Film

As a fading diva in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Annette Bening reminds the reviewer of why he fell in love with film in the first place.

Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country joins the canon of Australian westerns probing violent colonialism and Indigenous dispossession.

In Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Call Me By Your Name’, Timothée Chalamet provides an outstanding portrait of a swooning teen’s sexual awakening.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a dark parable about eye-for-an-eye justice. But at the heart of the film is the view that children are never innocent.

In Suburbicon, George Clooney’s latest turn behind the camera, the foibles of American society are again in the spotlight. Here, the actor–director talks about gun laws, the sanctity of the fourth estate and how failure breeds success. “No one wants to look at someone with a string of hits and a string of right decisions. You have to make bad decisions and … you have to make mistakes. You only learn from mistakes. You never learn from success.”

Following the success of her Glass Menagerie with Eamon Flack, Pamela Rabe reunites with the director to explore the knottiness of Ibsen’s Ghosts. “I’m never one to sit around and wait for the phones to ring,” she says. “I love working in the theatre, and I work a lot in the theatre.”

Filmmaker Warwick Thornton’s latest offering, Sweet Country – a dark, outback, period western – brings the truth of Indigenous history to life through fiction. Says Thornton: “I was ready and really hungry, and a nice, big-arse western, a massive epic full of horses and guns, men scratching their balls, felt really, really good to me.”

Thirty-five years ago, Blade Runner was a thrilling and potent sci-fi offering. But while its sequel is just as visually inviting, the film’s storyline is more replicant than cutting edge.

While Yorkshire-born director Francis Lee brings authenticity to the screen with his depiction of rural labours, he fails to find honesty in God’s Own Country’s idealised central relationship.

Long before Australian actors were celebrated in the US, Anthony LaPaglia was forging a solid career in theatre and movies. But, he says, his rise to stardom could not have been more unexpected.