Album: Genesis Owusu - Smiling With No Teeth
Debut by new talent from Australia is a charismatic and multiform ride
The debut album by Australian-Ghanaian artist Genesis Owusu is so musically restless it’s exhilarating. What’s clear is this guy doesn’t want to be placed in a box, marked hip hop or anything else. Over a wild variety of music, he adopts multiple vocal styles, reminding of beatbox genius Reggie Watts (most especially his recent Wajatta project with John Tejada).
Rams review – softhearted bush-loving drama
Remake of Icelandic black comedy in tranquil outback setting
Kiwi and Aussie screen legends Sam Neill and Michael Caton have teamed up in this heartfelt and humorous remake of Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 Icelandic original. The template of Hákonarson’s story has been transplanted but all the details and fillings have changed. Director Jeremy Sims pitches us in Australian sheep country, a sunny and laconic world where life flows at a pretty breezy pace.
Penguin Bloom, Netflix review - stirringly acted if sentimental
Naomi Watts triumphs over the treacle
Two genuinely lovely performances elevate an often-simplistic tale in Penguin Bloom, based on a 2016 memoir of the same name.
DVD/Blu-ray: Relic
Dementia as demonic possession in an outstanding contemporary horror
Relic's deliberate drabness hits home first; set in Victoria, Natalie Erika James’s modern horror shows us a grey contemporary Australia, a place bleached of all colour.
Album: The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You
The Australian sample-stitchers return with an album of big themes rich in small detail
After a 16-year wait for the second album from Australian sample-stitchers The Avalanches, their third, a mere four years later, feels like a rush release by comparison. We Will Always Love You has been preceded by no fewer than four singles which, while welcome, are in danger of distorting the overall picture slightly.
Album: Kylie - DISCO
Much-needed escapism from Australia's finest export
We’re eight months into a global pandemic, and Kylie Minogue is serenading us from her kitchen. “We’re a million miles apart in a thousand ways,” she sings, feather-light vocals floating over a driving disco beat. “Can we all be as one again?”
Relic review – a deadly disappearing act
A family of women reaps the wrath of dementia
The bleak power of the Australian horror movie Relic, Natalie Erika James’s feature debut, derives from its masterful use of a simple metaphor.
Blu-ray: Walkabout
Fifty years on from its original release, Nicolas Roeg's solo debut gets a stunning restoration
It’s always a timeslip moment, revisiting films first seen in your teens, but never more so than when watching this beautifully restored print of Walkabout. Nicolas Roeg filmed and directed this fever dream of a movie in 1970, after co-directing Performance with Donald Cammell.
Babyteeth review - teenage love and terminal illness in the Sydney suburbs
Shannon Murphy's debut feature is packed with charismatic performances
Babyteeth gets off to a terrific start. A semi-naked, manic Moses (Toby Wallace, full of scabby charisma) almost pushes 15-year-old Milla (Eliza Scanlen; Sharp Objects, Little Women) on to the Sydney train tracks as she waits on the platform in her school uniform, carrying her violin. It’s a thunderclap: she’s smitten.