Authors

For & Against: Clowns

Review: At Eternity’s Gate

At Eternity’s Gate is the latest film inspired by visionary post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh.  It is set in the turbulent last years of van Gogh’s life, as he grapples with mental illness, spirituality and an all-encompassing compulsion to paint the world as he sees it. Director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) does his best to understand the man behind the icon; to strip away novelty and gaze at the star-crossed van Gogh operating on an alien frequency.

Review: Sweet Phoebe

Contemporary classic Sweet Phoebe has been reimagined for Red Stitch Theatre under the direction of Mark Wilson, a quarter century after it premiered in Sydney starring a young Cate Blanchett. In this stark, intimate space, tightly wound couple Helen (Olivia Monticciolo) and Fraser (Marcus McKenzie) rove around their desperately upper-middle-class domain, eager to quash the insecurities plaguing them as they barrel towards mutually assured success.

Review: The Girl in the Spider’s Web—Sugary Asphyxiation

Hollywood’s lolly pythons have squeezed the thrill from the fourth thriller in the Millennium series, the Girl in the Spiders Web.  In-keeping with the tradition of ‘translating’ complex narratives into packet pancakes (sugar-coated, two-dimensional, easily franchised), the Girl in the Spider’s Web wastes a talented cast on tired tropes and a plot that ties itself in knots only to arrive at an obvious conclusion.

Kids, Cats and Survival

I am curled up in a ball like a frightened armadillo.