“Stories are wild creatures… When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak,” the Monster says in the film adaptation of Patrick Ness’s award-winning novel, A Monster Calls. Human lives are all made up of stories – ...
Read More »“La La Land” the big Globes winner.
It’s always a little tough writing about the Golden Globes as a South African critic because local reviewers will have only watched around half of the films nominated. The Oscars are always easier as they end off the awards season and by then ...
Read More »Does the WWII biopic, “Hacksaw Ridge”, redeem Mel Gibson?
“While everybody else is going to be taking life, I’m going to be saving it. That’s going to be my way to serve.” That’s what Desmond Doss tells his father before enlisting in the U.S. army to fight in World ...
Read More »“Passengers” — a cosmic love story.
The poet, Emily Dickinson, wrote of loneliness “Ourself behind ourself, concealed —Should startle most —Assassin hid in our Apartment Be Horror’s least.” Loneliness is a force that confronts and unmakes the self. Humans are by and large social creatures. It ...
Read More »“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” — our (completely) spoiler-free review.
Blah, blah, blah. The alt+right hates the new Star Wars spinoff and stand-alone movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Because how DARE the hero be female and how dare the creators and writers ‘politicise’ the film. The lead character, Jyn ...
Read More »“La La Land”, “Moonlight” lead Golden Globe nominations.
Awards season is fully in swing following the nominations for the Golden Globes, one of the most highly profile awards along with the Oscars. The musical, La La Land, about dreams and dreamers in Los Angeles, leads with seven nominations, including ones ...
Read More »[LISTEN] Nomavenda Mathiane on her haunting book, “Eyes in the Night. An Untold Zulu Story”.
An offhand remark at her mother’s funeral took veteran South African journalist, Nomavenda Mathiane, on a journey into the past — the story of her grandmother, who survived the Anglo-Zulu war. It is a story about how a young girl ...
Read More »Cirque Éloize’s iD production: “Westside Story gone hip hop circus”.
Electronic dance music pulses as the b-boy spins on his head, arms in the air, legs bent like the blades of a helicopter. To the side, a woman bends over backwards, folding herself into a seemingly impossible pose. Slowly she ...
Read More »We review J.K. Rowling’s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” [no spoilers].
Nearly twenty years after J.K. Rowling created the stunning and enduringly popular wizarding world of Hogwarts and Harry Potter, the British author is finally giving fans more of the same world, albeit without Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Set in 1926, ...
Read More »“Blood Father” – is this action-drama Mel Gibson’s way back to big screen glory?
Reports from international critics covering film festivals have it that award-winning actor and director, Mel Gibson, is finally on the up and up. Gibson has essentially been blacklisted for nearly a decade decade following incidents of drunken racism and anti-Semitism. ...
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