Phil Jeng Kane

It’s 1978. Cam Stuart (Mark Ruffalo) is a man from a well-to-do Boston family who should be able to walk into a highly paid job based on his connections. However, he is manic-depressive (or bi-polar) and he doesn’t always take his medication. This gives him a reputation for volatility that isolates him from his friends and family. Cam meets Maggie (Zoe Saldana) and they marry.  For a time the rela...

It is 1692 and King Louis the XIVth of France is moving the aristocrats and nobles of the court to Versailles. André Le Nôtre, the landscape architect (Matthias Schoenaerts), has been tasked with creating the parks and gardens of the new palace. The scope of the enterprise is so vast that he advertises for other gardeners, builders and architects to take on sections of the work. One of the candida...

From the late 1950s, America fell in love with the work of Walter Keane. He captured the public imagination with his melancholy paintings of big-eyed waifs. In order to get these images out to a market that couldn’t get enough of them, Keane sold the images as posters, prints and coffee table books. Then, in 1969, America was shocked when Margaret Keane, Walter’s wife, claimed that every single wa...

You are likely to have heard of the name Edward Snowden, the former system administrator who worked as a contractor to the United States’ National Security Administration (NSA). You will have heard him described as everything from a whistleblower and a patriot, to a spy and a traitor.  In 2013, he leaked information that revealed the extent of the NSA’s global surveillance operations. Their scope ...

Andre Allen (Rock) is a movie star. He transitioned from being a top stand-up act years ago and he is now famous for the role of Hammy The Bear, a violent, machine-gun-wielding, catch-phrase-spouting, cop in a bear-suit. He is also moving into the final phase of a reality show wedding with Erica Long (Gabrielle Union). The film opens with Allen doing media for the opening of his new movie, a serio...

Jess Barrett (Margot Robbie) is a newbie grifter who tries to pull a con on a man whom she targets in a bar.  Unbeknownst to her she has chosen Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith) who comes from a line of infamous con artists. Nicky is amused by Jess’s ineptitude and tells her in detail why her con was terrible. She decides that if she is going to improve, she wants him as a mentor. He takes her on ...

Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Egerton) has grown up in a council estate and now the young man has fallen in with a gang of street thugs. When he gets in trouble with the law, he is sprung from confinement by Harry Hart (Firth). Eggsy doesn’t know Harry, but Harry knew his long-dead father. They both worked for an ultra-secret British spy organisation Kingsman, which, despite the name, is an independent grou...

If someone asked you to name a scientific genius, you’d probably say Albert Einstein. If you had to name a second genius, chances are your answer would be Stephen Hawking. These two are the real-life, brand-name theoretical physicists we non-scientists can identify. Einstein died in 1955, so Hawking is our go-to, living, breathing mastermind. The fact his body is paralysed by motor neurone disease...

What is BIRDMAN about you ask? Well. It’s hard to explain properly without giving it away. Hmm. So here goes.  Hollywood actor Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) was once world-famous for playing the part of superhero Birdman. Over 20 years ago, the Birdman films made him rich, powerful and famous, but the experience almost destroyed him. So for the sake of his sanity he drew the line at doing Birdma...

Twelve-year-old Dylan (Ed Oxenbould) lives in country Australia. When a teacher challenges the class to design paper airplanes for a local competition, Dylan is surprised to discover he has a natural talent for the activity. His plane flies right out of sight. After this, Dylan’s goal becomes competing in paper plane events, however he is hindered by several obstacles. His home is far from the cit...

ANNIE, the feature film adapted from the 1977 Broadway musical, which in turn is an adaptation of the Great Depression-era comic strip Little Orphan Annie, is a film with a lot of cultural baggage. The kind of baggage that you just don’t want to be lifting today in your post-Yuletide haze. So setting aside the remake and adaptation bizzo for a few paragraphs, what is 2014 post GFC-era ANNIE about?...