Reviewed by John Catania

Bio-pics intend to represent real life. The phrase ‘inspired by a true story’ is often a euphemism, suggesting the film bears little relation to truth. But in two hours it is not possible to provide all the details. In film, telling the story with integrity and honouring the spirit of the person and their life, is paramount. In Hollywood, truth is determined by formula and box office.

Reviewed by Nick Heydon

The cover of Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz's book Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide features a photo of James Caviezel's Jesus Christ being directed by Mel Gibson on the set of The Passion of the Christ. That photo foreshadows the major argument of the authors in this book: there is indeed a relationship between theology and film that needs to be acknowledged and discussed.

Reviewed by Luise Toma

You know Girlfriend Magazine? They’ve come up with a rather honourable idea: to give teenage girls a series of books they can relate to ,and have a good time with. They’ve come up with a catchy slogan, too. Girlfriend Fiction: real life, real emotions, great stories. Apart from being extraordinary catchy, this also sets the bar fairly high before you’ve even opened the pretty paperbacks.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

For fans of blaxploitation flicks of the 1970s, you cannot, I repeat, cannot go past Rudy Ray Moore in The Human Tornado. This is a hard movie to classify because there are moments in this raunchy, sex-drenched adventure that will leave you scratching your head in disbelief, editing that will make you wonder if the disc jumped, and scenes of such sheer, delirious, unadulterated camp, you’ll wonder if someone spiked your coffee. You’ll wonder alright, but as you do so, you’ll be laughing in outraged delight, for The Human Tornado has got to be one of the greatest comedies ever put on film.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton


The tagline for A Lovely Way to Die reads “A bodyguard too involved with the body he was guarding”. Enticing enough, but this psychedelic crime adventure from 1968 starring Kirk Douglas and the always superb Eli Wallach seems more an example of crazed, lusty filmmaking. Yes, it rollicks along, and there’s a surprise around every corner, but A Lovely Way to Die comes off more like a vehicle for its star to prove once again what a player he was when it came to essaying a hard-ass.

A production with bold ideas that occasionally falters in the execution.

Reviewed by Mari Webb

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre remains a difficult story to bring effectively to screen or stage because of its intense focus on the psychology and inner life of the eponymous heroine. In the original novel we are introduced to Jane as a ten year old orphan, living on the charity of her relatives the Reed family. When John Reed, the son of the house, twits Jane with her lack of status and injures her by throwing a heavy book at her head, Jane defends herself for the first time. As a result, she is promptly sent away to a charity school called Lowood. We follow her fortunes there, and to Gateshead where she is eventually employed as a governess, and falls in love with the master of the house Mr. Rochester, who has a mysterious past, but is one of the few people who seems to understand what Jane thinks and feels. The rest of the story continues to trace Jane's struggle to find a place in her world on her own terms.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

For the most part, Desert Fury has all the trappings of film noir crossed with the western. There's tension here, but it's undermined by the overwhelming Technicolour (rare for the era and the material) and Lizabeth Scott's matching makeup and countless costume changes. It's a shame, because the film would have been more effective in black and white.

Reviewed by Will Noonan

Something about seeing the head of John the Baptist on a platter has meant that I’ve never been able to take the story of Salome entirely seriously. The highly enjoyable new Salome by The Rabble at the CarriageWorks Theatre confirms this hypothesis in some unexpected ways, although there is far more at stake here than a cheap laugh. Third in the series of “In Cogito” collaborations between director Emma Valente and co-creator Mary Helen Sassman, this production is by turns cruel, poignant and side-splittingly funny, crossing shades of Wilde with modern Australiana and the Theatre of the Absurd.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

In my previous reviews of the films of Carl Theodore Dreyer, Gertrud and Master of the House, I discussed the emotional investment that strengthened his narratives. In the recently-released Day of Wrath and Ordet, the emotional mood is once again ubiquitous; this time, he has flavoured them with themes of horror and the supernatural, and to masterful effect. The sense of dread hanging over Day of Wrath—a meditation on witch-hunts—is devilishly claustrophobic, and the power of religious belief allows his masterwork Ordet a celestial finale.

Reviewed by Jodie Martin

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews was released in April to the delight of long-time fans and curious readers. In Home, Andrews pieces together previously unknown facts about her childhood with exceptional storytelling.

Home follows Andrews’ early life, beginning with her birth in 1935 at Walton-on-Thames, England and ending in the early 1960s with Andrews leaving for Hollywood to film Mary Poppins with Walt Disney (for which she won an Academy Award). Andrews has previously written best-selling children’s books alone and in co-authorship with her daughter Emma, though Home is the first time readers can find out more about Julie Andrews, before her celebrity status.