Phil Jeng Kane
Phil has written for magazines, corporate videos, online ads, and even an app. He writes with one eye on the future, one eye on the past and a third eye on the Lotto numbers. His social bits are here.
Girl Asleep
Greta Driscoll is 14-years-old. Her family have recently moved into their new Adelaide home. Her mother, father and older sister appear to be settling in well, but life feels harder for Greta (Bethany Whitmore). She hasn’t made any friends at her new school, apart from weird, nerdy Elliott (Harrison Feldman) and she is doing everything she can to avoid the attentions of mean girl sisters, the trip...
The Infiltrator Review
Robert Mazur is a US Customs special agent. He regularly goes under cover to make drug stings. When we first see him, Mazur (Bryan Cranston) is in the middle of a bust. There’s trouble, but his professionalism carries the day. He wraps up the case and destroys his fake IDs as a kind of end ritual. He’s proud of the work he does, but he is glad to leave his sketchy undercover persona behind, so he ...
Blood Father
John Link (Mel Gibson) is an ex-con making his way as a tattooist working from a worn-out old trailer in a small town in the California Desert. His neighbours are mostly loner men living out their existence far from the pressures and expectations of city life. John’s closest friend is Kirby, (William H. Macy) his AA sponsor and a man well-accustomed to dealing with Link’s moody personality. One da...
Down Under
December 11, 2005. In the seaside suburb of Cronulla, there’s a race riot on the beach. White Aussies versus Lebanese. Australia is shocked. Politicians and the media rush to condemn the violence. This is not how Australia is supposed to be, is the general consensus. It is the day after the riot and as it says in the publicity, “two carloads of hotheads from either side are destined to collide”. T...
War Dogs Review
David Packouz (Miles Teller) is a young Miamian who is college educated and yet has found employment difficult to hold on to. He is now a massage therapist. It is 2005 and he admits in the brief and painless opening narration, that he is lost. He meets up with an old high school friend, Ephraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). He quickly discovers that Ephraim, by contrast, has a very strong sense of direct...
Bad Moms Review
Amy (Mila Kunis) is the mother of two and the part-time sales executive at a hipster coffee company. Her marriage to Mike (Brad Walton) has seen better days and because she is always multi-tasking for three other people, she is never on time for her job, nor any of her kids’ many extra-curricular activities. To make matters worse, at her children’s school, she runs into numerous problems wit...
Demolition
DEMOLITION was the opening night film of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival 2016. Director Jean-Marc Vallee’s best-known feature to date is the Oscar award-winning DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (2015). Investment banker Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is being driven to work by his wife Julia (Heather Lind) when they are involved in a car accident that kills her. (This happens approximately tw...
Queen of the Desert Review
Iconic German filmmaker Werner Herzog has directed QUEEN OF THE DESERT, a film about English explorer, writer, spy and archeologist Gertrude Bell. Australia’s own Nicole Kidman assays the lead role. Before digging into the movie itself, it may be useful to know more about the historical Bell. She was born in 1868. Her family was wealthy and influential. Unusually for the era, she was educated at O...
Now You See Me 2 Review
The first NOW YOU SEE ME was a globetrotting, jet-setting heist movie that kept its audience off-kilter with a series of plot twists ending with a big one that I will not reveal here, even though you’ve had three years to discover it. The movie relied on splashy visuals, clever set pieces and the charm and chemistry of its cast. It established the idea of a mystic society called The Eye dating bac...
Alice Through the Looking Glass Review
Tim Burton’s and Disney’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010) now has a sequel, ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, this time directed by James Bobin of THE MUPPETS (2011) and television’s Flight of the Conchords. When we left Alice (Mia Wasikowska) in the first picture, she was about to jump aboard her father’s ship,The Wonder, and embark on a colonialist adventure in the Far East. ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING ...
Hunt for the Wilderpeople Review
Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is a street kid who is taken to a foster home in the country. There he is looked after by Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and more reluctantly by Hec (Sam Neill). When Ricky’s living circumstances change he decides to go on the run with Hec. This leads to a national manhunt that plays out across the media. Writer director Taika Waititi has adapted Barry Crump’s book Wild Pork a...
The Meddler Review
Marnie (Susan Sarandon) is a recent widow who has followed her television screenwriter daughter Lori (Rose Byrne) from New York to Los Angeles. Marnie’s late husband left her financially secure and she needs to do nothing but enjoy the weather and her new apartment. Instead, she focuses on her daughter’s life. Lori has recently broken up with her actor boyfriend and is attempting to develop a tele...