Review

Does what it says on the tin. Two teachers at an elite prep school – one an alcoholic wordsmith (Clive Owen), the other an arthritis-impaired painter (Juliette Binoche) – come to metaphorical blows over the respective merits of art and literature in a verbose rom-com that fails to convince us …

How to train your nurse-bot… Michael Bay’s Autobots have nothing on young inventor Hiro’s microbots. Once assembled into group formations by human braincontrol, beating bigger ’bots in back-alley fights isn’t all they’ve got. Treated with love, they can combine to assume any shape imaginable, building wondrous worlds. Like Hiro’s microbots, …

Short cuts, cut short… Playing like an Antipodean Short Cuts, The Turning was a major cultural event when it was released in Australia in 2013. Adapted from a celebrated 2005 book of loosely interlocking short stories by Tim Winton, it saw 18 directors bring Winton’s writings to life across 180 …

Tripping Major Paul… Paul Thomas Anderson’s seventh film feels like light relief after his sixth, the heavyweight melodrama The Master. But then rather like Punch-Drunk Love, when PTA does comedy, don’t expect hearts and flowers. This is the first time revered and reclusive American author Thomas Pynchon has been adapted …

Another episode that’s light on action and big on actions, leaving you wondering what kind of mega set-piece the production team are saving their money for. Packed with revelations and decisions that seem likely to have huge ramifications later on, it’s a week of compelling two-handers and shifts in the …

BATMAN BC… After dusting off the swords-and-sandals sub-genre with Gladiator in 2000, Sir Ridley Scott now has a crack at reviving the Biblical epic. Such movies were big, in every way, in the ’50s and ’60s, when pictures like Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis, King Of Kings, The Ten Commandments and The …

Release Date: 1 December 2014448 pages | Hardback Author: Jill LeporePublisher: Scribe Right from the start, it was no secret to DC’s editors that Wonder Woman was disconcertingly kinky; fan letters from bondage fetishists only confirmed it. No secret either that her creator, William Moulton Marston, meant her to be …

Forget everything you think you know about remastered video game rereleases, because new-gen Grand Theft Auto 5 punches the rule book, steals its car, and then reverses back over the battered, leathery remains just to be sure. The obvious question is ‘should I buy GTA 5 all over again?’ to …

This offbeat black comedy from writer/director Zach Clark follows Suzanne (the superb Anna Margaret Hollyman), an estate agent about to move to Hawaii with TV weatherman husband Jeff. But returning home one December day, she finds Jeff brutally murdered. Against a Christmas-is-coming backdrop, Suzanne juggles grief with some revelations about …

The Pokemon formula is a classic: collect monsters, shove them in your pockets, fight everyone you make eye contact with. There’s always the same number of Gym badges to collect (eight FYI, though you probably knew that already) and there’s always an evil organisation or two to topple in the …