Kravitz-starring standout takes its cues from smart devices, humanity's increasing dependence upon technology, and the kinds of events that a virtual assistant like Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant might eavesdrop on. As a result, Soderbergh has crafted another movie that riffs on a growing area of real-life interest, then turns it into a tense, potent and devilishly smart feature. A bonus: focusing on a protagonist who doesn't feel safe leaving her house, Kimi couldn't better capture how the pandemic has felt without overtly needing to be a COVID-19 film. Kravitz (The Batman) plays Angela Childs, who works for Seattle-based tech corporation Amygdala from the comfort of her own sprawling loft — and from her own audiophile's dream of a computer setup — listening to snippets of conversation captured by smart speaker Kimi for quality assurance. In one clip, she hears what she believes to be a horrible crime and is compelled to follow up; however, her bosses aren't thrilled about her probing. Complicating matters: after being the victim of an assault a couple of years earlier, Angela suffers from anxiety and agoraphobia, making leaving the house to investigate a fraught task. As he did to particularly stellar effect in Unsane as well, Soderbergh styles his latest psychological thriller after its protagonist's mindset, making unease and suspense drop from every aesthetic choice — camera angles and placement, jittery frames and a voyeuristic perspective all included. Kimi streams via Binge. ATHENA When a director uses a single take for a lengthy sequence, an episode of television or an entire film — even with some editing trickery to help — it usually isn't just a gimmick. As everything from The Bear to 1917 have shown, there's urgency and immediacy in that stylistic approach. Given that Athena plunges into a powderkeg situation in a French neighbourhood that shares the movie's moniker, with the banlieue's residents understandably incensed after the brutal killing of a teenager from their midst by law enforcement, this latest stunner from writer/director Romain Gavras (after the excellent The World Is Yours) was always going to feel unrelenting, inescapably tense and utterly in-the-moment anyway. See also: 2019 French Oscar-nominee Les Misérables, similarly about the response to police violence, which was penned and helmed by Athena's co-screenwriter Ladj Ly. Still, the unbroken shot that opens Gavras' latest spectacular film is up there with 2022's best in any feature. Long takes pop up often in Athena, which starts with French soldier Abdel (Dali Benssalah, No Time to Die) confronting the fact that his 13-year-old brother Idir (first-timer Mohamed Amri) is dead — and, as seen in online footage, that the cops are responsible. He's managing to keep calm, however, until another of his siblings Karim (debutant Sami Slimane) throws a Molotov cocktail inside a crowded police station. Cinematographer Matias Boucard (Eiffel) captures it all without looking away, and keeps doing the same as they return home, with Athena soon under siege as the authorities swarm in and the home crowd explodes with anger. Even when edits come, this is an unflagging and unflinching feature, as aided by close-up and handheld camerawork, impassioned performances, its topical storyline and staggering action cinematography. Athena uses its aesthetics to make a statement, too, about race, power and inequality — and it firmly knows that this tale can only be a tragedy. Athena streams via Netflix. WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR "Hey guys, Casey here. Welcome to my channel. Today I'm going to be taking the World's Fair Challenge." So says We're All Going to the World's Fair's protagonist (feature newcomer Anna Cobb) twice to start this absorbing horror film, to camera, in what makes a spectacular opening sequence. Next, an eerie wave of multicoloured light flashes across her face. Watching her response brings the also-excellent She Dies Tomorrow to mind, but Casey has her own viral phenomenon to deal with. She's doing what she says she will, aka viewing a strobing video, uttering a pivotal phrase and then smearing blood across her laptop screen — and she promises to document anything that changes afterwards, because others have made those kinds of reports. Written, directed and edited by fellow feature debutant Jane Schoenbrun, the instantly eerie and intriguing We're All Going to the World's Fair is that record. Schoenbrun's film is more than that, however. It also charts the connections that spring and splinter around Casey just by joining the online trend, where her videos spark others in return — and the spirals she goes down as she watches, which then sparks a response in her own way, too. A portrait of isolation and alienation as well, while chronicling the after effects of playing a virtual horror game, We're All Going to the World's Fair is also a picture of an always-recorded world. Take your lockdown mindset, your social-media scrolling, all that Zooming that defined the beginning of the pandemic and a gamer vibe, roll them all together, and that's still not quite this arresting movie — which keeps shifting and evolving just like Cobb's enigmatic and evocative performance. The entire flick earns that description and, not that it needs an established name's tick of approval, the fact that The Green Knight and A Ghost Story director David Lowery is an executive producer speaks volumes. We're All Going to the World's Fair streams via Shudder. GREAT FREEDOM Great Freedom begins with 60s-style video footage captured in public bathrooms, showing Hans Hoffmann (Franz Rogowski, Undine) with other men, and with court proceedings that condemn him to prison purely for being gay. That was the reality in West Germany at the time due to Paragraph 175, which criminalised homosexuality — and, when he's incarcerated at the start of this equally tender and brutal Austrian film, Hans isn't surprised. He's been there before, as writer/director Sebastian Meise (Still Life) conveys almost like he's chronicling time travel. It's a canny touch, as relayed in the movie's cinematography, editing and overall mood. The minutes, days, hours, weeks and more surely move differently when you've been locked up for being who you are, and when being in jail is the better alternative to being in a concentration camp. Meise jumps between Hans' different stretches, exploring the imprint all that time behind bars leaves, the yearning for love and freedom that never dissipates, and his friendship with initially repulsed fellow inmate Viktor (Georg Friedrich, Freud). In the process, Great Freedom resounds with intimate moments and revealing performances, as anchored by another stellar turn by Rogowski. The German talent has had an outstanding few years thanks to Victoria, Happy End, Transit, In the Aisles and Undine. He's as absorbing as he's ever been here, too, in a movie that stares his way so intently — and with such a striking sense of light and shade — that it could be painting his portrait. Friedrich is just as impressive, in an outwardly thorny part. Great Freedom streams via SBS On Demand. RESURRECTION Another year, another engrossing thriller starring Rebecca Hall. Another film giving the English actor a new standout performance for her packed resume, too. After proving remarkable in 2021's The Night House, and also turning director with the marvellously moving Passing, Hall plays a woman virtually synonymous with tension in the sleek and twisty Resurrection. Even when her character, Margaret, is calm and empathetic at her job in pharmaceuticals, including while counselling her junior colleagues, unease flickers in her haunted eyes and rigid posture. When she's fussing over her almost 18-year-old daughter Abbie's (Grace Kaufman, The Sky Is Everywhere) comings and goings, such as soon leaving for college, Margaret comes off as overprotective — but with a tormented edge. Resurrection lingers in this feeling, teasing out the details behind it while also making it plain that constantly being on guard can be a reality thanks to traumas and simply life. Indeed, thanks to his ambiguous tale, writer/director Andrew Semans (Nancy, Please) ensures that that sensation remains even when Margaret's demeanour and behaviour gets an explanation. If a human tooth suddenly showed up in your daughter's wallet, an eerie man from your past (Tim Roth, Sundown) re-emerged after two decades and the worst pain you'd ever experienced was drudged up again, you'd find it impossible to remain composed and collected, too. As Resurrection thrusts Margaret through her own personal horror show, it isn't concerned with simply showing a woman unravelling — rather, it focuses on a woman pushed to her limits by tragedy, malevolence, manipulation and one helluva toxic man. Semans's knack for crafting a skin-crawlingly unsettling atmosphere is immense, and so is his willingness to take gloriously unhinged swings and his talent for casting. It's no wonder that the film can barely look away from Hall, who is stellar from start to finish but next-level astounding during a lengthy monologue and a big confrontation. And as for Roth, creepy doesn't even begin to describe his work here. Resurrection streams via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. CAUSEWAY Trauma is a screenwriter's best friend. If on-screen characters didn't have past stresses to overcome or new hardships to cope with — usually both — then dramatic scripts would barely last a few pages. Neither would horror flicks, or thrillers, or plenty of comedies; however, few films are happy to sit with trauma in the way that (and as well as) Causeway does. Starring Jennifer Lawrence (Don't Look Up) as a military veteran sent home from Afghanistan after being blown up, working her way through rehab and determined to re-enlist as soon as she has medical sign-off, this subtle, thoughtful and powerful movie grapples with several stark truths. It knows that some woes do genuinely change lives, and not for the better. It's well aware that many miseries can't be overcome, and completely alter the person experiencing them. It's keenly cognisant that that simply existing can be a series of heartbreaks, and escaping that cycle can be the most powerful motivator in the world. And, when Atlanta and Bullet Train's Brian Tyree Henry enters the picture as a New Orleans mechanic with his own history, it sees the solace that can be found between people willing to face their tough realities together. When Causeway begins, Lawrence's Lynsey is freshly out of hospital, and learning how to walk, dress, shower, drive and do all other everyday tasks again. Even then, she still wants to redeploy. Directed by feature first-timer Lila Neugebauer (The Sex Lives of College Girls), and penned by fellow debutants Ottessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel and Elizabeth Sanders, the film spies the determination in its protagonist's eyes — and the pain she's trying to bury after she goes home to stay with her mother (Linda Emond, The Patient), gets drawn into old unhealthy dynamics, but finds a friend in Henry's kind, eager but haunted James. There's no cross-country drive with a canine, if the similarly themed Dog comes to mind, but rather a willingness to steep in Lynsey and James' complicated emotions. Neugebauer has the perfect central duo for the movie's key parts, too; neither Lawrence nor Henry's resumes are short on highlights, acclaim or award nominations, but their respective textured, naturalistic and deeply felt performances in Causeway ranks among each's best work. Causeway streams via Apple TV+. FRESH Finally, a film about dating in the 21st century with real bite — and that's unafraid to sink its teeth into the topic. In this hit Sundance horror-comedy, Normal People's Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Noa, and once again gets entangled in a romance that'll leave a mark; here, however, the scars aren't merely emotional. Swiping right hasn't been doing it for Fresh's protagonist, as a comically terrible date with the appropriately named Chad (Brett Dier, Jane the Virgin) demonstrates early. Then sparks fly the old-fashioned way, in-person at the supermarket, with the curiously offline doctor Steve (Sebastian Stan, Pam & Tommy). Soon, he's whisking her away to a secluded spot for the weekend — a little too swiftly for Noa's protective best friend Mollie's (Jojo T Gibbs, Twenties) liking, especially given that no one can virtually stalk his socials to scope him out — and that getaway takes a savage and nightmare-fuelling twist. If Raw met Ex Machina, then crossed paths with American Psycho and Hostel, and finally made the acquaintance of any old rom-com, Fresh still wouldn't be the end result — but its tone stems from those parts, as do some plot points and performances, and even a few scenes as well. First-time feature director Mimi Cave doesn't butcher these limbs, though, and screenwriter Lauryn Kahn (Ibiza) doesn't stitch them together like Frankenstein's monster. As anchored by the excellent Edgar-Jones and Stan, there's care, savvy, smarts and style in this splatter-filled, satirical, brutal, funny, empowered and sweet film. Its twists, and its cutting take on predatory dating, are best discovered by watching, but being turned off apps, men and meat in tandem is an instant gut reaction. Fresh streams via Disney+. COW As its name so clearly explains, Cow devotes its frames to one farmyard animal — and it's one of the most haunting films of the past few years. It's the third feature to take its title from a four-legged critter in the past two years, after the vastly dissimilar Pig and Lamb. It's also the second observational documentary of late to peer at the daily existence of creatures that form part of humanity's food chain, following the also-exceptional Gunda. And, it also joins 2013's The Moo Man in honing its focus specifically upon dairy farming, and in Britain at that. But the key to Cow is Andrea Arnold, the phenomenal filmmaker behind Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights, American Honey and the second season of Big Little Lies. She sees Luma, her bovine protagonist, with as much affection and understanding as she's ever seen any of the women who've led her projects. While watching, viewers do as well. Starting with the birth of Luma's latest calf — and, in the beginning, taking detours to see how it's faring as well — Cow unfurls with the rhythm of its agricultural setting. It's the rhythm of Luma's life, too, as she's milked and fed, moos for the offspring that's taken away too quickly, and is soon impregnated again. There's no doubt where the documentary is headed, either. There's simply no shying away from the fact that Luma and cattle like her only exist for milk or meat. Without ever offering any narration or on-screen explanation, Arnold stares at these facts directly, while also peering deeply into its bovine subject's eyes as often as possible. The result is hypnotic, inescapably affecting, and also features the best use of Garbage's 'Milk' ever in a movie. Cow streams via DocPlay. I'M YOUR MAN Since 2013, any film that's involved making an emotional connection with artificial intelligence has brought Her to mind. Since 2014, any movie about human-android relationships has conjured up Ex Machina as well. And, since 2007, any flick that focuses on the companionship that a lonely human soul might find in an artificial companion has walked in Lars and the Real Girl's footsteps, too. In smart, perceptive and warmly humorous German gem I'm Your Man, however, it's a woman who is opening her life to a male presence — an AI-run robot designed to be her perfect match — and she's not too happy about it. Archaeologist Dr Alma Felser (Maren Egger, I Was at Home, But) is merely and begrudgingly testing out the technology that brings Tom (Dan Stevens, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga) into her life, for three weeks at the behest of her boss at Berlin's Pergamon Museum, and solely for the good of science. I'm Your Man is a rom-com, which means exactly what viewers think it does going in: that Alma slowly starts rethinking her position on Tom. But that's about the only aspect of this thoughtful, witty and yearning exploration of what it means to be human and to truly connect that does what's expected. Fresh from winning an Emmy for directing Unorthodox — and making this before helming She Said — German filmmaker Maria Schrader helms a charming and insightful take on what's beginning to be an oft-considered topic, and is unpacked in a moving and delightful way in her hands. Her film is also extremely well cast, with Egger thoroughly deserving her 2021 Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Acting Performance as Alma, and Stevens pitch-perfect as the supposed robotic man of her dreams — who just wants love himself. I'm Your Man streams via Binge. NANNY In Nanny, Aisha (Anna Diop, Us) is haunted, both when she's asleep and awake. Her slumbers are disturbed by nightmares, but seeing rising waters and unwelcome spiders isn't just relegated to when the Senegalese woman in New York closes her eyes. A gut-wrenching sense of unease also lingers while she works, after securing a childminding job for rich Upper East Side residents Amy (Michelle Monaghan, Echoes) and Adam (Morgan Spector, The Gilded Age). Their five-year-old daughter Rose (Rose Decker, Mare of Easttown) adores Aisha — more than her parents, it often seems. And, the nannying gig helps Aisha distract herself from missing her own son, who she's desperately trying to bring over to the US. She's haunted by his absence, too, and by the stolen snippets of conversation she gets with him on the phone, constantly juggling the time difference. The supernatural disturbances plaguing Aisha and her feelings about leaving her child in Senegal to chase a better future for them both are clearly linked, although Nanny is atmospheric and insightful rather than blunt and overt. The first horror film to win Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize, this evocative effort hails from writer/director Nikyatu Jusu, who makes her feature-length debut with quite the calling card. 2022 isn't short on affectingly moody and evocative female-focused thrillers with a maternal bent — see: Resurrection above, which also debuted at Sundance — but Nanny's addition to the fold is deeply steeped in Aisha's immigrant experience. Thanks to all that otherworldly water, it feels like it's always steeping, in fact, soaking in the troubles and struggles of trying to snatch even a piece of the American dream when you're not wealthy, white and originally from the so-called land of the free. Also prominent: the dispiriting minutiae of Aisha's day, aka exactly what she has to endure to even have a chance of gaining what comes easily and obliviously to her employers. Like its central figure, Nanny is haunted several times over, too. Nanny streams via Prime Video. PREY No stranger to voicing iconic lines, Arnold Schwarzenegger uttered one of his best-known phrases yet 35 years ago, in a franchise that's still going today. "If it bleeds, we can kill it" has been quoted frequently ever since — even by champion AFL coaches — and it's no spoiler to mention that it pops up again in the latest Predator film Prey. Trotting out that piece of dialogue won't surprise anyone, but this fine-tuned action-thriller should. It's one of the saga's best entries, serving up a lean, taut and thoughtful kill-or-be-killed battle set in the Comanche Nation 300 years ago. The Predator series hasn't been big on highlights over the years — Predator 2 is forgettable to put it nicely, 2010's Predators is effective, 2018's The Predator favoured its throwback vibes above all else, and the two terrible Alien vs Predator cross-over films are best left forgotten — however Prey not only breathes new life into it, but paves a welcome path for more. (Bring on a Prey sequel ASAP.) The overall premise remains the same, with the franchise's ruthless, brutal and technologically advanced alien species using earth as its hunting ground as the series has already established — and showing zero concern about leaving a body count. Trained healer Naru (Amber Midthunder, The Ice Road) is the first to notice that something is awry this time, spotting the predator's spaceship in the sky and taking it as a sign to follow her dream to become a hunter herself. Alas, that isn't the done thing. In fact, she's spent her entire life being told that she can't be like her brother Taabe (first-timer Dakota Beavers), and should focus on her assigned role instead. Now, even with an extra-terrestrial foe wreaking havoc, she's still dismissed at every turn. Midthunder plays Naru as a fierce, determined, persistent and resourceful force to be reckoned with, while writer/director Dan Trachtenberg — co-scripting with Jack Ryan's Patrick Aison — gives all things Predator the taut focus, canny shift and fresh feel he also gave the Cloverfield saga with 10 Cloverfield Lane. Prey streams via Disney+. HELLBENDER Meet the Adams family — no, not the creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky characters that've featured on pages and screens for decades (including in 2022 newcomer Wednesday, plus two terrible recent animated flicks), but the filmmaking collective comprised of couple Toby Poser and John Adams, plus their daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams. The quartet might be missing a letter from their well-known counterparts' names, but they're just as fond of all things horror. Case in point: their second feature Hellbender, a self-financed standout that's both a spellbinding tale of witchcraft and a clever coming-of-age story. It starts in a house in the woods, and also spends most of its time there. It includes the arrival of an unexpected stranger, shattering the status quo. But formulaic and by-the-numbers, this must-see isn't. In making first-rate use of its setting, and of a cast that's primarily comprised of Adams family members, it's also a masterclass in lockdown filmmaking. In the most expected aspect of Hellbender, the film's name does indeed refer to a punk-metal band, with 16-year-old Izzy (Zelda Adams, The Deeper You Dig) and her mother (Toby Poser) its sole members. No one else has ever heard them play, either, given that Izzy is both homeschooled and confined to the family's sprawling mountainside property, as she has been since she was five. Her mum tells her that she can't venture into town or around other people due to a contagious autoimmune disease; however, when a lost man (John Adams) wanders their way and mentions that his teenage niece Amber (Lulu Adams) lives nearby, Izzy gets the confidence to go exploring. As both written and directed by three out of four Adams family members — all except Lulu — Hellbender proves an impressive supernatural affair from its opening occult-heavy prologue through to its astute take on teen rebellion. Here's hoping this Adams family spirits up more DIY horror delights soon, too. Hellbender streams via Shudder. APOLLO 10 1/2: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD In 1969, the year that Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood is set, writer/director Richard Linklater was nine years old and living in Houston, Texas. This lovely animated film happens to follow a boy around the same age in the same city — and trust the filmmaker behind Boyhood, Dazed and Confused, and the glorious trio that is Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight to make viewers who weren't there then (who weren't even alive and have never been to America, too) to feel as nostalgic about the place and era as he clearly does. As narrated by his Bernie and The School of Rock star Jack Black, the film's entire middle section dances through memories of the time and city with infectious enthusiasm, but its biggest dose of affection radiates towards the technological promise of the 60s. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions were rocketing into space and it patently felt like anything was possible, a sensation so marvellously captured in each second of Apollo 10 1/2. Jumping back into the rotoscoped animation that served Linklater so well in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, this loving ode to years and moods gone by also sports a delightful premise. As his older guise (Black) explains, young Stan (debutant Milo Coy) was an ordinary Houston kid with a NASA-employed dad (Bill Wise, Waves), doting mum (Lee Eddy, Cruel Summer) and five older siblings when he was approached by two men (Shazam!'s Zachary Levi and Top Gun: Maverick's Glen Powell) to help them with a problem. In the lead up to Apollo 11, it seems that NASA accidentally built the lunar module a couple of sizes too small, so they need a kid — Stan — to help them by going to the moon to test things out before Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins make their famous trip in a bigger version. That fantastical idea feels ripped from Linklater's childhood dreams, and it well might be; it also makes for a warm and charming entry point into a movie that's as much about life's ups and downs, the bonds of family and the wide-eyed optimism of youth as it is about heading to space. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood streams via Netflix. ASCENSION Ascension may not be one of this year's Oscar-winners, losing out to the also fantastic Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), but it'll always be among 2022's nominees. More than that, this two-time Tribeca Film Festival winner will forever remain one of the most arresting documentaries of the past 12 months as well. Helming her first feature-length doco, filmmaker Jessica Kingdon turns her gaze to the Chinese dream — and what she sees, while situated in a very specific cultural context by design, is a clear and easy sibling to its American counterpart. That's part of the statement her film makes, all just by watching on patiently but meticulously as people go about their lives. Starting with factory recruitment on the streets, then moving into mass production, then climbing the social hierarchy up to the rich and privileged, Ascension explores employment and consumerism — and what they mean in an everyday sense in modern-day and modernised China. It's a portrait of the needs that make working on assembly lines a necessity, and of the dreams that inspire every climb, rung by rung, up the societal ladder. Some folks build sex dolls, their uncanny valley-esque forms adding an eerie mood. Others take lessons on etiquette for service jobs, including about not letting your face betray your emotions, and the tone is also unsettling. Observational to a mesmerising degree, Kingdon's exceptional film lets its slices of life and the behaviour, attitudes and patterns they capture do the talking, and they all speak volumes. Indeed, what a clever, telling, incisive and surreal story they unfurl. Ascension streams via Paramount+. TURNING RED What'd happen if the Hulk was a teenage girl, and turned into a giant, fuzzy, super-cute red panda instead of going green and getting ultra-muscular? Or, finding a different riff on the ol' werewolf situation, if emotions rather than full moons inspired a case of not-quite-lycanthropy? These aren't queries that most folks have thought of, but writer/director Domee Shi certainly has — and they're at the core of Pixar's Turning Red, her debut feature after winning an Oscar for 2018 short Bao. As many of the animation studio's movies do, the film takes its title literally. But, it also spins the usual Pixar question. Turning Red does indeed wonder what'd happen if red pandas sported human-style emotions; however, the Disney-owned company has been musing on people becoming other kinds of critters of late, with particularly astute and endearing results here. The movie's focus: 13-year-old Chinese Canadian Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang, also making her film debut). The year is 2002, and she loves meeting her strict but doting mum Ming's (Sandra Oh, The Chair) expectations, hanging out with her pals and obsessing over boy band 4*Town. And while her mother doesn't approve of her friends or her taste in music, Mei has become accustomed to juggling everything that's important to her. But then, after a boy-related mishap, the red panda appears. Mei goes to bed feeling normal, albeit angsty and upset, only to wake up looking like a cuddly creature. Like werewolf tales about teenage boys tend to be, Turning Red is all about puberty and doesn't hide it — and whether it's tackling that head-on, pondering generational trauma or showing its rampant love for boy bands, it sports sweetness, soul and smarts. Turning Red streams via Disney+. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing highlights? Check out our list of film and TV streaming recommendations, which is updated monthly. We've also picked 15 exceptional films that hardly anyone saw in cinemas in 2022, the 15 best returning TV series of the year, 2022's 15 best new shows and 15 other excellent TV newcomers from the past 12 months that you might've missed.
It's happening again: if a particular hit murder-mystery comedy is going to keep living up to its title, there's set to be another murder in the building. Viewers are currently watching what happens when someone is killed in New York's fictional Arconia complex for the fourth time, thanks to Only Murders in the Building season four — and a fifth round is now on the way as well. Everyone is already well-aware of the show's setup, too. Each season, a new murder takes place in the apartment tower that its main sleuthing trio call home. It was true in 2021's season one, 2022's season two and 2023's season three, as well as in the now-streaming season four. When season five will arrive hasn't been revealed, but the series has been dropping new episodes annually so far. Variety reports that there'll be ten episodes in the fifth season — so, ten more chances to see Selena Gomez (The Dead Don't Die), Steve Martin (It's Complicated) and Martin Short (Schmigadoon!) as neighbours and podcasters Mabel Mora, Charles-Haden Savage and Oliver Putnam. There's no word yet on guest stars, with Only Murders in the Building fond of enlisting plenty of other famous faces. Sometimes they play themselves, as Sting (The Book of Solutions) and Amy Schumer (IF) have. Sometimes the show gets Meryl Streep (Don't Look Up), Paul Rudd (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire), Tina Fey (Mean Girls) and more into character. At present, in a season that's also taken them to Hollywood, Mabel, Charles and Oliver are looking into the death of Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch, Velma), Charles' stunt double. They're also grappling with the fact that a Tinseltown studio wants to turn their podcast into a film. Cue Molly Shannon (The Other Two), Eugene Levy (Schitt's Creek), Eva Longoria (Tell It Like a Woman) and Zach Galifianakis (The Beanie Bubble) all popping up, with season four's new cast members also including Melissa McCarthy (Unfrosted), Kumail Nanjiani (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) and Richard Kind (Girls5eva). Alongside Short, Gomez and Martin, plus Lynch, fellow long-running Only Murders in the Building regulars Michael Cyril Creighton (American Fiction) and Da'Vine Joy Randolph (a newly minted Oscar-winner for The Holdovers) are also a part of season four. As always, knowing that there'll be another death in the Arconia doesn't mean knowing what's to come in season five — other than Mabel, Charles and Oliver getting sleuthing, with a heap of fellow big-name talent both helping and hindering their investigations. There's obviously no trailer yet for season five, but check out the full trailer for Only Murders in the Building season four below: Only Murders in the Building streams Down Under via Star on Disney+, with season four streaming now. Season five does not yet have a release date. Read our reviews of season one, season two and season three. Via Variety.
Throughout 2021, Marvel and Disney+ have been showering viewers with new TV series, all featuring characters we all know and love from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, you've probably watched Loki get up to his trickster antics in Loki, and seen The Falcon and The Winter Soldier team up in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. And, you likely now have Hawkeye's next adventures in the upcoming Hawkeye on your radar as well. Yes, these MCU streaming series couldn't have more straightforward names. Yes, Marvel has now turned watching TV into big-screen homework, given that its movie franchise keeps hitting cinemas (thanks to Black Widow and Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings already this year, and with Eternals and Spider-Man: No Way Home still to come before 2021 is out). And yes, the first of these new MCU Disney+ shows finally made everyone take notice of the always-great Kathryn Hahn, who stole every scene she was in each and every time she popped up in WandaVision. Obviously, WandaVision was about Marvel characters Wanda and Vision, with Avengers: Endgame's Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprising their roles. But Hahn also played a significant part as neighbour-slash-witch Agatha Harkness, even nabbing an Emmy nomination for her efforts. So, because she was such a fan favourite, she's now getting her own show. Variety reports that the series will be a dark comedy about Agatha, starring Hahn; however, details beyond that are currently under wraps. But the character has a considerable history, only some of which WandaVision dived into. In comic books, she's been around since the 70s — and, story-wise, her tale dates back to the Salem witch trials. The news — and the world's reaction to the glorious Hahn — won't come as a surprise if you've been watching the exceptional actor throughout her pre-Marvel career. She stole scenes in Parks and Recreation, Transparent and I Know This Much Is True as well, and made an impact in movies as varied as Revolutionary Road, Our Idiot Brother and the Bad Moms flicks. And, she's also exceptional in Netflix film Private Life as well. Exactly when Marvel and Disney+'s Hahn-led Agatha Harkness spinoff will arrive hasn't been revealed. But, you can get the Emmy-winning 'Agatha All Along' tune stuck in your head again now until more news drops: WandaVision is currently available to stream via Disney+. When Marvel and Disney+'s Agatha Harkness spinoff will drop hasn't yet been revealed — we'll update you when more information is announced. Via Variety. Image: Suzanne Tenner, Marvel Studios.
When all else fails, escape into cinema: that's the movie-lover's mantra. There's nothing quite like staring at the silver screen in a cavernous theatre, soaking in its shimmering sights with nothing else but darkness around you and communing with the artform as it flickers by at 24 frames per second. And, that's a truth that remained intact in 2021, even with temporary pandemic-induced cinema closures once again part of our reality for another year. As anyone who yearned to watch a film somewhere other than their own couch knows — to revel in the escape that only these celluloid dreams bring, too — absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder. Whether picture palaces near you were up and running or affected by lockdowns, they still screened a wealth of fantastic movies in 2021. They showed terrible ones as well, but that always comes with the territory. We watched and reviewed them all each week no matter what, exceptional and terrible alike, and somehow managed to whittle all the standout flicks down to this: our picks for the year's 12 absolute best movies. 2021 might've been another swirl of chaos in general, but movie magic always delivers. THE POWER OF THE DOG Don't call it a comeback: Jane Campion's films have been absent from cinemas for 12 years but, due to miniseries Top of the Lake, she hasn't been biding her time in that gap. And don't call it simply returning to familiar territory, even if the New Zealand director's new movie features an ivory-tinkling woman caught between cruel and sensitive men, as her Cannes Palme d'Or-winner The Piano did three decades ago. Campion isn't rallying after a dip, just as she isn't repeating herself. She's never helmed anything less than stellar, and she's immensely capable of unearthing rich new pastures in well-ploughed terrain. With The Power of the Dog, Campion is at the height of her skills trotting into her latest mesmerising musing on strength, desire and isolation — this time via a venomous western that's as perilously bewitching as its mountainous backdrop. That setting is Montana, circa 1925. Campion's homeland stands in for America nearly a century ago, making a magnificent sight — with cinematographer Ari Wegner (Zola, True History of the Kelly Gang) perceptively spying danger in its craggy peaks and dusty plains even before the film introduces Rose and Peter Gordon (On Becoming a God in Central Florida's Kirsten Dunst and 2067's Kodi Smit-McPhee). When the widowed innkeeper and her teenage son serve rancher brothers Phil and George Burbank (Spider-Man: No Way Home's Benedict Cumberbatch a career-best, awards-worthy, downright phenomenal turn, plus Antlers' Jesse Plemons) during a cattle-run stop, the encounter seesaws from callousness to kindness, a dynamic that continues after Rose marries George and decamps to the Burbank mansion against that stunning backdrop. Brutal to the lanky, lisping Peter from the outset, Phil responds to the nuptials with malice. He isn't fond of change, and won't accommodate anything that fails his bristling definition of masculinity and power, either. Read our full review. FIRST COW Gone are the days when every image that flickered across the screen did so within an almost square-shaped frame. So, when a director today fits their visuals into a much tighter space than the now-expansive norm, it's an intentional choice. They're not just nodding to the past, even if their film takes place in times gone by. With First Cow, for instance, Kelly Reichardt unfurls a story set in 19th-century America, but she's also honing her audience's focus. The Certain Women filmmaker wants those guiding their eyeballs towards this exquisite movie to truly survey everything that it peers at, to see its central characters — chef Otis 'Cookie' Figowitz (John Magaro, Overlord) and Chinese entrepreneur King-Lu (Orion Lee, Zack Snyder's Justice League) — and to realise that neither are ever afforded such attention by the others in their fictional midst. There's much to take in throughout this magnificently told tale, which heads to Oregon as most of Reichardt's movies have. In its own quiet, closely observed, deeply affectionate and warm-hearted fashion, First Cow is a heist movie, although the filmmaker's gentle and insightful spin on the usually slick and twist-filled genre bucks every convention there is. It first meets Cookie as he's searching for food, and meets King-Lu when Cookie helps him evade a group of Russians. The seeds of friendship are sown and, when the duo next crosses paths, they spend an alcohol-addled night sharing their respective ideas for the future. Those ambitious visions get a helping hand after the Chief Factor (Toby Jones, Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom) ships in the region's highly coveted first cow, with Cookie and King-Lu secretly milking the animal in the dark of night, then using the stolen liquid to make highly sought-after — and highly profitable — oily cakes. Read our full review. LICORICE PIZZA A Star Is Born has already graced the titles of four different films, and Licorice Pizza isn't one of them. Paul Thomas Anderson's ninth feature, and his loosest since Boogie Nights — his lightest since ever, too — does boast a memorable Bradley Cooper performance, though. That said, this 70s- and San Fernando Valley-set delight isn't quite about seeking fame, then navigating its joys and pitfalls, although child actors and Hollywood's ups and downs all figure into the narrative. Licorice Pizza definitely births two new on-screen talents, however, both putting in two of 2021's best performances and two of the finest-ever movie debuts. That's evident from the film's very first sublimely grainy 35-millimetre-shot moments, as Alana Haim of Haim (who PTA has directed several music videos for) and Cooper Hoffman (son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, a PTA regular) do little more than chat, stroll and charm. The radiant Haim plays Alana Kane, a Valley dweller of 25 or 28 (her story changes) working as a photographer's assistant, which brings her to a Tarzana high school on yearbook picture day. Enter the smoothly assured Hoffman as 15-year-old Gary Valentine, who is instantly smitten and tries to wrangle a date. From there, Licorice Pizza charts the pair's friendship as it circles and swirls, and as they often sprint towards each other — chronicling everything else going on in the San Fernando Valley, where PTA himself grew up, too. The result is a shaggy slice-of-life film that Anderson has penned partly based on stories shared by Gary Goetzman, an ex-child talent turned frequent producer of Tom Hanks movies. Spanning everything from waterbed sales to high-tension truck drives — and child-acting stardom, gasoline shortages and mayoral campaigns as well — Anderson lets Licorice Pizza saunter along leisurely like it's just stepped out of the 70s itself, and coats it in that anything-can-happen vibe that only comes with youth. Read our full review. PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN Promising Young Woman would've made an excellent episode or season of Veronica Mars. That's meant as the highest compliment to both the bubblegum-hued take on the rape-revenge genre and the cult-status private detective series. Writer/director Emerald Fennell clearly isn't blind to the parallels between the two, even casting Veronica Mars stars Max Greenfield (New Girl) and Chris Lowell (GLOW) in her feature debut. Don't go thinking the Killing Eve season two showrunner and The Crown actor is simply following in other footsteps, though. At every moment, the brilliant and blistering Promising Young Woman vibrates with too much anger, energy and insight to merely be a copycat of something else. It's a film made with the savviest of choices, and provocative and downright fearless ones as well, in everything from its soundtrack to its weaponised pastel, peppy and popping Instagram-friendly imagery. Played by Carey Mulligan, and drawing upon her near-peerless ability to express complex internalised turmoil, Cassie Thomas is inebriated and alone at a nightclub when she's introduced. Three men discuss women over beverages by the bar, and notice Cassie while talking, with one commenting, "they put themselves in danger, girls like that". No woman brings sexual assault upon themselves, with this whole intelligent and astute revenge-thriller rebuffing the bro-ish bar guy's early observation in every way possible, and meting out punishment to those who think similarly. Cassie won't stand for such attitudes and, as she embarks upon a vigilante quest, the movie takes her to bold places. Boasting a relentlessness that mirrors the persistence of grief and pain after trauma, Promising Young Woman never lets its protagonist's rage subside, proving furious from start to finish — and sharing that feeling even in the film's most overt setups and obvious scenes (which are also some of its most entertaining) is a foregone conclusion. Read our full review. ANNETTE Dreamy and dazzling from its first moments, rock opera Annette bursts onto the screen with a question: "so may we start?". "Please do", fans of Holy Motors director Leos Carax should think to themselves, and devotees of Ron and Russell Mael as well — and yes the later, aka art-pop duo Sparks, are clearly having a moment in 2021 (see: The Sparks Brothers below). All three appear on-screen in Annette's opening, joined by Adam Driver (Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker), Marion Cotillard (We'll End Up Together) and Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory). In a glorious, song-fuelled, sing-and-walk scene, no one is playing a character yet, but they're all still playing a part. They're setting the vibe in a sensational way, and the tune is pure Sparks, with the pair both composing the movie's music and writing the feature itself with Carax. The tone bubbles with the duo's avant-garde sensibilities, too, and the whole song echoes with the promise of remarkable things to come. Nine years ago, Carax gave the world a once-in-a-lifetime gem. Annette is a different film to Holy Motors, obviously, but it gleams just as brightly and with the same beguiling, inimitable, all-encompassing allure. There's an ethereal, otherworldly quality to Carax's work — of heightening reality to truly understand how people feel and act, and of experimenting with artforms to interrogate them — and that sensation seeps through every second of his gleefully melodramatic musical, which deservedly won him the Cannes Film Festival's Best Director award. Everything about Annette has been turned up several notches on every setting, from its lush and lavish imagery to its cascade of toe-tapping, sung-through tunes that keep propelling the narrative forward. Every detail of that story has been amplified, too, as this tragic fairy tale follows standup comedian Henry McHenry (Driver), opera star Ann Defrasnoux's (Cotillard), their mismatched but passionate and all-consuming love, and their titular daughter — with the latter played by a marionette. Read our full review. NITRAM It's terrifying to contemplate something so gut-wrenchingly abominable as the bodies-in-barrels murders, which director Justin Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant depicted in 2011's Snowtown, and to face the fact that people rather than evil were behind them. Nitram courts and provokes the same response. Exploring the events preceding the Port Arthur massacre, where 35 people were murdered and 23 others wounded in Tasmania in 1996, it focuses on something equally as ghastly, and similarly refuses to see the perpetrator as just a monster or a Hollywood horror movie-style foe. It too is difficult, distressing, disquieting and disturbing, understandably. In their third collaboration — with 2019's blazing True History of the Kelly Gang in the middle — Kurzel and Grant create another tricky masterpiece, in fact. That Nitram is about a person is one key reason for its brilliance. The film's core off-screen duo don't excuse their protagonist. They don't justify the unjustifiable, explain it, exploit it or provide neat answers to a near-unfathomable crime. Rather, they're careful in depicting the lone gunman responsible for Australia's worst single-shooter mass killing, right down to refusing to name him. In an exacting movie in every way possible, they also benefit from exceptional performances by Caleb Landry Jones (Finch) as the film's namesake, Judy Davis (Mystery Road) as his wearied mother, Anthony LaPaglia (Below) as his father and Essie Davis (The Justice of Bunny King) as his lottery heiress friend. Read our full review. THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD Sometimes, a performance just flat-out shakes and startles you — in a good way, that is. In her 2021 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress-winning role, Norwegian actor Renate Reinsve (Phoenix) turns in that type of complex, layered, no-holds-barred and relatable portrayal. She's magnificent, and thoroughly deserves all of the shiny trophies sent her way. She plays Julie, a young Oslo resident who doesn't ever earn The Worst Person in the World's title, but nonetheless pinballs through the mess of her millennial life. Across 12 chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue, almost everything about the character's existence changes within the mere four years that the movie focuses on: dreams, goals, studies, careers, loved ones, boyfriends (including Bergman Island's Anders Danielsen Lie), apartments, friends and her perception of herself. That aforementioned moniker stems from a comment that Julie spits her own way, actually, because she's often aware of her own chaos. Writer/director Joachim Trier (Thelma) is just as cognisant of how romantic dramedies like this tend to turn out, which both feeds and enables Reinsve's astonishing performance — because this isn't the usual cliche-riddled affair. Every rise and fall that comes Julie's way transcends tropes to contemplate what growing up, being an adult and forging a life is really like, including at both the sunniest and the most heartbreaking extremes. As a character study, The Worst Person in the World is a masterpiece. As a snapshot of an age and life stage, it's just as canny, insightful and excellent. Read our full review. TITANE Eye roll-inducingly terrible bumper stickers be damned; no one honks if they're horny in Titane. Revving when aroused is more this petrol-doused body-horror film's style, spanning characters both flesh and chrome. When she's seen writhing in fishnets atop a flame-adorned vintage Cadillac, the stony-gazed Alexia (debutant Agathe Rousselle) is working. She's titillating a Fast and Furious-style car crowd with her sexed-up display, but the car model still seems to hum with every gyration. After wrapping up, murdering a grab-happy fan with the metal chopstick keeping her hair up and then showering off the gooey, gory evidence, she's soon purring rhythmically inside that gleaming vehicle. Yes, in a plot detail that spilled the instant Titane premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Palme d'Or, this is the French car sex flick. How does someone fornicate with an automobile? In her sophomore effort after the also-phenomenal teen cannibal film Raw, writer/director Julia Ducournau isn't too interested in those specifics. Instead, she's more concerned with shrewdly linking mechanophilia with agency and control, particularly over one's feelings and body. Her narrative starts its drive in Alexia's childhood, then speeds forward to her time as a fugitive posing as a fire chief's (Vincent Lindon, At War) long-missing son — and proves not just the French car sex film, nor merely a car sex movie about a woman partly forged from titanium (and with a penchant for piercing her way through those who block her road), but a ferocious and unflinching thriller that's also beautiful, tender and compassionate. If Ducournau had made her script out of metal, she'd be moulding it in its molten form. If her feature was a car instead, it'd be that libidinous, fire-emblazoned Cadillac, which arrives with a bang, lures Alexia in and then lets loose. Read our full review. THE SPARKS BROTHERS "All I do now is dick around" is an exquisite song lyric and, in Sparks' 2006 single 'Dick Around', it's sung with the operatic enthusiasm it demands. It's also a line that resounds with both humour and truth when uttered by Russell Mael, who, with elder brother Ron, has been crafting art-pop ditties as irreverent and melodic as this wonderful track since 1969. Sparks haven't been dicking around over that lengthy period. They currently have 25 albums to their name, and they've taken on almost every genre of music there is in their highly acerbic fashion. That said, their tunes are clearly the biggest labour of love possible, especially as the enigmatic duo has always lingered outside the mainstream. They're the band that all your favourite bands, actors and comedians can't get enough of, but they're hardly a household name — and yet, decade after decade, the Maels have kept playing around to make the smart, hilarious and offbeat songs they obviously personally adore. Everyone else should love Sparks' idiosyncratic earworms as well — and, even for those who've never heard of the band before, that's the outcome after watching The Sparks Brothers. Edgar Wright, one of the group's unabashed super fans, has turned his overflowing affection into an exceptional documentary. It's the Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho director's first factual effort, and it's even more charming and delightful than the films he's best known for. That said, it'd be hard to mess up a movie about Sparks, purely given how much material there is to work with. Russell and Ron, the former sporting shaggier hair and the latter donning a pencil-thin moustache rather than the Charlie Chaplin-style top lip he's brandished for much of his career, are also heavenly interviewees. That's the thing about these now-septuagenarian siblings, every Sparks tune they've ever blasted out into the world, and this comprehensive yet always accessible film that's instantly one of 2021's best: they're all joyously, fabulously, eccentrically fun to an infectious and buoyant degree. Read our full review. THE LOST DAUGHTER Watching Olivia Colman play a complicated woman is like staring at the ocean: it's never the same twice, it couldn't be more unpredictable, and all that surface texture bobs, floats, swells, gleams and glides atop leagues of unseen complexity. It's fitting, then, that The Lost Daughter tasks The Favourite Oscar-winner with glaring at the sea, and doing so both intently and often. A necessity of the narrative, as penned on the page by My Brilliant Friend's Elena Ferrante and adapted for the screen by actor-turned-filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, it's a touch that washes through the movie with extra force due to its star. Colman plays literature professor Leda, who fills much of her time peering at the water as she summers on a Greek island — and getting caught up in the lives of Nina (Dakota Johnson, The Nowhere Inn) and her frequently screaming toddler. While both gazing at the waves and taking in the onshore domestic dramas, Leda sees her own ebbs, flows, thorns and flaws reflected back. The idea that bringing life into the world isn't the existence-defining triumph of femininity it's sugar-coated as doesn't simply sit at the heart of Ferrante's novel and Gyllenhaal's debut stint behind the lens; from the instant that Colman is seen collapsing on the pebble-strewn shoreline in the picture's opening, it laps over The Lost Daughter's every moment. As seen in its present-day storyline and its flashbacks to the past (with I'm Thinking of Ending Things' Jessie Buckley as Leda), its protagonist is a woman haunted by everything having kids has brought, as well as guilt-stricken by all that's followed — and this bold and affecting movie confronts that rocky truth. For any director, this is audacious and intricate terrain, but Gyllenhaal proves as exceptional and daring a filmmaker as she is a performer. Read our full review. BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN Banging is the certainly word for it; when Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn begins, it's with high school teacher Emi (Katia Pascariu, Beyond the Hills) and her camera-wielding husband Eugen (first-timer Stefan Steel) having loud, enthusiastic, pink wig-wearing sex — and filming it. Romanian writer/ director Radu Jude (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians) shows the explicit three-minute snippet of footage as others will see it, because others will indeed see it: the students at Emi's school, their parents and her fellow teachers among them. All genitalia and thrusting and lustful talk (and shouted queries through the door from whoever is looking after the couple's child), this graphic opening also makes a firm statement. So many people within the film's frames will take issue with it as vocally as Emi and her partner are enjoying themselves — and they're unmistakably enjoying themselves — but Jude definitely isn't one of them. What follows is a razor-sharp satire of a world that's so indifferent to so much, but so unaccepting of carnality. The film wields that notion as a weapon, all as Emi and Bucharest's other residents also navigate the pandemic. In the cinema verite-style first section, Emi rushes around the city on foot, learning of the sex tape backlash while surrounded by everyday hostilities and vulgarities. Next, Jude unleashes scathing and playful cine-essay snippets about Romania's past, the planet's present, human behaviour, and how porn is used as both a scapegoat and anaesthetic. Then, Emi is interrogated by parents and teachers, their judgement and hypocrisy on full display — in the climax to an already brilliant, biting and bleakly hilarious achievement. Read our full review. DUNE A spice-war space opera about feuding houses on far-flung planets, Dune has long been a pop-culture building block. Before Frank Herbert's 1965 novel was adapted into a wrongly reviled David Lynch-directed film — a gloriously 80s epic led by Kyle MacLachlan and laced with surreal touches — it unmistakably inspired Star Wars, and also cast a shadow over Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Game of Thrones has since taken cues from it. The Riddick franchise owes it a debt, too. The list goes on and, thanks to the new version bringing its sandy deserts to cinemas, will only keep growing. As he did with Blade Runner 2049, writer/director Denis Villeneuve has once again grasped something already enormously influential, peered at it with astute eyes and built it anew — and created an instant sci-fi classic. This time, Villeneuve isn't asking viewers to ponder whether androids dream of electric sheep, but if humanity can ever overcome one of our worst urges and all that it brings. With an exceptional cast that spans Timothée Chalamet (The French Dispatch), Oscar Isaac (The Card Counter), Rebecca Ferguson (Reminiscence), Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Josh Brolin (Avengers: Endgame), Javier Bardem (Everybody Knows), Zendaya (Spider-Man: No Way Home) and more, Dune tells of birthrights, prophesied messiahs, secret sisterhood sects that underpin the galaxy and phallic-looking giant sandworms, and of the primal lust for power that's as old as time — and, in Herbert's story, echoes well into the future's future. Its unpacking of dominance and command piles on colonial oppression, authoritarianism, greed, ecological calamity and religious fervour, like it is building a sandcastle out of power's nastiest ramifications. And, amid that weightiness — plus those spectacularly shot visuals and Hans Zimmer's throbbing score — it's also a tale of a moody teen with mind-control abilities struggling with what's expected versus what's right. Read our full review. These are our 12 favourite films of 2021 — but the year was filled with plenty of other excellent movies. We've also put together lists of the best films hardly anyone saw this year, the best straight-to-streaming movies and the other standouts from 2021 that you should catch up on over summer. Don't say you don't have anything to watch.
If you're a fan of the biggest thing in musical theatre in the 21st century — that'd be Lin-Manuel Miranda's game-changing, award-winning, rightly raved-about Hamilton — then you'll know that the show's dialogue and lyrics can be adapted to plenty of situations. So, when it comes to making sure that you get to see the stage sensation during its Australian run, you'd best take the play's very own advice. No, you don't want to throw away your shot. When April 2023 comes to an end, so will Hamilton's Aussie seasons, after what's been a huge few years for the hit show. After opening its Down Under run in Sydney in 2021 and currently playing Melbourne, the musical has booked a 2023 date with Brisbane from January. When that's over, however, Aussies will no longer be able to sit in the room where it happens. Australia's big loss is New Zealand's hefty gain, with Hamilton hopping across the ditch from May 2023. Haven't become a Hamilton obsessive yet? Can't make the remaining Melbourne shows, or enjoy a date with the Sunshine State's season? Maybe you've got an Auckland holiday in your future. The Broadway blockbuster's Aussie production boasts a cast that includes Jason Arrow as Alexander Hamilton, Chloé Zuel as Eliza Hamilton, Lyndon Watts as Aaron Burr, Akina Edmonds as Angelica Schuyler, Matu Ngaropo as George Washington, and Victory Ndukwe as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. If you want to see all of the above on home soil — plus Shaka Cook as Hercules Mulligan and James Madison, Marty Alix as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, Elandrah Eramiha as Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds, and Brent Hill as King George III — you'll need to make plans ASAP. Still new to this song-and-dance take on 18th-century American politics? Not quite sure why it has been the most-talked about theatre show of the past six years? The critically acclaimed hip hop musical, for which Miranda wrote the music, lyrics and the book, is about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, as well as inclusion and politics in current-day America. In addition to its swag of Tony Awards — 11 in fact, which includes Best Musical — it has nabbed a Grammy Award and even a Pulitzer Prize. Until 2021, Australians eager to see the show had to be content watching the filmed version of its Broadway production, which started streaming via Disney+ in 2020 (and yes, it's as phenomenal as you've heard). If you're not feeling financial enough to nab a seat, you can try the $10 ticket lottery, which offers Hamilton tickets for less than the cost of lunch. TodayTix, the platform behind it, has just launched in Brisbane, so fingers crossed those discounted tickets will make their way to Queensland as well. And yes, there's another Hamilton quote that might get you all hopeful about a return: you'll be back. That might be the case eventually, somewhere down the line, but who wants to risk a massive wait? Hamilton's Australian season will finish in Brisbane in April 2023. Head to the musical's website for further details, or to buy tickets. Images: Daniel Boud.
Founded by Emma Nguyen in 2011, I Love Pho has a special focus on bringing an authentic Vietnamese experience to Sydney. Decked out with a bamboo-themed interior, the dining room captures the essence of the frantic hustle and bustle of Vietnamese street dining. The service here is classy and casual, and it's the kind of place you'll be returning to again and again after discovering it, whether that's once a year or once a week. As the name suggests, the oft mispronounced but easy-to-consume Vietnamese noodle soup is the star of the show at this Crows Nest spot. Following a traditional recipe from Hanoi, and cooked for 24 hours, this steaming broth is available in several different flavours including vegetable, pork chop, wagyu beef and chicken breast. The chicken broth pho is slow-simmered with a hint of zesty ginger and fresh lime leaves, and the mixed seafood option is especially exciting. There's even a totally vegan pho with tofu, mixed veg and lotus root noodle soup. Outside of pho, the menu boasts some incredible traditional Vietnamese dishes. Standouts include a vegan curry topped with roasted peanuts, spicy pork belly served with steamed Chinese broccoli, and a truly spectacular roast duck salad. The wine lost at I Love Pho has all the standards from shiraz to pinot noir and pinot gris to chardonnay, while the beer list is international with the classic Vietnamese Hanoi Beer included. For northsiders, heading here is an easy call — and for everyone else, it's definitely worth crossing the bridge for.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest to old favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from October's haul of newbies. BRAND NEW STUFF YOU CAN WATCH IN FULL CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY When you've catapulted to fame as a fierce child queen in the biggest fantasy TV series of the past two decades, and you're next about to play perhaps the best-known teenage girl from a video-game franchise across the same period — so, when you're in-between starring in Game of Thrones and the television adaptation of the The Last of Us, that is — how do you fill the time? You make a magnificent medieval comedy that's also a coming-of-age film, a frank but irreverent look at history's treatment of women, and the third feature directed by Lena Dunham. That's the path that Bella Ramsey has charted, and she's as much of a delight in the marvellous Catherine Called Birdy as she was in the role that made sure everyone with a screen to stare at knows who she is. The energy that made such an impact as GoT's Lyanna Mormont bursts through here, too, albeit in a cheekier, scampier, bawdier and more humorous mode. That's what this version of Karen Cushman's 1994 novel calls for, and gets — and the end result is an utter charmer. The eponymous Lady Catherine, who prefers to be called Birdy, is the 14-year-old daughter of Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott, The Pursuit of Love) and Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper, I Hate Suzie), and is accustomed to spending her days inciting mischief around their Lincolnshire manor — much to her nurse Morwenna's (Lesley Sharp, Fate: The Winx Saga) dismay. But the family is now broke thanks to Rollo's poor handling of their finances, and only marrying off the reluctant Birdy looms as a solution to their money troubles. It's the done thing in the 13th century, but Dunham directs this tale with a firmly 21st-century mindset and spirit as her titular character does whatever she can to avoid basically being sold off to whichever gentleman of means has the most lucrative offer. The movie's thoroughly modern vibe and outlook doesn't just come through in its narrative, themes and lively lead performance, or its witty narration and all-round attitude, but with smatterings of pop songs on the soundtrack — Piper's own 'Honey to the Bee' included. If Girls was set eight centuries back, was about a teen, and also featured Joe Alwyn (Conversations with Friends) as a favourite uncle, this'd be the dream end result. Catherine Called Birdy streams via Prime Video. GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Whether he's dallying with vampires, haunted houses, creepy carnivals, eerie orphanages, rampaging kaiju or romantic amphibious creatures, Guillermo del Toro has thoroughly proven himself an avid collector. You don't amass a resume like his without actively endeavouring to curate an on-screen compendium — with his movies stuffed full of ideas, themes, motifs and images that just keep fascinating the acclaimed filmmaker. So far, the proof has beamed into theatres for cinema-goers to revel in; however, new TV horror anthology Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities is a natural addition to his filmography. Across eight chapters helmed by eight other directors — including The Babadook and The Nightingale's Jennifer Kent, Mandy's Panos Cosmatos, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon's Ana Lily Amirpour, and Cube's Vincenzo Natali — del Toro keeps compiling, curating and and dissecting the unsettling, unnerving, mysterious and curious, whether Cabinet of Curiosities is getting grim and cautionary, stomach-churningly gory and grotesque, sporting soulful restraint, unleashing a stunning display of phantasmagoria or delighting in being off-kilter. Boasting a cast spanning everyone from Harry Potter's Rupert Grint and I'm Your Man's Dan Stevens to Mythic Quest and Moon Knight's F Murray Abraham and RoboCop's Peter Weller, there are no disappointing drawers in this Alfred Hitchcock Presents-meets-The Twilight Zone series; the tone varies, but del Toro and his colleagues are committed to contemplating what scares us and why. In Lot 36 by Guillermo Navarro, cinematographer on six of del Toro's features, that means a dark rumination on xenophobia — and while Amirpour's The Outside is noticeably lighter than its counterparts, squeezing out a satirical, The Stuff-esque, Christmas-set satire on consumerism, conformity and beauty, it too is sinister and disquieting. Other standouts include the show's two most grisly episodes: Natali's Graveyard Rats and David Prior's (The Empty Man) The Autopsy, both of which have descriptive titles. Or, there's Cosmatos's The Viewing, a wild, dazzling, synth-scored trip in the best possible way — and Kent's The Murmuring, reuniting her with The Babadook's Essie Davis for another stirring and striking haunted-house tale about grief and motherhood. Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. THE FIRE WITHIN: A REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFFT The twin film phenomenon strikes again — so if The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft gives you a hefty dose of déjà vu, there's a reason for that. You may indeed have seen a movie about the French volcanologists already this year, and with a similar title, all courtesy of big-screen release Fire of Love. If you did catch that also-stunning flick, then you've glimpsed plenty of the imagery showcased here as well. Keep it all coming, please. However many documentaries that however many filmmakers want to craft about the Kraffts, their lives, work and impact — and using their sublime footage from decades spent surveying lofty and dangerous peaks, too — audiences should lap each and every one up. Of course, this particular doco hails from the great Werner Herzog (Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds), who already showed Katia and Maurice ample love in 2016's Into the Inferno, so it was always going to be a must-see. Narrated with his distinctive tones and inimitable perspective on existence, The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft truly feels like the movie that the iconic German director (and one-time Parks and Recreation star) was born to create. Whether undulating hypnotically with red lava flows or inciting gut-wrenching terror with towering, billowing grey explosions projecting into the heavens, the imagery captured by Katia and Maurice is mesmerising, revealing and astonishing — no matter how many times you watch it. It's little wonder, then, that Herzog states from the outset that his aim with The Fire Within isn't to give the world another Krafft biography (because plenty of those already exist) but to do justice and pay tribute to their recorded materials. His voiceover still provides the necessary basic details for first-timers to the pair's story, however, including beginning with visuals from the 1991 Mount Unzen eruption in Japan that claimed their lives. But Herzog knows what anyone who's ever come across the Kraffts before knows, and everyone watching this movie quickly learns: that their otherworldly footage makes a helluva impact all by itself, including inspiring thoughts about nature, humanity, how humbled the latter is by the former, the earth's longevity, life's oh-so-brief run, passion and the importance of doing something you love. Herzog's own observations are a fantastic bonus, though. The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft streams via Docplay. THE MIDNIGHT CLUB New year, new spooky season, new Mike Flanagan series. Yes, that's as great a tradition as any. It hasn't quite happened every 12 months since 2018's The Haunting of Hill House — 2019 is the outlier — but 2020's The Haunting of Bly Manor, 2021's Midnight Mass and now 2022's The Midnight Club have kept the trend going, serving up a fresh dose of frights from the filmmaker also behind Oculus, Hush, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep. Co-created with Bly Manor alum Leah Fong, The Midnight Club offers a bit of a departure, however, this time going down the teen-centric route. Happily nodding to The Breakfast Club but shifting to a decade later and an evening hour, the series hails from the books by author Christopher Pike, and takes its name from a group of cancer patients getting treatment at a fancy hospice centre. After dark, they secretly meet to share spooky stories, and try to freak each other out. But there's another caveat attached to their tale-telling: whichever one of the terminally ill teens passes away first, they have to promise to try to contact the rest of the cohort from the other side to let them know what it's like. While The Midnight Club's moniker directs its focus away from its setting, another eerie abode is at the heart of the show — so, yes, it's classic Flanagan. Also thoroughly in the writer/director's wheelhouse: pairing chills, thrills, bumps and jumps with fleshed-out characters, and musing on the power of horror, the terrors of mortality and the inevitably of death in tandem. The cast should all use the series as a launchpad, too, especially Iman Benson (#BlackAF, Alexa & Katie) as Ilonka, the newest arrival at Brightcliffe Home. After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer just as she's preparing to go to college, the bright student finds the hospice online, researches its past and is determined to use it as a path to actually having a living future. If the narrative was that straightforward, there wouldn't be a series, though — and if you're hanging out for Flanagan's 2023 effort The Fall of the House of Usher, this'll fill the gap nicely. The Midnight Club streams via Netflix. WEREWOLF BY NIGHT Running for 53 minutes, Werewolf by Night is more a standalone Marvel Cinematic Universe special than a movie. It's the first release of its type for the sprawling comic book-to-screen behemoth, and it makes the case for more like it. In fact, if you've been feeling fatigued by average big-screen MCU releases lately, it also makes the case for more variety and experimentation in the Marvel blockbuster realm in general — because when the usual mould gets tinkered with in a significant way, and not just with a goofy vibe like Thor: Love and Thunder, something special like this can result. The mood is all horror, in a glorious throwback way, complete with gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. The focus: hunting for monsters, which does, yes, involve bringing together a crew of new characters with special traits. Thankfully, that concept never feels formulaic because of how much creepy fun that Werewolf by Night is having, and how much love it splashes towards classic creature features. That monochrome look, and the shadowy lighting that comes with it, clearly nods to the ace monster flicks of the 1930s and 1940s; composer-turned-director Michael Giacchino (who provided Thor: Love and Thunder's score, in fact), must be a fan, as we all should be. His filmmaking contribution to the MCU takes its name from comic-book character Werewolf by Night, which dates back to the 70s on the page — but if you don't know that story, let the same-titled flick surprise you. The plot begins with five experienced monster hunters being summoned to Bloodstone Manor following the death of Ulysses Bloodstone, and told to get a-hunting around the grounds to work out who'll be the new leader (and also gain control of a powerful gem called the Bloodstone). That includes Jack Russell (Gael Garcia Bernal, Station Eleven), plus Ulysses' estranged daughter Elsa (Laura Donnelly, The Nevers). Everything that happens from there — and before that — instantly makes for pulpy and entertaining viewing. Werewolf by Night streams via Disney+. HELLRAISER Horror remakes and sequels are a bit like Halloween itself: even if you're not a fan, they always keep coming. First, a key rule about giving beloved old flicks a do-over or a years-later followup: the originals always still exist, no matter how the new movies turn out. Now, a crucial point about Hellraiser circa 2022: it's never going to be the OG picture, but it's still visually impressive, eager to get gory in bold and inventive ways, well cast and also happy to muse thoughtfully on addiction. And yes, there's a note of warning included in that above assessment of a film that arrives 35 years after Clive Barker's first stab at the series, and following nine other sequels. Directed by The Night House helmer David Bruckner, the new Hellraiser is stylish with its violent, bloody imagery, but it also still loves ripping flesh apart — and serving up a grisly nightmare. For newcomers to the Hellraiser fold, beware of puzzles. The moving box here is oh-so-enticing — that's how it gets its victims — but it's also a portal to a hellish realm. That's where demonic, frightening-looking beings called Cenobites dwell, and they're eager to haunt and terrorise the living. (Yes, that includes the ghoulish Pinhead, whose aesthetic really is all there in the name.) Accordingly, this Hellraiser movie kicks off with millionaire Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic, The Boys) obsessed with the box, and his lawyer Menaker (Hiam Abbass, Ramy) luring in new people to get torn to pieces. Then, six years later, recovering drug addict Riley (Odessa A'zion, Good Girl Jane) and her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey, The Terminal List) find the cube in their possession. When it claims the former's brother Matt (Brandon Flynn, Ratched), she's determined to work out what's going on — and, while never full of narrative surprises, the brutal imagery sears itself into viewers' memories. Hellraiser streams via Binge. MASS Two couples, one church, six years of baggage and two absent children. That's one of the equations at the heart of Mass. Here's another: four phenomenal performances, one smart and affecting script that tackles a difficult subject in a candid and thoughtful way, and one powerful directorial debut by actor-turned-filmmaker Fran Kranz. Best known for on-screen roles in Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods, Homecoming and Julia, the latter guides gripping portrayals out of Reed Birney (Home Before Dark), Ann Dowd (The Handmaid's Tale), Jason Isaacs (Operation Mincemeat) and Martha Plimpton (Generation) — and crafts a harrowing yet cathartic drama out of the aftermath of a far-too-familiar tragedy, too. The reason that Richard (Birney), Linda (Dowd), Jay (Isaacs) and Gail (Plimpton) are in the back room at a place of worship, discussing their kids with heartbreak etched across their faces? Richard and Linda's son Hayden was a school shooter, killing Jay and Gail's son Evan in his spree, then turning the gun on himself. What can anyone say in that situation? Kranz, who both writes and directs, keeps his screenplay simple — but as loaded with emotion as the scenario obviously requires. He keeps his filmmaking flourishes just as restrained as well; that's a craft in itself, but the cast rather than the technique is the focus here. At first, they utter loaded lines with weighty awkwardness, aka the kind that fills and silences a room. Then, each in their own way, they unleash the hurt, anger, regret, sorrow, misery and more that's festering inside their characters, and that no amount of talking can ever completely capture. Mass is a musing on that very fact, too: that even the most spirited of dialogues, slinging about both carefully chosen and heatedly spur-of-the-money words, can't fix, explain or do justice to the pain that Richard, Linda, Jay and Gail are going through. The end result would make an exceptional, albeit unshakeably distressing, double with We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Fallout or Vox Lux, or even Elephant or Polytechnique as well. Mass streams via Stan. NEW AND RETURNING SHOWS TO CHECK OUT WEEK BY WEEK THE WHITE LOTUS Lives of extravagant luxury. Globe-hopping getaways. Whiling away cocktail-soaked days in gorgeous beachy locales. Throw in the level of wealth and comfort needed to make those three things an easy, breezy everyday reality, and the world's sweetest dreams are supposedly made of this. On TV since 2021, HBO's hit dramedy The White Lotus has been, too. Indeed, in its Emmy-winning first season, the series was a phenomenon of a biting satire, scorching the one percent, colonialism and class divides in a twisty, astute, savage and hilarious fashion. It struck such a chord, in fact, that what was meant to be a one-and-done limited season was renewed for a second go-around, sparking an anthology. That Sicily-set second effort once again examines sex, status, staring head-on at mortality and accepting the unshakeable fact that life is short for everyone but truly sweet for oh-so-few regardless of bank balance — and with writer/director/creator Mike White (Brad's Status) still overseeing proceedings, the several suitcase loads of smart, scathing, sunnily shot chaos that The White Lotus brings to screens this time around are well worth unpacking again. Here, another group of well-off holidaymakers slip into another splashy, flashy White Lotus property and work through their jumbled existences. Another death lingers over their trip, with The White Lotus again starting with an unnamed body — bodies, actually — then jumping back seven days to tell its tale from the beginning. Running the Taormina outpost of the high-end resort chain, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore, Across the River and Into the Trees) is barely surprised by the corpse that kicks off season two. She's barely surprised about much beforehand, either. That includes her dealings with the returning Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge, The Watcher), her husband Greg (Jon Gries, Dream Corp LLC) and assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson, After Yang); three generations of Di Grasso men, aka Bert (F Murray Abraham, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities), Hollywood hotshot Dominic (Michael Imperioli, The Many Saints of Newark) and the Stanford-educated Albie (Adam DiMarco, The Order); and tech whiz Ethan (Will Sharpe, Defending the Guilty) and his wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza, Best Sellers), plus his finance-bro college roommate Cameron (Theo James, The Time Traveller's Wife) and his stay-at-home wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy, The Bold Type). The White Lotus streams via Binge. Read our full review of season two. THE PERIPHERAL For four seasons on Westworld so far, viewers have been asked to ponder humanity's potential future with robots and simulations. A key question driving the hit film-to-TV HBO series: how might the years to come unfurl if people use mechanics, artificial intelligence and elaborately fabricated worlds as playthings and playgrounds? In The Peripheral, a similar query arises, also musing and hypothesising on what lies ahead — and how flesh, machines, the real and the digital might coexist. The latest question, in another twisty series, as fronted by Chloë Grace Moretz (Mother/Android): what happens if robots and virtual reality become humanity's conduit through time? Bringing Westworld to the small screen and now executive producing The Peripheral, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy clearly have a niche. Indeed, if you didn't know that the latter series comes from the same minds as the former — adapting a 2014 book of the same name by cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson, and with Scott B Smith (The Burnt Orange Heresy, A Simple Plan) as its showrunner — you'd easily guess while watching this new tech-, robot-, avatar- and dystopia-obsessed effort. When storytellers speculate on what the upcoming years might hold, they theorise about choices and ramifications. The Peripheral has many to ruminate upon. In the process, it also serves up two visions of the future for the price of one, both riffing on aspects of life circa 2022 that could easily evolve as predicted. When the series begins in 2032, 3D print shop worker Flynne Fisher (Moretz) simply decides to assist her military-veteran brother Burton (Jack Reynor, Midsommar) by slipping into his avatar to make cash in a VR game — which she's better at than him, but sexism in the industry still reigns supreme. Then, when he's tasked by a Colombian company with testing a new virtual-reality headset that looks lower-tech, doesn't come with a glasses-like screen but exceeds the competition in its realism, she does the honours again. Flynne hasn't just plugged into a better simulation, though. Via data transfer, her consciousness is time-travelling to the future — to 2099, and to London — and inhabiting the robot body that gives the series its title while on an industrial-espionage quest. The Peripheral streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE When Louis de Pointe du Lac met Lestat de Lioncourt, his life forever changed. His death did, too. That's the story that Interview with the Vampire tells and, by committing it to the page in 1976, Anne Rice's existence was altered for eternity as well — although not quite in the same way, naturally. The author has been known for her Vampire Chronicles series ever since, and its debut entry was adapted into a Brad Pitt- and Tom Cruise-starring 1994 movie before getting a do-over now as a television series. Obviously, the late Rice doesn't share her characters' lust for blood, or their ability to thwart ageing and time. Still, her famed works keep enticing in both readers and viewers — and this latest novel-to-screen version is a gothic series worth sinking your teeth into, especially thanks to its willingness to take on race, to embrace queer themes, to get playful and humorous, and to splash a sweepingly rich iteration of its now well-known tale across streaming queues. If you've seen the film, you'll know Interview with the Vampire's basic gist, although there has been some tweaking. Nonetheless, Louis (Jacob Anderson, aka Game of Thrones' Grey Worm) and Lestat (Sam Reid, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson) meet in New Orleans, where they're both drawn to each other — and soon the former joins the latter in sleeping in coffins, avoiding daylight and (reluctantly) feeding on people. The series has the titular chatting happen in today's times, however, as a continuation of the movie's first conversation. Yes, this version of Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian, Succession) has been there and done this before. That didn't turn out so well for him, so he's reluctant about a repeat discussion, this time in Dubai. But Louis still has quite the story to unfurl, including covering been a Black man trying to make his way in the bayou at the turn of the 20th century, what it's meant to join the undead, his complicated relationship with Lestat, and the arrival of Claudia (Bailey Bass, Psycho Sweet 16) as part of their bloodthirsty family. Interview with the Vampire streams via AMC+. 2022 CINEMA HIGHLIGHTS WORTH CATCHING UP WITH AT HOME RED ROCKET It might sound crazy, but it ain't no lie: Red Rocket's *NSYNC needle drops, the cost of which likely almost eclipsed the rest of the film's budget, provide a sensational mix of movie music moments in an all-round sensational picture. A portrait of an ex-porn star's knotty homecoming to the oil-and-gas hub that is Texas City, the feature only actually includes one song by the Justin Timberlake-fronted late-90s/early-00s boyband, but it makes the most of it. That tune is 'Bye Bye Bye', and it's a doozy. With its instantly recognisable blend of synth and violins, it first kicks in as the film itself does, and as the bruised face of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex, Scary Movie 3, 4 and 5) peers out of a bus window en route from Los Angeles. Its lyrics — "I'm doing this tonight, you're probably gonna start a fight, I know this can't be right" — couldn't fit the situation better. The infectiously catchy vibe couldn't be more perfect as well, and nor could the contrast that all those upbeat sounds have always had with the track's words. As he demonstrates with every film, Red Rocket writer/director/editor Sean Baker is one of the best and shrewdest filmmakers working today — one of the most perceptive helmers taking slice-of-life looks at American existence on the margins, too. His latest movie joins Starlet, Tangerine and The Florida Project on a resume that just keeps impressing, but there's an edge here born of open recognition that Mikey is no one's hero. He's a narcissist, sociopath and self-aggrandiser who knows how to talk his way into anything, claim success from anyone else's wins and blame the world for all his own woes. He's someone that everyone in his orbit can't take no more and wants to see out that door, as if *NSYNC's now-22-year-old lyrics were specifically penned about him. He's also a charismatic charmer who draws people in like a whirlwind. He's the beat and the words of 'Bye Bye Bye' come to life, in fact, even if the song wasn't originally in Red Rocket's script. Red Rocket streams via Binge and Prime Video. Read our full review. AMBULANCE Following a high-stakes Los Angeles bank robbery that goes south swiftly, forcing two perpetrators to hijack an EMT vehicle — while a paramedic tries to save a shot cop's life as the van flees the LAPD and the FBI, too — Ambulance is characteristically ridiculous. Although based on the 2005 Danish film Ambulancen, it's a Michael Bay from go to whoa; screenwriter and feature newcomer Chris Fedak (TV's Chuck, Prodigal Son) even references his director's past movies in the dialogue. The first time, when The Rock is mentioned, it's done in a matter-of-fact way that's as brazen as anything Bay has ever achieved when his flicks defy the laws of physics. In the second instance mere minutes later, it's perhaps the most hilarious thing he's put in his movies. It's worth remembering that Divinyls' 'I Touch Myself' was one of his music-clip jobs; Bay sure does love what only he can thrust onto screens, and he wants audiences to know it while adoring it as well. Ambulance's key duo, brothers Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, The Matrix Resurrections) and Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal, The Guilty), are a former Marine and ostensible luxury-car dealer/actual career criminal with hugely different reasons for attempting to pilfer a $32-million payday. For the unemployed Will, it's about the cash needed to pay for his wife Amy's (Moses Ingram, The Tragedy of Macbeth) experimental surgery, which his veteran's health insurance won't cover — but his sibling just wants money. Will is reluctant but desperate, Danny couldn't be more eager, and both race through a mess of a day. Naturally, it gets more hectic when they're hurtling along as the hotshot Cam (Eiza González, Godzilla vs Kong) works on wounded rookie police officer Zach (Jackson White, The Space Between), arm-deep in his guts at one point, while Captain Monroe (Garrett Dillahunt, Army of the Dead), Agent Anson Clark (Keir O'Donnell, The Dry) and their forces are in hot pursuit. Ambulance streams via Binge and Prime Video. Read our full review. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August and September this year. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream 2022 shows so far as well — and our best 15 new shows from the first half of this year, top 15 returning shows over the same period and best 15 straight-to-streaming movies up until June.
While Sydney is not exactly short on options for midweek fun and frivolity, a surprising new entrant has joined the city's lineup of hump day deal masters, tempting you off the couch and out of the house. Announced today, the Sydney Opera House has kickstarted a new Wednesday night offering, featuring a weekly changing swag of two-for-one ticket deals, and some tidy food and drink specials to match. Each week's theatre and event deals will remain under wraps until the Tuesday night, riffing on similar last-minute ticket programs offered by the likes of London's West End theatre set and on Broadway in New York. There'll be specials on shows presented by the Sydney Opera House and its resident companies, eats and drinks from onsite venues like Opera Kitchen and Portside Sydney, and even cheap parking at the Sydney Opera House Wilson Carpark. To give you a hint of what to expect, this Wednesday's lineup could see you score two-for-one tickets to Sydney Theatre Company's hilarious political farce Accidental Death of an Anarchist, for example, or a production of Molière's comedy of manners The Misanthrope. There will also be two-for-one specials on Opera Kitchen's crispy chicken, matched with a wine or Sydney Lager. While the deal itself is great, the accompanying campaign name and video are a little cringeworthy. The Sydney Opera House has dubbed it Make Wednesday Great Again, a 'satirical' riff on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign slogan (which was used by Ronald Reagan in 1980, too). It feels a little too soon to turn the presidential campaign into a marketing exercise — but, still, if it means feasting on theatre for less, this hump day treat is sure to find its fair share of fans. The two-for-one Wednesday deals will be made available to email subscribers each Tuesday night at 5pm. To sign up, head to the Sydney Opera House website. Image: Letícia Almeida
It's a case of new year, new idea at the Australian National Maritime Museum in January, with the Darling Harbour spot hosting its first series of after-hours waterside parties. Head by on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the month and sunset shindigs await at Summer Lates — with DJs spinning tunes, food and drinks available to purchase, and the museum's exhibitions open as well. Yes, a boozy night at the museum is in store on January 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, 19, 25 and 26. You'll be able to wander through the world of sharks at On Sharks & Humanity's showcase of artwork, step into an a story about the fight for recognition of Indigenous sea rights via Gapu-Monuk Saltwater, and venture to the ocean's depths thanks to James Cameron's Challenging the Deep. Like the parties, the first two exhibits are free to enter; however peering beneath the sea with the director of the Titanic does attract a $12–20 fee. Timing-wise, the waterfront bar will start serving up summery cocktails from 5pm, running through until 10pm — and you'll be able to enter the museum until 8pm. Teaming up with Surry Hills' Fishbowl, ANMM is putting on a tasty salad menu for the occasion. Think salmon sashimi with beets, edamame and kale; free-range chicken with coriander, cucumber, roast sesame dressing and and wasabi peas; and hand-pressed tofu with radish, shallots and a miso tahini dressing.
For more than two decades, acclaimed New York artist Spencer Tunick has been staging mass nude photographs in Australia — and he isn't done yet. Sydneysiders, or anyone who's keen to disrobe for a new piece of art, you'll want to be in the Harbour City at the end of November. Your destination: a yet-to-be-disclosed beach. It's been 21 years since the country's first taste of the internationally famed talent's work, when 4500 naked volunteers posed for a snap near Federation Square in Melbourne as part of the 2001 Fringe Festival. Tunick then photographed around 5000 nude people in front of the Sydney Opera House during the 2010 Mardi Gras, headed back to Melbourne in 2018 shoot over 800 Melburnians in the rooftop carpark of a Prahran Woolworths, and went to the Whitsundays with almost 100 Aussies in 2019. Elsewhere, he's photographed the public painted red and gold outside Munich's Bavarian State Opera, covered in veils in the Nevada desert and covered in blue in Hull in the UK. But with his new Aussie installation, he's getting sandy and raising funds for — and awareness about — skin cancer. Saturday, November 26 is the date earmarked for the shoot, with Sunday, November 27 on hold in case the weather isn't quite right for naked folks on the beach. Tunick is hoping to amass around 2500 volunteers, with each participant honouring one of the 2000-plus Aussies who pass away each year due to skin cancer. "Skin unites us and protects us. It's an honour to be a part of an art mission to raise awareness of the importance of skin checks. I use the amazing array of body types and skin tones to create my work, so it feels perfectly appropriate to take part in this effort in that my medium is the nude human form," said Tunick, announcing his new installation. "It is only fitting that I use my platform to urge people to get regular check-ups to prevent skin cancer. I have not had a skin check in ten years, so I am one of the many who have wrongly ignored getting them regularly. One can say I am traveling all the way to Australia to get one!", Tunick continued. Dubbed Strip Off for Skin Cancer, the artist's latest work is timed to coincide with National Skin Cancer Action Week, which runs from Monday, November 21–Sunday, November 27 — and it is looking for volunteers. Tunick hopes to have a diverse mix of bodies in the shoot, with participants each getting a print of the photograph and, we're sure, a big boost of body confidence. The catch here is, of course, the location. Exact details of where the shoot is taking place will only be given to folks signing up — but if you're not usually located in Sydney, you will need to travel there at your expense. Those that do will not only be part of a piece art, but will also help a great cause. Strip Off for Skin Cancer will be shot on Saturday, November 26 on a Sydney beach. Head to the installation's website to register to take part. Images: Spencer Tunick.
If you're a fan of Mariah Carey, then this is a vision of love and also a sweet, sweet fantasy come true, baby: 11 years after she last toured Australia, the iconic singer is returning in 2025 to headline Fridayz Live. For its big comeback this year, the festival boasts a lineup led by the music megastar. If all you wanted for an early Christmas is this, it's quite the gift. Mariah is celebrating 20 years since her 2005 album The Emancipation of Mimi released — and based on recent set lists, get ready to hear everything from 'Emotions', 'Dreamlover' and 'Hero' to 'Without You', 'Always Be My Baby', 'Honey' and 'Heartbreaker'. She'll have company on the Fridayz Live bill, because this event's blend of R&B, hip hop and nostalgia always brings a heap of big names our way. For 2025, Pitbull, Wiz Khalifa, Lil Jon, Eve, Tinie Tempah and Jordin Sparks are also on the lineup. 'Give Me Everything', 'Timber', 'Fireball', 'Black and Yellow', 'See You Again', 'Young, Wild and Free', 'Get Low', 'Turn Down for What', 'Let Me Blow Ya Mind', 'Who's That Girl', 'Girls Like', 'Miami 2 Ibiza', 'No Air', 'One Step at a Time': expect to hear them all too, then. In Sydney, Fridayz Live has a date with ENGIE Stadium on Saturday, October 18. If you want to go all out for the occasion, The Downing Hotel is transforming into Motel Fireball, with a Fireball-themed room (from the bedsheets to the toiletries, its all Fireball themed) available for bookings ahead of Fridayz Live. On the big day itself, there'll be a concert pre-party on the second floor with live music, a karaoke stage to practice your sing-alongs and a Fireball whisky bubbler to complete the dedication to the theme. Visit the Motel Fireball website to find out more. [caption id="attachment_1030880" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Trent van der Jagt[/caption] Fridayz Live 2025 Lineup Mariah Carey Pitbull Wiz Khalifa Lil Jon Eve Tinie Tempah Jordin Sparks Mariah Carey images: Raph_PH via Flickr. Wiz Khalifa image: Daniel Kelly.
Surfers may flock to Sydney's sandy suburbs while leaf-lovers stick to the city's best parks, but locals wanting the best of both worlds will head to Randwick. This easy-breezy 'burb is perfectly positioned between Centennial Park and the eastern suburbs' fantastic stretch of coastline for residents and visitors to enjoy the best of the city in one spot. At its heart is the long-standing Ritz Cinema and its impressive art deco facade, and a clutch of well-kept cafes, restaurants, bars and specialised shops. In partnership with American Express, we've found a Randwick spot that'll hit the mark on every occasion, whether you're catching up with a group of old mates or refurbishing your pad.
Headed by distiller Odelia Potts, Kings Cross Distillery is Macleay Street's cocktail den and distillery featuring house-made gins, cocktails and Spanish snacks — plus personality aplenty. As with many old buildings in the area, the venue's past lives are varied and salacious. These include an illegal gambling den and an adult bookstore with a hidden vault. That vault is no longer home to questionable activities, but the distillery's precious bottles of gin. The fit-out pays homage to the building's history and emulates speakeasies from the 1920s — think dark green leather booths, exposed brick walls and gold details aplenty across the split-level bar. The distillery's 200-litre pot also sits front-and-centre. Expect seats for 120 all up and a kitchen serving mezze-style bites like garlic prawns ($29), sea bass ceviche ($29) and anchovies ($28). You can also order caviar by the ten-gram serve ($75). Apart from the gin, the distillery will also make its own vodka and whisky, and pours other spirit and wine brands from around Australia and the globe. Guests can even keep specially selected drops in personalised spirit lockers, where bottles can be stored between visits and then used in any concoction on the menu. Eager punters can pre-purchase those spirit lockers (for a cool $400–1350) and have one all ready to go for opening night. On the bar's cocktail menu, you'll find a bubble-topped Impeachment ($24), a Sin and Tonique ($24) and gin old fashioned dubbed Pepperation Makes Perfect ($24). All made with one of the distillery's house-distilled gins, of course. And you can leave with a bottle of that gin, too, with the classic dry gin and Garden Island navy strength gin available online and in-store.
Something delightful is happening in cinemas across the country. After months spent empty, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, Australian picture palaces are back in business — spanning both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made over the past three months, including new releases, comedies, music documentaries, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufBK5XheeCU THE BEE GEES: HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART It starts with the disco beats of 'Stayin' Alive' echoing through the cinema. Although he doesn't ever phrase it quite so bluntly, it ends with surviving Gibb brother Barry wistfully and wishfully applying that song's title to his siblings and fellow Bee Gees members Robin and Maurice. In-between, career-spanning documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart steps through all of the band's ups and downs — from the group's humble beginnings when its members were growing up during the British-born trio's childhood stint in Brisbane, to the rollercoaster ride that saw them top the music world several times but also endure time both apart and off the charts. As tales of fame, fortune and trying to survive go, this one has everything, including brotherly rivalries, tabloid-fodder weddings, shock splits and comebacks, and drugs and the stereotypical celebrity lifestyle. It also spans a public call for their music, and the disco genre they were virtually synonymous with in the late 70s thanks to the mega-hit Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, to be literally blasted into smithereens. Through candid recent chats with Barry, as well as the use of archival interviews with Robin and Maurice before their deaths, director Frank Marshall (Arachnophobia, Alive) details it all. From early success 'Spicks and Specks' (aka the song now used as a theme tune for the TV quiz show of the same name) through to the post-Saturday Night Fever single 'Tragedy' — and yes, featuring the track that gives the movie its title as well — How Can You Mend a Broken Heart surveys the band's enormous contribution to music, of course. Getting a Bee Gees' song stuck in your head, or several, is part of the experience of watching. So is instantly imagining how tunes such as Diana Ross' 'Chain Reaction' and Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' 'Islands in the Stream' would've sounded if the Gibbs had sung as well as penned them in their second life as hit songwriters for other acts. But, whether you've cut a rug to 'You Should Be Dancing' before or you've only ever paid attention to their music in passing, what resonates in this thorough documentary is its candour and its detail, especially when it is focusing on Barry, Robin and Maurice's brotherly relationship and their artistry. Less successful are the intertwined interviews with other musicians, including Noel Gallagher noting that working with family can be a blessing and a curse and Chris Martin spouting mumbo jumbo about how tracks just come to musos out of the air, which always feel like superfluous padding in a fascinating and involving doco that definitely doesn't need it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFOrGkAvjAE SOUND OF METAL When Sound of Metal begins just as its title intimates, it does so with the banging and clashing of drummer Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed, Venom) as his arms flail above his chosen instrument. He's playing a gig with his girlfriend and bandmate Lou (Olivia Cooke, Ready Player One), and he's caught up in the rattling and clattering as her guttural voice and thrashing guitar offers the pitch-perfect accompaniment. But for viewers listening along, it doesn't quite echo the way it should. For the bleached-blonde, tattooed, shirtless and sweaty Ruben, that's the case, too. Sound of Metal's expert and exacting sound design mimics his experience, as his hearing fades rapidly and traumatically over the course of a few short days — a scenario that no one wants, let alone a musician with more that a few magazine covers to his band's name, who motors between shows in the cosy Airstream he lives in with his other half and is about to embark upon a new tour. That's not all the film is about, though. Ruben's ability to listen to the world around him begins to dip out quickly and early, leaving him struggling; however, it's how he grapples with the abrupt change, and with being forced to sit with his own company without a constant onslaught of aural interruptions distracting him from his thoughts, that the movie is most interested in. With apologies to cinema's blockbusters (which usually monopolise the sound categories come Oscars time), no other feature this year mixes its acoustics together in as stunning and stirring a fashion, and also bakes every single noise heard into its script, and its protagonist's journey, as well. As Ruben takes up residence at a rural community for addicts who are deaf, it expresses Ruben's distress at his situation as immersively as possible; 'intense' is the word for Sound of Metal, but it's also a term that doesn't completely do the movie justice. Making his feature directing debut, and co-writing another screenplay with filmmaker Derek Cianfrance as he did with 2012's The Place Beyond the Pines, Darius Marder turns his picture into a masterful exploration and skilled evocation of the kind of anxiety that's drummed deep into a person's darkest recesses. Viewers don't just hear what Ruben hears, but also feel what he feels as he rages and rallies against a twist of fate that he so vehemently doesn't want yet has to live with. While the film specifically depicts hearing loss, it's so detailed and empathetic in conveying Ruben's shock, denial, anger and hard-fought process of adjustment that it also proves an astute rendering of illness and impairment in general. That's Ahmed's recent niche, as also seen in this year's Berlinale-premiering Mogul Mowgli, and his powerfully physicalised performance shows the fight and fortitude required for Ruben to learn to cope. Sound of Metal is screening in select cinemas in Sydney, and is also available to stream via Amazon Prime Video. Read our full review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ0jBNa6JUQ THE PROM A word of warning to filmmakers eager to make the next big on-screen musical: cast James Corden at your peril. It may now seem like a lifetime ago that Cats proved a gobsmacking catastrophe, but that 2019 movie's horrors are impossible to shake — and while Corden's latest, The Prom, thankfully doesn't resort to repeating the word 'jellicle' over and over again to try to convince the world that it means something, it still follows in the feline-focused flick's paw prints as this year's all-singing, all-dancing misfire. The two films' common star is grating and relies upon gratuitous overacting in both features. He's hardly alone in bombing and flailing, though. In The Prom's case, a 2018 Broadway success with an important message about acceptance and being true to one's self has been transformed into an over-long star vehicle, as well as a movie that can't see past its sequin-studded pageantry and smug attitude to actually practise what it preaches. Its continually, needlessly and irritatingly circling cinematography captures its struggles perfectly, because The Prom is too caught up in shiny things, recognisable faces and disposable songs to let everything that should matter, including its main statement, have any real impact. Miscast from the get-go, Corden plays Barry, a Broadway veteran playing second fiddle to multi-Tony-winning drama diva Dee Dee (Meryl Streep, Little Women) in Eleanor!, a new production about former US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Initially, the pair is on top of the world after the show's opening night — but then the reviews start piling in and piling on. Distraught from the critical savaging as they drown their sorrows with perennial chorus girl Angie (Nicole Kidman, The Undoing) and Juilliard-trained actor-turned-sitcom lead-turned bartender Trent (Andrew Rannells, The Boys in the Band), they concoct a plan to get back in the showbiz industry's good graces. Scrolling through Twitter, Angie spies a news story about Indiana teenager Emma (feature debutant Jo Ellen Pellman), whose high school has just completely cancelled the prom because she wanted to bring her girlfriend. As quick as a burst of confetti, Barry, Dee Dee, Trent and Angie are on a Godspell tour bus to America's midwest to rally against this injustice and whip themselves up some flattering publicity. In the screenplay written by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin, both of whom worked on the original stage production, this is all meant to be a joke: that fading, has-been and never-were celebrities shallowly and calculatingly try to use one young woman's horrific plight for their own gain, that is. But The Prom likes the gag so much that it misguidedly decides that favouring stars over substance is the best approach in general. The Prom is screening in select cinemas, and will also be available to stream via Netflix from Friday, December 11. Read our full review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykWO1FhqTfo THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN For decades across the page and screen, science fiction has pondered just where artificial intelligence might take humanity, in ways both positive and negative. The field of science has as well, making some of those possibilities a reality already — however, as The Trouble with Being Born makes clear, we shouldn't just be wondering what AI can do for us, but also what it will and does reflect about our nature. This Berlinale-premiering feature from Austrian director Sandra Wollner asks a plethora of questions, all of them difficult and provocative, about the role of robots in our future. It explores the possibility of becoming dependent on android substitutes for human contact, including in acceptable and abhorrent situations, and examines the emotional toll for both sides of the relationship. With a steely look that's purposefully disconcerting, an opening scene that aims to assault and disrupt the audience's senses to leave them interrogating and intricately observing everything in front of them, and a willingness to pose a severe worst-case scenario (by implication, rather than gratuitous detail), The Trouble with Being Born aims to make its audience uncomfortable while probing these thorny ideas. That it initially focuses on a ten-year-old android girl called Eli who is deployed by her flesh-and-blood owner as a stand-in for his runaway daughter speaks volumes. In Australia, The Trouble with Being Born will always be marked by controversy. It's the movie that the Melbourne International Film Festival scheduled for its 2020 online-only event, then pulled from its lineup after a backlash caused by an article in The Age, which quoted concerns by forensic psychologists specialising in child abuse cases who had either not watched the film in full or at all. But Wollner's feature has taken great pains to approach its subject carefully and sensitively — its child star, Lena Watson, goes by a pseudonym, and is disguised in the movie by under a silicone face mask and via CGI — and to engage viewers in an unnerving but intelligent series of questions about its topic and scenarios. While it rarely makes for straightforward viewing, it's also one of the year's essential films. It is cinema's place to challenge, and to examine aspects of life that are tough and unpleasant; making her second full-length movie after 2016's The Impossible Picture, Wollner accepts and embraces that task. She explores identity and memory as well, and the role in the latter in shaping the former. And, she adds a film both distinctive and important to the growing list of works (see also: AI, Her, Ex Machina, Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049) that ponder what the creation and use of AI says about humanity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi2MK9K1hxc THE GODFATHER CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE The Godfather saga might eventually gain a new chapter. In this time of constant remakes, reimaginings and decades-later sequels, absolutely nothing can be discounted, after all. But The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone isn't a new addition to the gangster epic. Rather, it's a recut version of 1990's The Godfather Part III, aka the least acclaimed movie in the Francis Ford Coppola-directed trilogy. As his multiple versions of Apocalypse Now have shown over the years, the filmmaker has a penchant for tinkering with his past work. We've all looked back and wished we could do something over gain, so he's doing just that (last year, he not only released another new version of his Vietnam War masterpiece, but of The Cotton Club as well). Here, by renaming the revised third Godfather movie Coda, he's repositioning as well as re-editing, though. Coppola is telling the world that he sees this feature less as a second sequel and more as an epilogue to the first two exceptional Godfather movies — a message that might seen a bit cheeky, especially given how much this new iteration has in common structurally with the first film, but encourages viewers to give The Death of Michael Corleone more distance from its two Oscar Best Picture-winning predecessors than its has otherwise been afforded. Both upon its release three decades ago and again now, Coppola's third Godfather film doesn't match his first two. It suffers from Robert Duvall's absence, after the studio wouldn't pay him what he asked for to return a third time — and also from Sofia Coppola's inexperienced presence, with the On the Rocks director co-starring as Mary Corleone, daughter to Al Pacino's titular Michael, after Winona Ryder dropped out just before shooting started. But it's still an interesting, ambitious and mostly engaging movie, endeavouring to chart the struggle its eponymous figure endures as he tries to divest himself from illicit dealings and go legit. If you've ever heard the oft-quoted line "just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in", you'll know that achieving this plan isn't easy. Also on the elder Coppola and writer Mario Puzo's minds here: how that back-and-forth struggle between the life one knows and the better future they've been striving for ripples down through later generations, as seen through the inclusion of Andy Garcia as Michael's hotheaded nephew. The changes made to turn The Godfather Part III into The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone are minor, other than the astute moving of one pivotal scene from partway through to the film's beginnings; however, as intended, it welcomely forces a revisit and re-evaluation with fresh eyes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47ooNWugxRE OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE Three decades ago, one of neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks' books was turned into a film. Drawn from his time in the late 60s treating patients with encephalitis lethargica — people catatonic thanks to a pandemic that spread around the world between 1915–26, and still hospitalised across all those intervening years — Awakenings brought an astonishing true tale to the screen, with Robin Williams playing Sacks' on-screen surrogate and Robert De Niro co-starring as one of the afflicted. The work that led to the text, and the fact that it was adapted into a movie, are both significant achievements. But Sacks' life was filled with many remarkable acts, deeds and successes. He passed away in 2015 aged 82; however, documentary Oliver Sacks: His Own Life assembles a wealth of footage shot as he was facing his end and looking back on his ups and downs. Days after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier that year, he penned an article for The New York Times, called My Own Life, about learning the news — and that same year he published an autobiography, On the Move: A Life — so sharing his thoughts to camera, and stepping through the ebbs and flows of his life that brought him to that junction, was a natural extension of a reflective process he was already going through. There's much to look back on; Sacks might've dedicated his medical career to getting inside the minds of others, and to advancing the understanding of many conditions that affect the brain, but his own life could inspire a comparable wealth of material. Consequently, filmmaker Ric Burns (Made for Each Other: A History of the Bond Between Humans and Dogs) has the job of synthesising the abundance of incidents and details from his subject's eight-decade existence into a thorough and accessible 111-minute film — a considerable feat, but one he masters. Whether you're familiar with Sachs and have read his popular books, you only know him via Awakenings or you're a complete newcomer to his tale, His Own Life unfurls not just the requisite biographical data, but a true sense of spending time in Sachs' inimitable, always-curious, incessantly-thoughtful company. That, and his outlook as he was forced to face the end of his days, are the gifts this doco gives audiences. Sachs' friends and colleagues all pop up as talking heads, offering their recollections and thoughts as well, with Burns structuring his picture in a straightforward fashion — but there's nothing standard about the man at the touching movie's centre, or everything that comprised his life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv99TgifpH0 A CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM BOB The true tale behind 2016's A Street Cat Named Bob and now this year's A Christmas Gift From Bob is undeniably heartwarming, especially for anyone who has welcomed a pet — and a friendly feline at that — into their lives and been forever altered for the better. Homeless and struggling to kick a heroin habit, James Bowen finds the companionship and purpose he needs in a ginger kitty that wanders off the streets and into his flat. A firm bond is forged, and much changes for both the two-and four-legged sides of the relationship. That's the story that the first movie charted. This sequel now picks up after Bowen has become a literary success from turning his kinship with Bob into a bestselling book, although he's still busking, selling The Big Issue and working hard to get by. The struggle with both movies, however, is just how sappy and soppy everything feels at every single moment. It really shouldn't take much to be moved by Bowen and Bob's tale, but these films push the sentiment so forcefully, completely failing to trust that viewers will connect with the story without an overdose of mawkishness. It was true of A Street Cat Named Bob, and it still rings accurate in A Christmas Gift From Bob — which, as the moniker makes plain, is set during the festive season for an extra stint of heartstring-pulling. Life may have improved for Bowen (Luke Treadaway, Unbroken) thanks to Bob, but it doesn't take much to put the pair in a precarious situation. A Christmas Gift From Bob's big dramas come in the form of animal control, who threaten to take the cute cat away after they see him out with his owner in the chilly winter weather. That this happens just as Bob needs veterinary attention adds another layer, as does the easily spiral Bowen navigates due to living on a financial knife's edge. In a nicely drawn performance, Treadaway gives his role more depth than either director Charles Martin Smith or writer Garry Jenkins ask for. Alas, that the former's resume also spans Air Bud, Dolphin Tale and its sequel, and the slushy A Dog's Way Home, is telling — as is the fact that the latter returns after penning the lacklustre first Bob film. There's no point in A Christmas Gift From Bob where it isn't advising its audience how to feel via its dialogue, warm colour scheme and sugarcoating in general. There are zero moments that recognise that Bowen's plight doesn't need to be brought to the screen in such an overt and schmaltzy manner, either, and that both his experiences with Bob and in general are inherently affecting. And, even if you're the biggest feline fancier there is, not even a famous cat (playing himself no less) can patch over the movie's troubles, although its makers clearly think otherwise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fla02yFATuY HOW DO YOU KNOW CHRIS? The sounds of You Am I's 'Berlin Chair' fill its opening moments. An Ivy and the Big Apples-era Spiderbait t-shirt is given by one person to another. The Sydney Olympics are mentioned, too. Accordingly, if Australian film How Do You Know Chris? didn't inform its audience that it was set in 2000, they'd be able to hazard a very firm guess anyway. Spilling out a plethora of details, then asking viewers to piece them together: that's this Melbourne-shot and -set drama's approach. Its characters are in the same situation, after the eponymous Chris (Luke Cook, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) invites a disparate group of people to his apartment for a party. He gives them all different reasons for the shindig, including telling his boss Shane (Stephen Carracher, The Doctor Blake Mysteries) that it's costumed. He hires a waiter to serve beverages, to keep everyone socially lubricated. But, making them wait, drink, chat, get to know each other if they don't and work through long-held grudges if they're already acquainted — with commerce student Emi (Tatiana Quaresma, another The Doctor Blake Mysteries alumnus) falling into the first category, and high school classmates Justin (Jacob Machin, The Twilight Zone), Claire (Ellen Grimshaw, Bloom) and Blucker (Dan Haberfield, Wrong Kind of Black) in the second — Luke then takes his time to show up himself. Other guests are present, such as couple Ray (Lee Mason, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears) and Dot (Lynn Gilmartin, The Very Excellent Mr Dundee), plus the kohl-eyed Christal (Rachel Kim Cross, Mr Inbetween) — all with different connections to the chameleonic Luke, which get teased out over the course of the film. As a result, first-time feature director Ashley Harris and screenwriter Zachary Perez (a fellow debutant) ask a considerable amount of their cast, with the party attendees' awkward chatter and the general uncertainty they feel about the event driving the majority of the movie. As for why everyone is there, that's a tense puzzle for How Do You Know Chris?'s on-screen figures, but not its viewers. While there's weightiness to the idea of someone taking stock of their existence by inviting key people who've made a mark on their life to the one gathering, and to the big reveal when Luke's guests discover the purpose of the shindig, the movie nonetheless feels overstretched. Still, for its first two-thirds, this low-budget Aussie effort makes the most of its main players, the suspense they're saddled with and the movie's apartment-set cinematography. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-0bUxBs8lE THE WAR WITH GRANDPA There is very little that's impressive about The War with Grandpa, which is based on Robert Kimmel Smith's children's novel of the same name, other than its ability to repeatedly remind viewers that its adult leads have been in much, much better movies. The film not only nods to the Robert De Niro-starring Taxi Driver, but reunites him with his The Deer Hunter costar Christopher Walken. It has Uma Thurman playing the nagging mother of a black bob-wearing teenager called Mia (Decker, not Wallace, but the elbowing in Pulp Fiction's direction can't be accidental). These inclusions are meant to satiate adult audience members either watching along with their children, or just watching in general. Really, though, they just stress that this'll never rank among the standouts on De Niro, Walken or Thurman's resumes. It's unfair to compare The War with Grandpa with any of their career highlights, of course, but aside from its recognisable cast, this family-friendly comedy about a kid who overreacts when his grandfather moves in and takes over his bedroom doesn't boast anything other than overplayed and overly formulaic inanity. It's supposed to garner laughs from all ages; however, older viewers are unlikely to even crack a smile and kids 100-percent deserve more. After widower Ed (De Niro) has trouble with a supermarket self-checkout, accidentally becomes a shoplifter and causes a scene, his daughter Sally (Thurman) decides that it's time for him to live with her family instead of on his own. But her son Peter (Oakes Fegley, The Goldfinch) has to relocate to the attic to accommodate the household's new member and, really just because the movie's premise wouldn't work otherwise, he's brattishly unhappy about the change to the point of acting out. He declares war, in fact, even going as far as penning a letter announcing his plans — and soon grandpa and grandson are both engaged in a battle of escalating pranks over turf. While De Niro has plenty of forgettable features to his name (see also: this year's The Comeback Trail), he's also taken enough roles that just require him to be silly that his casting in films like this is no longer anywhere near funny. And director Tim Hill has a long history working on SpongeBob SquarePants, including helming this year's entertaining The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, so it is easy to see why he was drawn to the project — this storyline would've likely worked well in an animated format, set under the sea, and with that zany critter facing off against a nemesis — but there's not even the slightest trace of engaging goofiness here. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on July 2, July 9, July 16, July 23 and July 30; August 6, August 13, August 20 and August 27; September 3, September 10, September 17 and September 24; October 1, October 8, October 15, October 22 and October 29; and November 5, November 12, November 19 and November 26. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as The Personal History of David Copperfield, Waves, The King of Staten Island, Babyteeth, Deerskin, Peninsula, Tenet, Les Misérables, The New Mutants, Bill & Ted Face the Music, The Translators, An American Pickle, The High Note, On the Rocks, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Antebellum, Miss Juneteenth, Savage, I Am Greta, Rebecca, Kajillionaire, Baby Done, Corpus Christi, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The Craft: Legacy, Radioactive, Brazen Hussies, Freaky, Mank, Monsoon, Ellie and Abbie (and Ellie's Dead Aunt), American Utopia, Possessor, Misbehaviour and Happiest Season. Images: The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart courtesy of Ed Caraeff/Getty Images/HBO; The Prom via Melinda Sue Gordon/Netflix.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to watching anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest to old favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from May's haul of newbies. NEW SHOWS TO CHECK OUT WEEK BY WEEK OBI-WAN KENOBI More Ewan McGregor in anything is always a good thing, including in returning to a galaxy far, far away (and long ago). But before Disney+'s new Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi gives the space opera franchise's fans that gift as part of the platform's third live-action spinoff from the blockbuster movie saga (following The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett), it has another present to bestow. Across a few minutes in the show's "previously on" prelude prior to its opening episode, it recaps what viewers need to know about the Jedi and his time with Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen, The Last Man) before now. That means that viewing the terrible prequel trilogy is no longer ever necessary, because the main point of the entire three films has been condensed down into this quick montage. Elated, you should be — and may the force be with the time you'll never waste rewatching them again. There's obviously more to Obi-Wan Kenobi than that. Set ten years after Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, it finds Obi-Wan (McGregor, Halston) living as Ben Kenobi on Tatooine, all to keep an eye on a young Luke (Grant Feely, Creepshow) from afar. But the Empire is after the former Jedi master, and all Jedis — with a particularly determined Inquisitor, Third Sister (Moses Ingram, Ambulance), especially vicious in her efforts to hunt him down. That's all as expected; however, the storyline involving the kidnapping of young Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair, Waco), who is growing up with the Organas (In the Heights' Jimmy Smits and 11%'s Simon Kessell) as her adoptive parents, is far more of a surprise. Also boasting everyone from Joel Edgerton (The Green Knight) and Kumail Nanjiani (Eternals) to Sung Kang (Fast and Furious 9) and Benny Safdie (Licorice Pizza) among its cast, this six-part limited series slots easily into the ongoing sci-fi franchise at its big-screen best — including both looking and feeling the part. Obi-Wan Kenobi streams via Disney+. THE STAIRCASE On December 9, 2021, novelist and aspiring politician Michael Peterson called the North Carolina police to report that his second wife Kathleen had fallen down the stairs. It was late, and he was distraught. She was unconscious but still breathing, he said, and he pleaded for medical help ASAP. While waiting for the ambulance, he rang back to say that Kathleen was no longer breathing. When the paramedics arrived, she was dead. But the scene they found was shockingly bloody, and questions about Michael's story were asked immediately. Protesting his innocence, and originally supported by all five of his biological, adopted and step children, he was arrested and charged with his wife's murder. And yes, if this all sounds familiar — and not just from news headlines two decades back — it's because it was originally chronicled by 2004 French-made true-crime documentary miniseries The Staircase. Now, HBO's eight-part dramatised version — also called The Staircase — is relaying the same story. Whether or not you already know the full tale, the result is still gripping, tensely shot and edited, and also masterfully acted. Colin Firth (Operation Mincemeat) plays Michael, albeit with a far-from-convincing American accent. Aussie actors abound, too, with Toni Collette (Nightmare Alley) as Kathleen, plus Olivia DeJonge (Better Watch Out) and Odessa Young (Shirley) as two of the family's daughters. With Juliette Binoche (How to Be a Good Wife), Michael Stuhlbarg (Call Me By Your Name), Parker Posey (Lost in Space), Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones), Dane Dehaan (Lisey's Story) and Patrick Schwarzenegger (Moxie) all also popping up — and Rosemarie DeWitt as well, playing Collette's sister again after United States of Tara — getting absorbed in this retelling comes quickly and swiftly. The Staircase streams via Binge. BRAND NEW STUFF YOU CAN WATCH IN FULL RIGHT NOW CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS Peeking into intimate connections and making audiences feeling as though they've been lifted from their own lives, or from emotions they've navigated and weathered, is one of Sally Rooney's key skills as an author. It's true of both Conversations with Friends and Normal People in print, and it's a knack that the same creative team — Rooney as an executive producer, co-screenwriter Alice Birch (Lady Macbeth) and co-director Lenny Abrahamson (Room, Frank) — have brought to TV adaptations of both. In text and flickering across the screen, the two tales step into complicated romances that simmer with intensity. They confront class clashes and the difficulties that spring from them as well. And, they force contemplative women to confront what they want, who they are, how they'll grow as people and the others they might give their hearts to. In the instantly addictive Conversations with Friends, 21-year-old Frances (quietly magnetic newcomer Alison Oliver) is first poised as the other half in a couple that's not a couple, at least anymore; she went to school with and used to date the outspoken and outgoing Bobbi (Sasha Lane, American Honey), but now the two university students are best friends and spoken-word poetry partners. It's during one of their performances that successful writer Melissa (Jemima Kirke, Sex Education) spots the duo's act, compliments them afterwards and invites them over for a swim, then back to her well-appointed house for a drink. Enter Nick (Joe Alwyn, The Souvenir: Part II), Melissa's actor husband, who holds himself like he'd rather be anywhere but there but is too polite to upset the status quo. He's as reserved and introverted as Frances — and they catch each other's eyes, while Bobbi and Melissa gravitate towards each other. Conversations with Friends streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. PREHISTORIC PLANET Five episodes, one comforting voice, and a time-travelling trip back 66 million years: that's the setup behind Prehistoric Planet, an utterly remarkable feels-like-you're-there dive into natural history. Having none other than David Attenborough narrate the daily activities of dinosaurs seems like it should've happened already, of course; however, now that it finally is occurring, it's always both wonderful and stunning. Filled with astonishing footage on par with the visuals that usually accompany Attenborough's nature docos, all thanks to the special effects team behind The Jungle Book and The Lion King, it truly is a wonder to look at. It needs to be: if the Cretaceous-era dinosaurs rampaging across the screen didn't appear like they genuinely could be walking and stalking — and fighting, foraging for food, hunting, flying, swimming and running as well — the magic that typically comes with watching an Attenborough-narrated doco would instantly and disappointingly vanish. Welcome to... your new insight into Tyrannosaurus rex foreplay, your latest reminder that velociraptors really don't look like they do in the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World flicks, an entertaining time spent with al kinds of animals, and your next favourite dinosaur project with an Attenborough attached. Each of Prehistoric Planet's five instalments focuses on a different type of terrain — coasts, deserts, freshwater, ice and forests — and chats through the creatures that call it home. Set to a spirited original score by Hans Zimmer, fresh from winning his latest Oscar for Dune, there's a formula at work. That said, it's no more blatant than in any David Attenborough-hosted show. Viewers watch as some dinos look after their young, others try to find a mate, plenty search for something to eat and others attempt not to be eaten. The same kinds of activities are covered in each episode, but the locations and dinosaurs involved all change. Prehistoric Planet streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. STRANGER THINGS Finally back for its fourth season after a three-year wait (yes, finally), Stranger Things ventures beyond its trusty small-town setting of Hawkins, Indiana, and in several directions. It keeps its nods and winks to flicks and shows gone by streaming steadily of course — but expanding is firmly on its mind. Once again overseen by series creators The Duffer Brothers, its latest batch of episodes is bigger and longer, with no instalment clocking in at less than an hour, one in the first drop running for a feature-length 98 minutes, and the final two not set to release until Friday, July 1. Its teenage stars are bigger and taller as well, ageing further and faster than their characters. The show has matured past riffing on early-80s action-adventure movies, too, such as The Goonies; now, it's onto slashers and other horror films, complete with new characters called Fred and Jason. And with that, Stranger Things also gets bloodier and eerier. That said, it's still the show that viewers have loved since 2016, when not even Netflix likely realised what it had unleashed — and no, that doesn't just include the demogorgon escaping from the Upside Down. But everything is growing, as Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown, Godzilla vs Kong), her boyfriend Mike (Finn Wolfhard, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), and their pals Will (Noah Schnapp, Waiting for Anya), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo, The Angry Birds Movie 2), Max (Sadie Sink, Fear Street) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin, Concrete Cowboy) all visibly have. Eleven, Will, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton, The Souvenir Part II) and Joyce (Winona Ryder, The Plot Against America) have branched out to California, and Mike comes to visit. Back in Hawkins, Dustin, Lucas, Max, Steve (Joe Keery, Free Guy), Robin (Maya Hawke, Fear Street) and Nancy (Natalia Dyer, Things Seen & Heard) have a new evil to face. And, as for Hopper (David Harbour, Black Widow), he's stuck in a Russian gulag. The first seven episodes of Stranger Things season four are streaming via Netflix. Read our full review. EMERGENCY The 'one wild night' genre isn't solely comprised of films about high school or college parties — Martin Scorsese's ace After Hours isn't, for example — but it's still filled with them. Emergency is the latest, but it's also a movie with something to say beyond the usual life lessons about valuing your real friends and working out who you genuinely are when you're at that awkward time learning about what being an adult means. It also takes a huge cue from a fairy tale that everyone knows, and adapts it to reflect an inescapable part of America today. How does being a person of colour change your options during a supposedly carefree night of partying? How does it influence your choices when something unexpected happens to someone else and you want to help? And what would happen if Goldilocks and the Three Bears was about a drunk white high schooler who passes out inside a house shared by one Latino and two Black college seniors? These are Emergency's questions. The answers to the above queries come courtesy of filmmaker Carey Williams (R#J) and screenwriter KD Dávila (Salvation), who adapt their short film of the same name. Their focus: pals Sean (RJ Cyler, The Harder They Fall), Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins, The Underground Railroad) and Carlos (Sebastian Chacon, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels), on what's supposed to be a huge night hopping between seven different campus shindigs. Then, they find Emma (Maddie Nichols, The Outsider) passed out on their lounge room floor. The Princeton-bound Kunle wants to call 911, but Sean knows how it'll look to the authorities — even though they're trying to do the right thing, have never met the girl before and don't know how she ended up in their house. Savvier than it is funny, Emergency is an oh-so-topical satire first and foremost, and doesn't hold back for a second. Emergency streams via Prime Video. UNDONE Returning for its second season three years after its first — which was one of the best shows of 2019 — the gorgeously and thoughtfully trippy multiverse series Undone is fixated on one idea: that life's flaws can be fixed. It always has been from the moment its eight-episode initial season appeared with its vivid rotoscoped animation and entrancing leaps into surreal territory; however, in season two it doubles down. Hailing from BoJack Horseman duo Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg, it also remains unsurprisingly concerned with mental illness, and still sees its protagonist caught in an existential crisis. (The pair have a type, but Undone isn't BoJack Horseman 2.0). And, it deeply understands that it's spinning a "what if?" story, and also one about deep-seated unhappiness. Indeed, learning to cope with being stuck in an imperfect life, being unable to wish it away and accepting that fate beams brightly away at the heart of the show. During its debut outing, Undone introduced viewers to 28-year-old Alma Winograd-Diaz (Rosa Salazar, Alita: Battle Angel), who found everything she thought she knew pushed askew after a near-fatal car accident. Suddenly, she started experiencing time and her memories differently — including those of her father, Jacob Winograd (Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul), who died over 20 years earlier. In a vision, he tasked her with investigating his death, which became a quest to patch up the past to stop tragedy from striking. Undone didn't necessarily need a second season, but this repeat dive into Alma's story ponders what happens in a timeline where everything seems to glimmer with all that its protagonist has ever wanted, and yet sorrow still lingers. Once again, the end result is deeply rich and resonant, as intelligent and affecting as sci-fi and animation alike get, and dedicated to thinking and feeling big while confronting everyday truths. Undone streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. RETURNING FAVES DROPPING EAGERLY AWAITED NEW EPISODES WEEKLY BARRY Three seasons into the sitcom that bears his name, all that Barry Berkman (Bill Hader, Noelle) wants is to be an actor — and to also no longer kill people for a living. That's what he's yearned for across the bulk of this HBO gem, which has given Saturday Night Live alum Hader his best-ever role; however, segueing from being an assassin to treading the boards or standing in front of the camera is unsurprisingly complicated. One of the smartest elements of the always-fantastic Barry is how determined it is to weather all the chaos, darkness, rough edges and heart-wrenching consequences of its central figure's choices, though. That's true of his actions not only in the past, but in the show's present. Hader and series co-creator Alec Berg (Silicon Valley) know that viewers like Barry. You're meant to. But that doesn't mean ignoring that he's a hitman, or that his time murdering people — and his military career before that — has repercussions, including for those around him. One of the most layered and complex comedies currently airing, Barry's third season is as intricate, thorny, textured and hilarious as the first two. Indeed, it's ridiculously easy to see how cartoonish its premise would be in lesser hands, or how it might've leaned on a simple odd-couple setup given that Anthony Carrigan (Bill & Ted Face the Music) plays Chechen gangster Noho Hank with such delightful flair. But Barry keeps digging into what makes its namesake tick, why, and the ripples he causes. It does the same with his beloved acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler, The French Dispatch) as well. With visual precision on par with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, it's also as phenomenal at staging action scenes as it is at diving deep into its characters — and, as every smartly penned episode just keeps proving, it's downright stellar at that. Barry streams via Binge. HACKS In 2021, Hacks' first season quickly cemented itself as one of 2021's best new TV shows — one of two knockout newbies starring Jean Smart last year, thanks to Mare of Easttown as well — and it's just as ace the second time around. It's still searingly funny, nailing that often-elusive blend of insight, intelligence and hilarity. It retains its observational, wry tone, and remains devastatingly relatable even if you've never been a woman trying to make it in comedy. And it's happy to linger where it needs to to truly understand its characters, but never simply dwells in the same place as its last batch of episodes. Season two is literally about hitting the road, so covering fresh territory is baked into the story; however, Hacks' trio of key behind-the-scenes creatives — writer Jen Statsky (The Good Place), writer/director Lucia Aniello (Rough Night) and writer/director/co-star Paul W Downs (The Other Two) — aren't content to merely repeat themselves with a different backdrop. Those guiding hands started Hacks after helping to make Broad City a hit. Clearly, they all know a thing or two about moving on from the past. That's the decision both veteran comedian Deborah Vance (Smart) and her twentysomething writer-turned-assistant Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, North Hollywood) had to make themselves in season one, with the show's second season now charting the fallout. So, Deborah has farewelled her residency and the dependable gags that kept pulling in crowds, opting to test out new and far-more-personal material on a cross-country tour instead. Ava has accepted her role by Deborah's side, and is willing to see it as a valid career move rather than an embarrassing stopgap. But that journey comes a few narrative bumps. Of course, Hacks has always been willing to see that actions have consequences, not only for an industry that repeatedly marginalises women, but for its imperfect leading ladies. Hacks streams via Stan. Read our full review. GIRLS5EVA When it first hit streaming in 2021 with an avalanche of quickfire jokes — as all Tina Fey-executive produced sitcoms do, such as 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Great News and Mr Mayor — Girls5eva introduced viewers to its eponymous band. One-hit wonders in the late 90s and early 00s, their fame had fizzled. Indeed, reclaiming their stardom wasn't even a blip on their radars — until, unexpectedly, it was. Dawn Solano (Sara Bareilles, Broadway's Waitress), Wickie Roy (Renée Elise Goldsberry, Hamilton), Summer Dutkowsky (Busy Philipps, I Feel Pretty) and Gloria McManus (Paula Pell, AP Bio) had left their days as America's answer to the Spice Girls behind, barely staying in contact since the group split and their fifth member, Ashley Gold (Ashley Park, Emily in Paris), later died in an infinity pool accident. But then rapper Lil Stinker (Jeremiah Craft, Bill & Ted Face the Music) sampled their single 'Famous 5eva', and they were asked to perform backing vocals during his Tonight Show gig. Jumping back into the spotlight reignited dreams that the surviving Girls5eva members thought they'd extinguished long ago — well, other than walking attention-magnet Wickie, who crashed and burned in her attempts to go solo, and was happy to fake it till she made it again. That's the tale the show charts again in its second season, which is back with more rapid-fire pop-culture references and digs; the same knowing, light but still sincere tone; and a new parade of delightful tunes composed by Jeff Richmond, Fey's husband and source of music across every sitcom she's produced. One of the joys of Girls5eva — one of many — is how gleefully absurd it skews, all while fleshing out its central quartet, their hopes and desires, and their experiences navigating an industry that treats them as commodities at best. The show's sophomore run finds much to satirise, of course, but also dives deeper and pushing Wickie, Dawn, Summer and Gloria to grow. Obviously, it's another gem. Girls5eva streams via Stan. Read our full review. RECENT AND CLASSIC FLICKS TO CATCH UP ON — OR REVISIT NO SUDDEN MOVE Any film by prolific director Steven Soderbergh (Unsane, Kimi) is a must-see event, even if it bypasses cinemas — as No Sudden Move sadly did. This crime thriller would've looked dazzling on a big screen, and for a plethora of reasons, but it's as excellent as ever even while watching on your TV. Soderbergh is no stranger to helming capers — he has Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen on his jam-packed resume, plus both Out of Sight and Logan Lucky — and No Sudden Move is as energetic as the rest of his heist fare. Here, he also revels in period details, with this Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted Face the Music)-scripted tale unfurling in the 1950s. As he's known to do, Soderbergh both shot and edited the movie himself, too, and that exceptional craftsmanship is another of this playful neo-noir's many delights. Spinning an engaging story steeped in Detroit's crime scene, No Sudden Move has something to say as well. Don Cheadle (Space Jam: A New Legacy) in is career-best form as Curt Goynes, who gets out of prison, then gets enlisted for a job by a middleman known as Jones (Brendan Fraser, Trust). That gig? With two colleagues (The French Dispatch's Benicio Del Toro and Succession's Kieran Culkin), he's tasked with babysitting the Wertz family (Archenemy's Amy Seimetz, A Quiet Place Part II's Noah Jupe and debutant Lucy Holt), all so the Wertz patriarch (David Harbour, Stranger Things) can steal a document from his work. There's no shortage of plot — No Sudden Move keeps twisting from there — but capitalism's worst consequences also bubble prominently underneath. Soderbergh and Solomon savvily tease out the details, though, keeping their audience guessing as much as their characters. No Sudden Move is available to stream via Netflix and Binge. EVERY JAMES BOND MOVIE Break out the martinis and prepare for a shaken but not stirred couch session: Bond, James Bond, is coming to your lounge room. Just in time for wintry binge-viewing marathons, the famed espionage franchise has hit Prime Video, spanning every flick in the series from the now 60-year-old Dr No through to 2021's No Time to Die. Sean Connery smouldering his way through everything from that first-ever Bond instalment through to Diamonds Are Forever, Roger Moore stepping into 007's shoes between Live and Let Die and A View to A Kill, Timothy Dalton's two-film run in The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill — they're all included. So is Pierce Brosnan's stint as the secret agent between GoldenEye and Die Another Day, and Daniel Craig's five contributions from Casino Royale onwards, wrapping up with what might be the best Bond film yet. Aussie actor George Lazenby's one-movie appearance as Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service is also on the bill. That's all 25 official movies in total covered, but there is also a 26th movie, Never Say Never Again, that you might want to watch. Made in 1983, it stars Connery as the suave spy. But, because it was made by a different company from the rest of the Bond movies, it's not considered part of the franchise itself — however, it is also on Prime Video now. Exceptional Bond flicks, terrible ones, everything in-between: if 007 is involved, it's now in this one spot. For everything other than No Time to Die, this isn't the first time the franchise has all sat on one streaming platform, and we've all seen various flicks hop between different services over the years. That said, the Bond movies aren't likely to move from Prime Video moving forward given that Amazon recently purchased MGM, the nearly century-old film studio that's behind all things 007. The entire Bond franchise streams via Prime Video. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2021, and January, February, March and April 2022 — and our top new TV shows of 2021, best new television series from last year that you might've missed, top 2021 straight-to-streaming films and specials and must-stream 2022 shows so far as well.
In every way that matters, Manly is the heart of Sydney's northern beaches. Despite its close proximity to the city, Manly has a distinctly small-town vibe that you won't find in many other areas of Sydney. In addition to the beach (which we all know is a stretch of heaven), the coastal suburb is also home to great cafes, boutique grocers and plenty of long lunch spots. To show some of Manly's best small businesses some love, we've teamed up with American Express to put together this list of spots that'll help you out, no matter the situation.
2022 was a glorious year for Taika Waititi, and for the writer/director/actor/comedian's fans. He was the subject of the Archibald's Packing Room Prize-winner, with his likeness becoming an award-worthy piece of art. He had that little Marvel movie Thor: Love and Thunder hit cinemas. Another season of Reservation Dogs, which he produces, arrived. Oh, and he went and co-starred in one of the best new TV shows of the year, Our Flag Means Death. Also, that swashbuckling comedy was renewed for a second run. 2023 is looking mighty fine for Waititi as well, and also beginning of 2024. Reservation Dogs is back for its final season. Big-screen soccer comedy Next Goal Wins, which he directed and pops up in, is on its way. And, so is that second sailing for Our Flag Means Death — complete with a just-dropped trailer. No, Taika's stint playing a pirate isn't over yet, in supremely welcome news for everyone who cruised through Our Flag Means Death's first season. His latest collaboration with fellow New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby (after also working together on Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows, Wellington Paranormal and Hunt for the Wilderpeople), it satirises the buccaneering times of the 18th century. As its first season unfurled, Our Flag Means Death also proved to be a sweet and warmhearted romance, as well as essential viewing. HBO clearly agreed, greenlighting the show's second season for its streaming service Max. Now, that next run has a first sneak peek, and a Thursday, October 5 release date in the US. Fingers crossed that Binge in Australia and in Neon in New Zealand drop new episodes at the same time. Spanning eight episodes, season two will pick up where its predecessor left off. If you haven't hopped aboard already, Our Flag Means Death stars Darby stars as Stede Bonnet, a self-styled 'gentleman pirate', a great approximation of Flight of the Conchords' Murray if he'd existed centuries earlier, and a man determined to bring a bit of kindness and elegancy to the whole swashbuckling game. He's based on an IRL figure, who abandoned his cosy life for a seafaring existence. The show is a loose adaptation of Bonnet's tale, though. As for Waititi, he dons leather, dark hues aplenty, an air of bloodthirsty melancholy and a head of greying hair as Edward Teach — the marauder better known to the world as Blackbeard. While the famed pirate seems like Stede's exact opposite, disproving that is a big part of the show's narrative. After sparks flew, then season one came to a memorable end, season two will follow what happens for Stede and Edward next. Also featuring among Our Flag Means Death's cast: Samson Kayo (Bloods), Vico Ortiz (The Sex Lives of College Girls), Ewen Bremner (Creation Stories), Joel Fry (Bank of Dave), Matthew Maher (Hello Tomorrow!), Kristian Nairn (Game of Thrones), Con O'Neill (The Batman), David Fane (The Messenger), Samba Schutte (Forspoken), Nat Faxon (Loot) and Leslie Jones (BMF), all returning from season one. This time around, they'll be joined by a heap of new recurring guest stars in Ruibo Qian (Servant), Madeleine Sami (Deadloch), Anapela Polataivao (The Justice of Bunny King) and Erroll Shand (The Clearing), plus Minnie Driver (Chevalier) and Bronson Pinchot (The Mysterious Benedict Society) as guest stars. Check out the teaser trailer for Our Flag Means Death season two below: Our Flag Means Death will return for season two in the US on Thursday, October 5 — we'll update you with Australian (via Binge) and New Zealand (via Neon) dates when they're announced. Read our review of season one. Images: Nicola Dove/ HBO Max.
For those considering a trip down to Sydney for Mardi Gras this year, Virgin Australia is sweetening the deal by offering a glitter-filled flight from Brisbane full of drinks, drag and DJs. The Pride Flight is a one-way flight from Brisbane to Sydney that will include bottomless beverages, DJs spinning classic pride tunes and mid-air drag performances hosted by Sydney drag queen Ms Penny Tration of Ru Paul's Drag Race. As you would expect, passengers will also be travelling on Virgin's most bright and colourful aircraft, decked out in glitter and rainbows. The flight will leave from Brisbane at midday on Friday, March 5, just in time for the final weekend of Mardi Gras which will include the 2021 parade, hosted in the SCG for the first time this year to abide by COVID-19 restrictions. An array of parties, talks, performances and an Oxford Street protest are all also scheduled for the first weekend of March. Check out Mardi Gras' full program at its website. Tickets for the 200-seat flight went on sale at 6am on Thursday, February 11 and are sure to be snatched up quickly. An economy seat on the flight will set you back $150 one-way or you can upgrade to business for $350. Passengers will have to organise their own less glitter-filled flight home following the weekend's celebrations. Of course, Sydneysiders wanting to experience the one-off flight can also head up to Brisbane prior to the Friday event. Virgin Australia is also currently waiving change and cancellation fees for bookings made before Friday, April 30, meaning you can book your Pride Flight ticket and your return ticket without the stress of hefty fees if a snap border closure or a change in your personal schedule ruins your Mardi Gras plans. Virgin Australia's Pride Flight will fly from Brisbane to Sydney at 12pm on Friday, March 5. Tickets are on sale now from the Virgin Australia website.
Bringing a hearty serve of la dolce vita to Barangaroo, Gina is a breezy, sun-washed diner inspired by the classic coastal trattorias of the Amalfi Coast. Brought to life by Wondrous Entertainment (Izgara, Malika Bakehouse), the 170-seat venue brings an approachable produce-led menu, aperitivo hours and handmade pasta to a prime harbourfront location. Interiors by Tom Mark Henry strike a balance between laidback Mediterranean charm and contemporary polish — think rattan pendants, golden terrazzo, walnut timber, glossy amber tiles and plenty of natural light. The venue features a mix of indoor and outdoor seating, including a semi-private space inside for intimate get-togethers and one of Barangaroo's largest terraces, complete with heating and cover for year-round al fresco dining. In the kitchen, Group Executive Chef Michael Chang (ex-Maydanoz) and Sicilian native Giuseppe Pappalardo (ex-Molto Italian, Canberra) are plating up refined takes on classic Italian fare. It's a crowd-pleasing selection that's just as suited to a lingering, grazing sundowner as it is to a hearty lunch or dinner. Start with a spread of creative antipasti like a punchy crostini topped with tonnato, cherry tomato and fresh tuna; golden, generously sized arancini with a gentle gorgonzola and pea mix; and an umami-laden calamari lifted with soppressata and XO, before moving to a daily-rotating selection of five house-made pastas — highlights might include hand-rolled leek and ricotta-filled caramelle in brown butter, Moreton Bay Bug pappardelle with chilli oil and cherry tomato and a grass-fed lamb ragu, rosemary and parmesan casarecce. There's also a curated edit of cold cuts sliced to order, as well as a grill section that includes a trio of steaks served with house-made mustard, with prices starting at $35. Cocktails also lean into the coastal vibe. Veteran bartender Grant Collins (Gin Lane, Zephyr) oversees a tight menu that riffs off the Italian canon — the sgroppino is backed by house-made lemon sorbet, the house negroni is given extra depth with a pink peppercorn and dill-infused gin and the Sole Spritz is a summer-ready combo of Aperol, coconut, passionfruit, lime, lemon prosecco and mint. Meanwhile, a 200-strong wine list features top Australian producers and an international selection of old- and new-world picks, spanning everything from easygoing whites to full-bodied reds and rare cellar finds. Images: Steven Woodburn.
A hub for some of the best sandwiches and baked goods in Sydney, Saga Enmore has been delighting tastebuds in the Inner West for over six years now. But, all good things must come to an end, with owner Andy Bowdy announcing that the cafe would be calling it quits — and that he'd be looking towards bigger things — via a post on Instagram. "Growing up playing backyard cricket we always played by the rule six and out… Sometimes these rules apply to life and Saga has just smashed the ball three houses down. After six and a bit years Mads and myself feel like it's time to call it a day for Saga, " the post reads. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andrew Bowden (@andybowdy) "It's been a ride filled with ups and downs, wonderful staff, a pandemic, many a sweet treat, an opening and closing of a second location, and of course the chance to meet and cook for all of the people who walked through our doors and supported our little cafe in Enmore. It's a dream I don't think either of us ever thought we would realise and it was an absolute privilege to have you all along for the ride." Bowdy opened Saga after serving as the pastry chef down the road at Hartsyard. His venture quickly built a cult following for its no-fuss cafe with next-level pastries and loaded sambos. Bowdy fans mustn't fear, however, with the post also alluding to plenty of exciting culinary developments to come in the future. [caption id="attachment_861109" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jarrad Shaw[/caption] "Obviously I can't do much besides cook so don't panic, I'll still be making celebration cakes and other deliciousness. We are busy working on a new project which we will be able to share with you very soon!!" Saga will close on Sunday, June 25. So, if you want to squeeze in one more taste of the team's delectable goods (for now at least), then you've still got two weeks. [caption id="attachment_615657" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kimberly Low[/caption] Saga Enmore is located at 178 Enmore Road, Enmore. Its last day of operation will be Sunday, June 25. Until then it'll be open 9am–3pm Wednesday–Sunday. Top image: Kimberley Low.
Parramatta has long been considered Sydney's second city for quite some time now. Of course, the abundance of outdoor activities, cultural hotspots and restaurants and bars are pretty good excuses to spend a day in Parramatta. And in recent years more and more events and festivals have chosen to launch in western Sydney rather than position themselves in the east. It's a sign of good things to come for the 2150 postcode. Yep, this city knows how to put on a party. We're talking free music concerts under the stars, cultural festivals taking over the streets and world premiering plays — and that's all just within the first two months of 2020. To help you map out your next couple of visits to the area, we've rounded up some of the most exciting things happening over the next few months. Get planning — many cultural adventures await.
Vivid 2015 will be amassing a buzzing crowd over at the Australian Technological Park with Game On this May. Featuring international and local guests, this festival celebrates two of the most popular things to do when procrastinating: interactive games and online videos. Game On is focused on fans and creators alike, with an expo hall open for gamers to playtest the latest projects from indie developers from around the world, as well as workshops and how-to presentations hosted by local colleges the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, JMC Academy and the Academy of Information Technology. Comedy, ideas and music will be represented by YouTube celebrities including Barack Obama impersonator alphacat, 24-year-old Australian master of disguise mychonny, the singing duo Jayesslee, gaming superchannel Smosh Games, and special FX warriors RackaRacka. If you're feeling inspired from this and want to break out into your own online fame, you'll also find plenty of opportunities to learn the craft of home broadcasting for yourself.
A local Sydney gin distillery has placed itself right in the mix of the Marrickville brewery crawl with a colourful new bar. Unexpected Guest started as a passion project on the Northern Beaches and quickly picked up steam, building a cult fanbase for its vibrant orange Kombi that would operate as a portable bar at weddings and events. Now, the team has picked up and moved to the Inner West, opening a playful distillery bar just a couple hundred metres from The Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre, Batch Brewing Company and Baba's Place. "We really played that waiting game because we wanted to be in Marrickville. We wanted to be amongst the breweries," says Communications Manager Carl McEvoy. "We want people to jump in, have a drink, learn about our gins and then move to another distillery, or move to a brewery, or go out for dinner. We love that culture." The new bar is decorated with Unexpected Guest's signature shade of orange and the four fun characters that appear on the front of the distillery's four varieties of gin. You'll also find the beloved Kombi parked down the back when it's not away at events. If you're lucky, you might even head in on a day when DJs have set up on its tow tray to provide the day's soundtrack. Alongside the splashes of colour around the bar, the bathroom has also been given a flashy makeover. "It was quite a feat, but we have made everything about those bathrooms hot pink," explains McEvoy. "This place was a mechanic workshop, and then it got turned into a gym, and now it's a distillery, but it was just like the most economical bathrooms, just for gym members. So turning them into fun bathrooms for a distillery was so much work." Catering to groups big and small, the distillery boasts a classic selection of drinks to showcase the crew's wares. There's a $20 tasting flight, a series of gin and tonics, and a standout cocktail to pair with each of the four gins on offer. The Young Tom's Bathtub Gin is paired with yuzushu and soda for a sleek take on a tom collins, for instance, while the Disco Flamingo's Pink Gin is transformed with Gelato Messina lemon sorbet and sparkling wine in the I Scream and Squawk cocktail. Gin-averse visitors who have wandered in with their spirit-loving friends can opt for Green Vineyards wine, Willie the Boatman beers or Strangelove non-alcoholic ginger beer. "We've had a really nice introduction to the breweries around us. And, when we chatted with them, we thought it was a little bit moot to sell their beer," continues McEvoy. "So, we talked to Willie the Boatman, who's sort of just out of our area, and they were really keen because it meant the people that were coming to us weren't necessarily going to go all the way over to them." Venture further down the menu, and you'll discover a refined list of bar snacks featuring gin nuts, olives, taramasalata and truffle salami. There's also a basque cheesecake sourced from A.P Bakery and paired with a raspberry gin coulis — perfect for a group nightcap where everyone leans in for a spoonful of dessert. Adding to the community energy of Unexpected Guest, the menu concludes with a suppliers list so you can source your own yuzushu or gelato, and a selection of beloved breweries, distilleries and restaurants nearby for anyone looking to kick on. Unexpected Guest is located at 12 Cadogan Street, Marrickville. The distillery bar is open 3–8pm Thursday–Friday, 12–8pm Saturday and 12–6pm Sunday. Images: Daniel Kukec.
Vivid is coming up, and you may be eyeing off some spots around Sydney to book in a meal illuminated by the iconic festival lights. If this applies you, one more option has just sprung forward with Taronga Zoo announcing it will open its elegant Wildlife Retreat dining room Me-Gal to the public for the first time on Thursday, March 30. Me-Gal is set among the zoo's one-of-a-kind eco-retreat that pairs the touches of luxury you'd expect from a five-star hotel together with koala habitats right out your bedroom window — it's one of our picks for the best hotels in Sydney. The restaurant offers a seasonal menu of modern Australian dishes showcasing local produce and native ingredients but its biggest drawcard is the harbour views it serves up. Thanks to Taronga Zoo's location on the head of the lower North Shore and Me-Gal's floor-to-ceiling windows, diners are treated to sweeping panoramic views of the Sydney skyline, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. While you can easily lose track of time staring across the water at the CBD, you'll eventually have to turn your attention to the menu. Executive Chef Stefan Schröder has worked with local farmers and producers to create a sustainably sourced and flavour-packed selection of eats. "When crafting the offering for Me-Gal we drew inspiration from its unique location and the Australian native fauna that surrounds it," says General Manager Hoanh Giang. "An unexpected dining destination on the lower North Shore, the focus at Me-Gal is on sustainable dining, a passion we share with our local community of producers." Take your pick from a la carte standouts like stuffed zucchini flowers with wattle seed ricotta and macadamia crumble, beetroot and whipped lemon myrtle ricotta risotto, and sautéed Hawkesbury calamari served with kipfler potatoes, nduja and wild rocket. If you're dining with a group of four or more, you can leave it in the hands of the chefs and order the shared feast which comes with eight different highlights from the menu and dessert for $120 per person. The wine list is designed around well-rounded Australian classics like Henschke, Penfolds, Yabby Lake, Leeuwin Estate and Oakridge, alongside a selection of vegan, organic, biodynamic and sustainable wines — most of which are available by the glass. If you want to make a real night out of it, you can still book a stay at the Wildlife Retreat, with rooms starting from just over $500 a night. Taronga Zoo is also bringing back its Wild Lights activation as part of Vivid this year. The luminous event will run for 18 nights giving visitors the opportunity to explore the zoo after dark with a light walk guiding you through the park past large-scale animal lanterns and large-scale actual animals. Plus, it's also introducing an intimate new immersive tour called Nura Diya Australia that will take you up close and personal with kangaroos, dingos pups and koalas. [caption id="attachment_853669" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Wild Lights at Taronga, Destination NSW[/caption] Taronga Zoo's Me-Gal is located at 2A Bradleys Head Road, Mosman. It will open to the public on Thursday, March 30, opening for lunch Thursday–Sunday and dinner Monday–Sunday.
Come October, the $20 notes you'll be stuffing in your wallet will look a little different — a new design for the lobster has just been release, and it's hitting tills around the country in just eight months. Australia's banknotes have been getting a makeover since September 2016, when a different $5 note started doing the rounds. It was followed by a revamped $10 in 2017, then $50 in 2018 — and now a sparkling fresh $20, which will hit the streets in October 2019. The upgraded design will celebrate Mary Reibey, an Australian convict-turned-merchant, shipowner and philanthropist, as well as John Flynn, the founder of what is now known as the Royal Flying Doctor Service. They're both recognised in several ways on the new notes, with not only their portraits displayed prominently, but with images one of Reibey's Port Jackson schooners and Flynn's aircraft leaving a Broken Hill homestead, as well as microprint featuring an excerpt from Flynn's book The Bushman's Companion. As well as changed artwork (albeit keeping the same colour scheme and same celebrated Australians as old notes), the new $20 boasts the same improved security features as the new $5, $10 and $50 notes, which are largely aimed to stop counterfeiting. A clear window running from top to bottom is the most obvious, and contains a number of features such as a reversing number and flying kookaburra. And, in great news for the vision-impaired, the new series of legal tender has a tactile feature to help distinguish between different denominations. As happened with the other denominations, the rollout will happen gradually, as will the withdrawal of old $20s — which you can obviously still keep using. And as for the final Aussie banknote yet to receive a revamp, the new $100 is due to be released in 2020.
