A postcode apocalypse. That’s what befell the town of Empire, Nevada elevation 4000, population now zero.

The fall of Empire is what makes America grate for so many working class citizens, folk who have bought into the capitalist dream to find themselves into the market driven nightmare of recession.

Manufacturing fractured and fucked over, blue collar quickly goes into the red.
No house, no home, no roof, no bed.

Fern fell foul to the fall of Empire. It was a double blow. Her husband succumbed to cancer, so she lost both spouse and house when Empire lost employment opportunities.

She sank her meagre funds into a camper van and hit the road, eking out a subsistence existence, at times working for the world’s richest man packing boxes at Amazon.

Sad, sombre and sobering and yet hopeful and optimistic, NOMADLAND is a hybrid movie, a docu drama filtered through with virtual verbatim, a mixed cast of actors and lived experience nomads. It’s a thrilling fusion.

Frances McDormand, on track for her third Oscar, plays Fern and David Strathairn plays her potential romantic interest, but aside from these two famous players, NOMADLAND features naturalistic performances from a slew of fascinating characters.

The plight of the itinerant, they need to work, they want to work, they need to eat, they want a skerrick of self respect, the sense of pride that comes from work. It comes to coruscating focus in NOMADLAND.

Unfortunately, Corporate America is not a uniting state, these nomads, the forced footloose, form a commonwealth of cohorts, offering advice and succour. A great deal of these nomads are older, men and women who have suffered grief and loss of loved ones, and the grief and loss of permanent employment.

Written for the screen, directed and edited by Chloe Zhao, it’s easy to go mad for NOMADLAND

In the new film BLACKBIRD, Lily, a spirited woman in her late 60s, is preparing for a weekend with her husband, Paul, and their visiting children.

Despite her impaired mobility, Lily insists on fending for herself. The couple are hoping for a lovely day, but the mood is clearly strained when their guests begin to arrive at their country home.

First is daughter Jennifer, who comes with her husband, Michael, and their 15-year-old son, Jonathan. Continue reading BLACKBIRD : STARRING SUSAN SARANDON : A FAMILY REUNION TURNS SOUR →

For a glorious respite from the challenges of our present reality, look no further than the Alliance Française French Film Festival, which will return from early March until mid-April for its luminous 32^nd season.

Presented by the Alliance Française in association with the Embassy of France in Australia, this joyous and evocative celebration of French culture will screen in splendour at Palace Cinemas across seven cities and two satellite locations.  The strictest Covid protocols are adhered to in each state, including social distancing, sanitising and circulation of clean air, to ensure a safe cinema experience.

For its 2021 outing, the Festival is delighted to have the generous patronage of esteemed Presenting Sponsor, Peugeot Australia. With over 210 years of rich history, Peugeot delivers award-winning excellence in its mobility solutions for the modern motorist. Continue reading ALLIANCE FRANCAISE FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL STARTS THIS WEEK →

As a sign of a return to some sort of normalcy the Jewish International Film Festival opened at the Randwick Ritz which is owned by its Artistic Director Eddie Tamir. It is touted as the biggest Jewish movie festival internationally.

The festival runs for a month and this year’s lineup includes the Australian premieres of fifty films and three television series, split equally between Israeli and diaspora productions, with 19 countries represented on screen. 

The first night audience enjoyed the traditional middle eastern staple, a falafel sandwich, kosher popcorn and that movie viewing essential, the choc-top icecream.  Continue reading OPENING NIGHT JEWISH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL →

Dedicated to Terry Jones, BYE BYE MORONS has another tangible link – or is that a wink – to Monty Python by way of a cameo by Terry Gilliam as a critter killin’ gun salesman.

Admiration and inspiration notwithstanding, BYE BYE MORONS, written and directed by Albert Dupontel, is a crazy, absurd, screwball, cracker barrel comedy about a terminally ill hairdresser, a suicidal civil servant and a blind archivist who band together in a dying wish quest that’s quirky, kooky and altogether quackers.

Deliriously daffy, poignant to a P, and zany as polka dotted zebra, BYE BYE MORONS is Brazil bit by Bobbie and Clyde and probably makes the Cohen Brothers wish they’d conceived it.

Conception is at the core of BYE BYE MORONS, as fifteen year old Suze was forced to give up her baby for adoption. Now twenty-eight years later, the hair dresser has been diagnosed with a deadly cancer caused by chemicals used in her workplace. Her bucket list is succinct. To track her adopted son and see him at last before she shuffles of her mortal curl.

In farcical episodes that need to be seen to be believed, she collects a cohort of collaborators, a duo of damaged blokes who aid and abet her adventure, capering through her crusade trailing chaos, conflict and uproarious assembly.

Dupontel directed the gorgeous See You Up There a few years ago, and doesn’t disappoint with his audacious telling of this curious tale. He also stars as M. Cuchas, the put upon public servant passed over for promotion by duplicitous politicians and pursued by the police for a perceived murder attempt.

Virginie Efira plays the terminally ill Suze with an effervescence that belies her character’s diagnosis and shows the determination and pluck of a woman who refuses to be robbed of her last ditch at happiness.

Nicolas Marie is blatantly batty as the blind archivist with a justified phobia of the police.

Farcical and fulsome, BYE BYE MORONS is an hilarious highlight of this year’s Alliance Française French Film Festival.

For bookings, venues and screening times check out
http://www.affrenchfilmfestival.org/

One of the great horrors of contemporary life is commercial aviation catastrophe, the gross loss of life when airliners plummet from the sky into the sea or into a mountain.

Investigators of such calamities have relied on the so called black box to try to discover what went wrong to down a plane – pilot error, mechanical or electrical failure, an act of terrorism.

Yann Gozlan’s terrific thriller BLACK BOX (Boite Noire) is about Matthieu, an acoustical engineer with acute hearing and intuitive acumen who believes there is more to the crash of an aircraft into the Alps en route from Dubai to Paris than first seems.

The film begins with a tracking shot from cockpit to tail cargo bay of the fuselage of a commercial jet liner. Sensational in its execution, it manages to plant clues and misdirection while building the suspense. It’s a crash waiting to happen but you don’t know how and when.

Afterwards, the air safety investigators assemble the wreckage and locate the black box. Nothing is clear cut. There are theories formed and thrown out. Then the lead investigator suddenly disappears and Matthieu is put in charge.

His dogged pursuit of the truth behind the disaster descends into the dark corners of corruption and cover up, where capitalism collides with the common good, and the very real dangers of the technology trap where control can be malevolently manoeuvred and fail its very usefulness.

Soaring suspense propelled by a palpable paranoia, BLACK BOX is a brilliant detective thriller that expertly shows that the threats that come with our techno age can be thwarted by positive use.

Pierre Niney is superb as the acoustic sleuth whose diligence to detail and duty to the dead puts him on perilous ground and pits him against friends and foes alike.

Not recommended for in flight entertainment, best to see the high flying tension of BLACK BOX at this year’s Alliance Française French Film Festival.

For bookings, venues and screening times check out
http://www.affrenchfilmfestival.org/

Not so steady, but real and ready, snout cam is deployed to depict the doggedness of the treat seeking missiles, the olfactory fidos in THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s film of the foragers of forest delicacies in Piedmont, Italy.

Deep in the forests of Piedmont, Italy, a handful of men, seventy or eighty years young, fossick for the rare and expensive white Alba truffle—which to date has resisted all of modern science’s efforts at cultivation. They’re guided by the noses of their feted and expertly trained dogs. Continue reading THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS : MORE THAN A TRIFLE →

I am a big fan of the legendary, romantic and mystic Irish singer Van Morrison. I remember a quote from one of his early songs in his trademark staccato language, ‘to love the love that loves to love’. It sounds ridiculous but when Van Morrison, with that great soulful voice sings it, it sounds like some mystical chant. The relevance of this will come later.

I am a big fan too of the work of New York writer John Patrick Shanley, lauded as ‘‘The Bard Of The Bronx’. 

I know his work mostly as a playwright – works that include ‘Danny and The Deep Blue Sea’, ‘The Big Funk’, ‘The Dreamer Examines His Pillow’, and  ‘Doubt : A Parable’.   

‘Danny and The Deep Blue Sea’, in particular, has been a favourite of independent theatre companies. The play is a searing study  of two lonely society outcasts who meet in a bar in the Bronx in New York and find connection and solace in each other. I lost count of how many times I have seen this play performed around Sydney. Continue reading WILD MOUNTAIN THYME : THE LATEST WORK FROM THE BARD OF THE BRONX →

Blake Edward’s classic 1961 film ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ makes for great Valentine’s viewing.

The film stars the irresistible Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, a naive, eccentric cafe society girl who falls in love with a struggling writer played by George Peppard.

It also features Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen, Martin Balsam and Mickey Rooney in supporting roles.

HOYTS – Broadway, EQ, Chatswood, Green Hills, Wetherill Park

PALACE CINEMAS – Central, Chauvel

READING CINEMAS – Rouse Hill, Rhodes

UNITED CINEMAS – Opera Quays, Warriewood, Narellan, Katoomba

DENDY – Newtown

OTHER: Randwick Ritz

Booze. Binge. Cultural cringe. Another Australian film? Not at all. ANOTHER ROUND is Danish, where getting into the piss is just as rife as in Oz.

ANOTHER ROUND starts with a schoolies scenario of drinking games – chugging till you chuck. What’s Danish for technicolor yawn? And why should students have all the fun?

At a 40^th birthday part, a group of male teachers reflect on the theory purported by Finn Skårderud’s unconventional suggestion that when humans are born they have a blood alcohol level 0.05 per cent too low and that modest inebriation opens our minds to the world around us, diminishing our problems and increasing our creativity.

Putting this theory to the test, four friends embark on the efficacy of such a notion with some startling results. Continue reading ANOTHER ROUND : TEACHERS WHISKEY →

Risk, reward, riches. That’s the three Rs of writer director Sean Durkin’s THE NEST, an above average stock take on avarice.

Charm and bullshit and a bushel of talent has got Rory O’Hara out of his council flat flat-lining childhood in London across the pond to a New York life and lifestyle with two kids and a wife.

By most standards, he has done well for himself, but his aspirations far exceed his accomplishments. Not content with his position at work he sees an opportunity in Thatcher’s England and uproots his family to return to the place of his birth. Continue reading THE NEST : JUDE LAW’S EDIFICE COMPLEX →

‘Earwig and The Witch’ marks Studio Ghibli’s first new theatrical feature since 2014’s ‘When Marnie Was There’, as well as the studio’s first entirely 3DCG animated feature.

Directed by Goro Miyazaki, ‘Earwig and The Witch’ is based on the novel of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones, who also wrote the source material for ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’.

The narrative of ‘Earwig and The Witch’ is straightforward enough: Growing up in an orphanage in the British countryside, Earwig has no idea that her mother had magical powers. Her life changes dramatically when a strange couple adopts her, and she is forced to live with a selfish witch and a volatile warlock. Continue reading EARWIG AND THE WITCH : CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN ANIMATION? →