Prey

Naru with a black stripe across her eyes

Prey refreshes the Predator franchise in ways that are predictable, unpredictable and surprising. All in all, it’s the best non-Schwarzenegger outing of the lot (which makes it number two of five overall, or seven if we’re including the Alien vs Predator spin-offs). An alien spaceship lands on the Great North Plains in 1719. On board is the mostly heat-seeking, mostly invisible, mostly lethal warrior/creature we’ve met before and outside are a band of Comanches going about their daily lives. One of their number, Naru (Amber Midthunder), almost instantly is on to the fact that the evil has landed, and over the swift, pacey 100 minutes that follow it’s Naru and her dog who … Read more

14 March 2016-03-14

Thomas Bair and Sarah Bolger in Emelie

Out This Week The Dressmaker (EV, cert 12) Husband and wife team Jocelyn Moorhouse (director/writer) and PJ Hogan (co-writer) hit us with a curious mix of the comic, the tragic and the romantic, a flawed star vehicle for Kate Winslet, delivering a vaudevillian spin on her latterday Joan Crawford shtick as the troubled Aussie who returns to the Outback to make fabulous dresses for the town that exiled her years before. It’s the sort of town now familiar but once the antithesis of Aussie grunt – of Priscillas and Muriels, camp characters one and all who yearn, how they yearn, to cross-dress and lip-sync to a series of trash hits. Actually, The Dressmaker … Read more