Australia
London Film Festival 2024 - a shaman and shamSaturday, 26 October 2024
Justin Kurzel’s Australian film subjects are out on the malign edge, from Snowtown’s suburban serial killer and Nitram’s mass shooter to Ned Kelly. His debut documentary’s protagonist Warren Ellis is a contrastingly loving renegade, an escapee from... Read more... |
Album: Amyl and the Sniffers - Cartoon DarknessWednesday, 23 October 2024
Amy Taylor’s lyrics on Amyl and the Sniffers’ previous discs could hardly be described as demure – especially with song titles like “Don’t Need a Cunt (Like You to Love Me)”. So, it’s encouraging to hear that the band hasn’t decided to censor... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - the Vatican, the Blitz, a trip to Poland and a surfin' nightmareSaturday, 12 October 2024
ConclaveDirector Edward Berger won an Oscar for his last feature, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), but here he concerns himself with the more intimate and claustrophobic battlefield of the Vatican. The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and under... Read more... |
Our Country's Good, Lyric Hammersmith review - lively but patchy revivalFriday, 13 September 2024
The latest Greatest Hit to land at the Lyric is Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 award-winning play about a performance of Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer by British convicts in a New South Wales penal colony. It’s a piece about a true incident... Read more... |
Album: SJS - A Sequence of MistakesThursday, 08 August 2024
Whether or not the lyrics Stuart Stawman writes and sings are autobiographical, the persona he’s created for himself as the leader of his neo-prog project SJS is that of a dutiful lover thwarted by the pressing of the self-destruct button no affair... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Heartbreak Hotel / The Gummy Bears' Great War / The CeremonySaturday, 03 August 2024
Heartbreak Hotel, Summerhall ★★★★ If the show’s title leaves you expecting schmaltz and dodgy Elvis impressions – well, you might be disappointed, and possibly pleasantly surprised. This quietly powerful two-hander from New Zealand-based... Read more... |
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire review - a bit of a monster let-downSaturday, 30 March 2024
The latest blockbuster of 2024 is this disappointing fifth entry in the so-called MonsterVerse franchise, owned by Legendary Pictures. About half of the film contain actors, while half of it is computer-generated – the likely brief future of cinema... Read more... |
Late Night With the Devil review - indie-horror punches above its weightMonday, 25 March 2024
In Late Night With the Devil, light entertainment rubs shoulders with demonic forces on a talk show. It isn't quite the homerun its 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating would suggest, but this Australian indie production punches above its weight with an... Read more... |
The New Boy review - a mystical take on Australia's treatment of its First PeoplesSaturday, 16 March 2024
This is writer-director Warwick Thornton’s third feature film, his first since 2017's excellent Sweet Country, and it took him 18 years to bring it to the screen. He describes it as “a really special one” with “a lot to say”, though viewers may find... Read more... |
Next Goal Wins review - football's lamentablesTuesday, 26 December 2023
For those who ever wonder if soccer scoreboards, or score-line captions on TV, can ever be made to reach three figures, consider the match between AS Adema and SO l’Emyrne, two teams in Madagascar, in 2002. It ended 149-0, but that was only because... Read more... |
A Stitch in Time review - feelgood Aussie indie with an undernourished scriptFriday, 24 November 2023
There’s a faint whiff of Strictly Ballroom about Sasha Hadden’s Australian indie A Stitch in Time, another tale of people in later life rekindling lost dreams and a long-buried love while nurturing younger folk with the same passions. Here, though,... Read more... |
The Royal Hotel review - sexual malice in AustraliaThursday, 02 November 2023
The jitters-inducing first feature directed on home soil by the Australian filmmaker Kitty Green is named after The Royal Hotel, the only pub in an Outback mining community removed from civilised society. To suggest all the blokes who drink there... Read more... |
