Author: Tim Kroenert
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 26 March 2015
2 Comments
At the height of the Troubles in Belfast, a young British soldier becomes separated from his unit and spends a night lost in one of the city's most dangerous locales. The city is fractured along numerous lines: it's not merely Catholic versus Protestant; the radicalised youths of the Provisional IRA are at odds with their established forebears. Rarely have the Troubles been so grippingly portrayed.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 19 March 2015
2 Comments
In 1993 Joaquin Phoenix's brother, River, died of a drug overdose, in front of a club owned by Johnny Depp. Depp later starred in an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's drug-addled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, prompting one film critic to wonder how Depp could see much humour in the material. One might now be tempted to ask the same question of Phoenix, who was present during his brother's fatal overdose.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 12 March 2015
2 Comments
Gameau's quest takes him to the Northern Territory, where the prevalence of high-sugar beverages has taken a dire toll upon Indigenous communities, whose access to nutritious foods has been stymied by government policy. Also to America, where he yarns with food industry spin doctors and witnesses the excruciating dental procedure a Kentucky teenager endures to reverse the effects of 'Mountain Dew Mouth'.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 05 March 2015
Abel's life is pointedly contrasted with Peter's, a young truck driver who has been the victim of several violent assaults on the job. Peter idolises Abel, for whom the Dream has apparently come true — if Abel can make it, so too can Peter. The problem is that Abel's Dream stands on the backs of ordinary workers like Peter. Peter is a tragic antihero coming to learn that for many, the Dream will remain just that.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 26 February 2015
2 Comments
Snowden is both passionate and highly articulate, wanting nothing less noble than to see the delineation between those with power and the people over whom they wield it redrawn. The real meat of the matter is not the revelations themselves, but how in their light governments and societies desiring security will move to decide just how much freedom they are willing to surrender in order to acquire it.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 19 February 2015
1 Comment
The theme song from Selma references Rosa Parks and Ferguson in the same breath. Indeed this is a powerful period drama that resonates loudly in a modern age where the injustice against which Martin Luther King raged continues to haunt Black America. Oyelowo's King is charismatic and proud, but plagued by doubts and capable of great sadness when even one of his followers falls in the midst of the struggle.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 12 February 2015
6 Comments
The late Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who as of this month is one step closer to beatification, has long been regarded as one of modern history's great champions of the poor. In 1989 he was 'canonised' on celluloid. The production has not aged well but is elevated by the late Raul Julia, whose conflicted, heroic portrayal of Romero is surely as iconic as the man himself.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 05 February 2015
2 Comments
The brilliant linguistics professor Alice Howland and her biologist husband, John, sit down to break the news to their adult children: Alice has early-onset Alzheimers. At first Alice maintains a fragile, trembling stoicism. But when she tells them the disease may be passed on genetically, the façade slowly implodes. 'I'm sorry,' she weeps, horrified by the prospect of what she clearly sees as a betrayal.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 29 January 2015
1 Comment
Cheryl Strayed is haunted by her past — by her own sins, and by tragedies that have befallen her. As she walks, she hums, and the music she hears in her head leads her in and out of the past. Her solo 1600-plus km trek along America's Pacific Crest Trail is a metaphor for her life: each hardship she overcomes brings her a step closer to facing down the fierce regrets that gnash at her heels.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 22 January 2015
Riggan's ego is immense. The action takes place backstage during the days leading up to the premier of his latest vanity project, and onstage during a series of previews. Riggan is out of his depth, prone to humiliating blunders, including one that results in a near-naked dash through the crowds of Times Square. But his resolve to affirm his greatness in the eyes of a media and public that has dismissed him is maniacal.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 18 December 2014
8 Comments
It's December, and film writers everywhere are putting together their lists of the best films of 2014. But best-of lists are so subjective, so here's our take: ten films from 2014 that are guaranteed to get you thinking, and talking!
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 11 December 2014
During an end-of-season trip to Bangkok, impressionable country footy dork Ray is badgered by one of his teammates into turning drug mule. He is picked up in Melbourne, where a couple of nasty cops detain him under supervision for seven days, waiting for him to pass the heroin-filled balloons he ingested. Ray is beset on all sides by systemic corruption, which makes his refusal to poo — fuelled not by greed but by a kind of everyman nobility — seem truly heroic.
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