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...
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...
The words Whiskey Tango Foxtrot are part of the internationally recognized phonetic alphabet used when communicating by telephone or radio. It also stands for WTF, which stands for, well, you know what it stands for. WTF sums up the situation in which New Yorker Kim Baker (Tina Fey) finds herself when she lands in Afghanistan in 2003. Baker usually writes news copy on cable television, which means...
Frank (Anthony LaPaglia) is a middle-aged real estate agent who is in trouble. He is reeling from the death of his mother a year ago. His marriage is in tatters. And he has no motivation whatsoever to sell houses. His boss and friend, Philip (John Clarke) can see Frank is going through some emotionally tough territory, but he makes it clear that it is time he shaped up. Then, out of the blue, Fran...
THE BOSS is the latest Melissa McCarthy vehicle. She plays Michelle Darnell, a powerful mogul who markets the attainment of wealth with a glitzy Tony Robbins style seminar. These are arena-sized events for ordinary folks who want to make it big like their idol. Michelle’s public persona is not subtle. She is a success-driven, A-type personality, who is also a narcissist that expects to be the cen...
Michael Moore the filmmaker and political activist is back with a new feature, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT. Moore’s fictional premise is that he has been approached by America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to work out why their nation hasn’t won a war since WW2. He takes it upon himself to travel across the world “invading” countries and “stealing” their best ideas to take them back the US. In practice, he vis...
A joint Anglo-American military operation is about to take place. A terrorist group has gathered in a compound, in a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya. The plan is to capture and question the group. The targets are surveilled from on high with a sophisticated drone that has a missile payload on board. On the ground, there are agents with cameras and listening devices. This profusion of electronic eyes and...
Henry (Geoffrey Rush), a man in his 60s, is the patriarch of a family who runs the sawmill in a small NSW town. Everyone in the district knows his family and most are employed at the sawmill. Henry is soon to be married to his former housekeeper, Anna (Anna Torv) who is thirty years his junior. The wedding is a large affair although the only people invited from the town itself are Charlotte (Miran...
Ireland, 1952. A young woman called Eilis Lacey works part time in a shop. She despises the owner the poisonous Miss Kelly, but there is no work in her small town of Enniscorthy. The lack of opportunity leads her older sister Rose to arrange for her passage to the United States. As reluctant as she is to leave her mother and her sister, Eilis makes the journey. On her way over, she finds herself i...
In a world of talking mammals where humans do not exist, there is a rabbit called Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) who dreams of being a police officer in the city of Zootopia. There has never been a rabbit cop before, but Hopps is determined. She eventually becomes the first rabbit to make it through the police academy, but she discovers that her fellow officers do not take her seriously. She is sne...
What do we expect of comedians? To make us laugh, obviously. To make us think? Sometimes. George Carlin moved from being a slick nightclub style comedian in his early days to a more anti-establishment voice. Sometimes comedians move the other way, they become more about the laughs and less about a clever take on the world. This is more or less where Sacha Baron Cohen is with his latest movie GRIMS...
Kate and Geoff Mercer are about to celebrate their 45th anniversary. Geoff receives some disturbing news. In the 1960s, before he met Kate, Geoff had a girlfriend called Katya. The couple were hiking in Switzerland and she fell to her death in a crevasse. Now, all these years later her body has been discovered in a melting glacier. This turn of events sets Geoff to thinking about his life before m...
