Opens: June 22 Genre: Drama Duration: 94 minutes Fifteen years after an adult man initiates an illegal three-month sexual relationship with an underage teenage girl, the victim finally confronts the man responsible in this gripping film set in suburban England, adapted by Scottish dramatist David Harrower from his own acclaimed stage play, Blackbird.  What might have been a simple revenge melodrama becomes a far more subtle and a far more nuanced – and therefore more powerful and haunting – affair in the hands of Harrower and his director, Benedict Andrews, the internationally successful Australian theatre director here making an excitingly accomplished cinema debut. While the play – which I haven’t seen – was confined to the meeting between the two adults, the film flickers back and forth between the present and the past, the former unfolding during a single day. Rooney Mara’s Una turns up to the light industrial warehouse where Ben Mendelsohn’s Ray now works. After serving a four-year sentence as a result of his abuse, Ray has moved to a different area, changed his name to Pete and married.  Interspersed throughout the film are flashbacks showing Una as a 13-year-old (terrific newcomer Ruby Stokes), flattered by the attention from…

New report finds that domestic visitors rate it Australia’s most creative city, but international visitors put Sydney on top.

Opens: June 8 Genre:  Biographical drama Duration: 110 minutes The life of Winston Churchill was crammed with enough adventure and intrigue to fill several movies. Given the early years were covered by Richard Attenborough in 1972’s Young Winston, it makes sense for later filmmakers to focus on the WW2 years. This new film starring Brian Cox narrows its focus even further to the few weeks leading up to the allied D-Day invasion of Nazi-Occupied France, with no footage of the actual assault.  The British leader was largely sidelined by the Americans at this stage of the war and is depicted here chafing in frustration, though his earlier preference for invasion via Greece and Italy is unmentioned. Scripted by historian and author Alex von Tunzelmann and directed by Australian Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man), this film aims to paint a realistic portrait of the wartime leader. It goes beyond the iconic British bulldog cliché to give us a multifaceted individual; one skeptical and nervous of the coming invasion, frustrated at being pushed aside by the Americans in the planning, fearful of the potential for disaster (influenced by guilt over his pivotal former role as the WWI leader responsible for the Gallipoli campaign), and dogged by the…

★★★½☆ Music and storytelling combine in a performance that brings narrative archetypes to life.

Along with Claire Edwardes and seven canny composers, the playwright explains how she created a musical Everywoman.

Unsatisfied with his instrument’s limitations, the film and television composer designed a seven-octave guitar with a piano’s range.

Opens: May 11 Genre: Art documentary Duration: 94 minutes Even those not well-acquainted with the art of the late Brett Whiteley are likely to know the legend – that of a comet that burned brightly through the art world, unleashing a self-destructive tailwind that caught up not only himself but his loved ones. This already potent story, both inspiring and sad, was refracted to most ordinary citizens through the distorting lens of the Australian media, where prurience and moralising were free to do their dirty work.  Among the minimum requirements for a documentary on Whiteley is the need to present a vivid and truthful account of the artist’s life bolstered by honest reminiscence and insightful commentary from those close to him, such as his long-time partner Wendy Whiteley and his sister Frannie Hopkirk, as well as the key art world professionals who recognised his talent.  To avoid hagiography, you’d want the film to be honest about his failings as well as his personal strengths and artistic powers, to be upfront about his alcohol and heroin abuse and their effect on himself and those around him – but crucially without falling into the twin perils of either sensationalism or myth-making.  Of course, it…

The arts sector is up in arms over management proposals to decimate arts coverage at SMH and The Age.

Richard Tognetti’s new odyssey leads a line up including Brett Dean’s Hamlet, Orwell’s 1984, Messiaen’s Turangalîla and more.

This powerful drama about the legal battle between ultra-right wing UK historian David Irving and US Holocaust studies academic Deborah Lipstadt could hardly have arrived at a more appropriate moment. That the Holocaust as a topic has a lasting relevance is obvious, but as the film’s title makes clear, it’s not just the historical event so much as the associated phenomenon of denialism – the attempt to erase it from history and excuse the perpetrators – that lies at the heart of the drama. Add to that the echoes now being felt of the darkest currents of 1930s politics, and the film’s subtext grows even timelier. In this age of “alternative facts”, when the powerful not only lie but try to make us not care about whether the notion of the truth any longer has meaning, and when deniers of anthropomorphic climate change are lavishly funded by billionaires, the film has a deeper and more wide-ranging impact than anyone might have expected only a few years ago. Irving (played here by Timothy Spall) sued Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) and her publisher Penguin Books for libel in the British courts in 1996 for calling him a liar in her lectures and writing….