Things to do in Melbourne this week

Director Elizabeth Banks takes the helm as the next generation of fearless Charlie's Angels take flight. In Banks' bold vision, Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska are working for the mysterious Charles Townsend, whose security and investigative agency has expanded internationally. With the world's smartest, bravest, and most highly trained women all over the globe, there are now teams of Angels guided by multiple Bosleys taking on the toughest jobs everywhere. The screenplay is by Elizabeth Banks from a story by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Auburn.

Kate (Emilia Clarke) harumphs around London, a bundle of bad decisions accompanied by the jangle of bells on her shoes, another irritating consequence from her job as an elf in a year-round Christmas shop. Tom (Henry Golding) seems too good to be true when he walks into her life and starts to see through so many of Kate's barriers. As London transforms into the most wonderful time of the year, nothing should work for these two. But sometimes, you gotta let the snowfall where it may, you gotta listen to your heart . . . and you gotta have faith.

JIFF has brought the best of Jewish cinema to Australia for the past 30 years and this year is no exception. It will showcase a whopping 60 films from 23 countries, so no matter what genre you’re into, there’ll be something for you. The festival will kick off with Ask Dr Ruth, an uplifting story of America’s most famous sex therapist by Primetime Emmy-nominated director Ryan White. The film is an inspiring account of how Dr Ruth revolutionized the conversation around sexuality and her uninhibited approach to sex therapy.  Audiences can also catch international award-winners including Berlinale Golden Bear winner Synonyms, an existential drama about a young man embarking on a quest to erase his Israeli heritage by moving to Paris; and satirical rom-com Tel Aviv On Fire, which won the award for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. The film is currently nominated for four Ophir awards, which are kind of like the Israeli Oscars. The festival will close with the first Australian screenings of Jojo Rabbit, fresh from winning the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film is directed by and stars Taika Waititi (whose mother is Jewish, while his father is Maori) and makes a powerful statement against hate. The Jewish International Film Festival will screen at Classic Cinema (Elsternwick), Lido Cinema (Hawthorn) and Cameo Cinema (Belgrave) from October 24 to November 21. Check out the full program here.

Watching a sequel can sometimes feel like wandering down the carpeted hallways of an old familiar place. Doctor Sleep, an unearned and cringeworthy follow-up to The Shining, is this idea literalised. It feels more like a theme-park experience than an actual movie, deploying the 1980 horror classic’s butchered twin sisters and a blood-gushing elevator on cue, but without any purpose. You could call it fan service, if the service is to teach fans that mimicking Stanley Kubrick’s chilly elegance – and even reshooting scenes from the original film with lookalike actors, a crime bordering on sacrilege – doesn’t make your take nearly as scary. The mimicker, director Mike Flanagan, should know better. His multi-episode TV version of The Haunting of Hill House showed him nailing a similar assignment, finding a side door into a revered novel while supplying fresh chills. This time, though, he’s saddled with weak material, namely Stephen King’s own 2013 continuation, a book that sagged with unusual obviousness. Wide-eyed Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is all grown up now, struggling with alcoholic urges, just like his dad did. He needs to dry up fast and join the Stand–like fight against a roving pack of evil essence-suckers, led by Rose (Rebecca Ferguson), whose alt-country black hat and crazy eyes make her look like a reject from The Voice. Flanagan pumps up the nostalgic sonic assault – Wendy Carlos’s ominous synth burbles, pounding heartbeats in your head, plenty of third-hand Pe

The Russian Resurrection Film Festival is one of the largest, oldest and most respected Russian film festivals outside of Russia. For its 16th anniversary, the Melbourne season of its national tour will screen new releases and favourites from both stalwarts of Russian cinema and rising stars, plus a special retrospective of Russian director Pavel Lunginat’s huge canon at the Capitol Theatre on Swanston Street. There’s everything from comedies to thrillers on the cards this year amongst the 19 featured films. In the horror department is Kirill Sokolov’s Why Don’t You Just Die!. This chaotic, bloody masterpiece will bring together murderous mayhem, very dark humour and gallons of gore in this non-linear story set in a single apartment. If you’re looking for laughs, check out the empowering story about a collection of women hell-bent on retribution against their philandering lovers, Mistresses. Those seeking out action should book tickets to Hero, a tale of double-crossing spy agencies, or director Pavel Lungin’s controversial film Leaving Afghanistan, which chronicles the withdrawal of the USSR from the Soviet-Afghan war in 1989. Your nerves will be on high alert during thrillers like Outbreak, which follows a family during an epidemic which paralyses Moscow, and New Year’s Eve disaster flick, Breakaway. For families who loved Frozen, there’s an even more magical animated icy adventure coming to the festival. In Snow Queen: Mirrorlands, it’s up to heroine Gerda to return ma

What Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It like Beckham did for football, her effervescent latest does for Springsteen. And Sony Walkmans. And double denim. For viewers of a certain age – if you ever owned a Level 42 cassette, that’s you – there’s loads of easy ’80s nostalgia to feast on. Blinded by the Light is about connecting with music in a way that finds you a tribe and respite from your worries – even when they’re as grave as the racist thug stalking you across your estate. It’s set in Luton at the mass-unemployment- and National Front-stained end of Thatcher’s ’80s, but Chadha gives it a sparky American-high-school-movie sheen and a Bruce-heavy soundtrack to banish the minor-key moments. Its hero, Javed (Viveik Kalra), is a British-Pakistani teenager who writes poetry, dreams of escape and gets his spirits crushed daily by his ultra-strict dad. But when his new friend Roops (Aaron Phagura) chucks him a couple of Bruce Springsteen tapes, salvation arrives in the form of the Boss’s uncannily relatable blue-collar anthems. "Bruce knows everything I’ve ever felt," he marvels. Based on a book by journalist Sarfraz Manzoor (who also co-writes), it’s peppered with the kind of loving details that can only be real. Javed’s sister chops onions in swimming goggles, while it takes the whole family to jump-start his dad’s old banger. His musical epiphany comes during the Great Storm of 1987, which has him spinning through the tempest, lost in the Boss’s tunes. With the lyrics pinwheeling acr

This strenuous but soapy real-life drama adapted from Peter Quilter’s play End of the Rainbow bookends Judy Garland’s life in a way that leaves no doubt over who it blames for the star’s later-life struggles. Hollywood – embodied in the bullying, Weinstein-like form of mogul Louis B Mayer – is shown stage-managing her life, plying her with pills and crushing her self-esteem, reminding her that she was nothing without its spotlights shining down on her. MGM, the studio that would make Gaslight, got in some early practice in the art with the budding starlet. The dramatic choice to bolt on scenes of the young Judy (Darci Shaw) prepping for The Wizard of Oz leaves it feeling disjointed and reductive in parts. Each of her travails – pills, booze, insomnia – gets its own origin story as Judy jags back and forth between the early years and the 47-year-old version (Renée Zellweger) enjoying a final hurrah on the London stage. It puts its protagonist on the couch and offers a diagnosis when it would have been much better off letting its iconic star speak for herself. Its trump card, of course, is Zellweger, who blows through the film in a gust of jittery energy, wounded ego and half-buried star quality. The transformation is startling, with dark lenses and a birdlike physicality essaying a faded but still formidable life force who’s at once unknowable and, by 1969, wildly overexposed. We see her bitter feud with ex-husband Sidney Luft (Rufus Sewell) and a love affair with handsome b

It's the laugh that gets you: Joaquin Phoenix’s half cackle, half rasp has all the soothing aural balm of a vulture in a blender. It’ll be ratting around in your ears long after the old-school “The End” card flashes up on this unrelenting, grimly funny and brilliantly visceral reinvention of the DC supervillain. Joker is a truly nightmarish vision of late-era capitalism – arguably the best social horror film since Get Out – and Phoenix is magnetic in it. He runs Heath Ledger cigarette paper-close as the finest screen Joker. Like everything in this drum-tight movie, the title’s lack of pronoun is no accident: it’s not the fully formed Joker being introduced here, but Arthur Fleck, a man whose ambition to tell jokes for a living is at odds with the living he scraps as a clown-for-hire on Gotham’s grimy streets. Judging by the movies playing – Excalibur and Blow Out – it’s 1981, but it feels more like the ’70s of Death Wish. He lives with his frail mom (Frances Conroy) in a broken-down tenement, eking out a little joy watching a TV chat show hosted with oily relish by Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). He’s on seven types of medication and has a neurological condition that causes him to laugh – OK, cackle – uncontrollably. In these domestic early scenes, Phoenix establishes Arthur as a man who sees himself less as an underdog than a mutt waiting to be put down. “I just don’t want to feel so bad anymore,” he says. And no wonder: It’s a seriously bleak world he inhabits, a citysc

If there’s a corner of a foreign field that is forever England, then it’s Palace Cinemas during the annual British Film Festival. The line-up is usually packed with big star names, well known directors and popular genres ranging from protest to literary adaptation – and 2019’s program is no exception. An ignominious Brexit may be just around the corner, but the Union Jack flies proudly in Melbourne this November.   This year the festival welcomes a very special guest – actor Timothy Spall, whose stunning portrayal of artist JMW Turner in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner won him the Best Actor award in Cannes. Spall is familiar from movies including Secrets and Lies and The King’s Speech and for playing the loathsome Peter Pettigrew in several Harry Potter movies. He will appear in Q&A at the screenings of Mrs Lowry & Son, in which he portrays another artist, LS Lowry, opposite Vanessa Redgrave as his mother.  Another UK acting great, Dame Helen Mirren, will be the subject of this year’s retrospective, titled Mirror on Mirren. Films screening span from her eye-opening starring role in the erotic 1969 film Age of Consent, filmed in the Whitsundays, through to her Oscar triumph in The Queen (2006). Ken Russell’s little-seen Savage Messiah (1972), Lindsay Anderson’s surreal anti-capitalist masterpiece O Lucky Man! (1973), The Madness of King George (1994) and Calendar Girls (2003) are the other Mirren films in the series. Mirren stars opposite Sir Ian McKellen in the festival’s brand ne

A languid, undercooked affair, writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s playful stab at the zombie movie returns the genre to the backwoods America of George Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead and gives it a half-meta reworking. It sprinkles in an ensemble cast to die for, bursts of OTT flesh-chomping gore, nods to zombie classics (look out for Living Dead’s 1967 Pontiac LeMans) and a few big laughs, but its zeitgeist-y concerns and self-conscious final-act twists don’t quite land. It’s a love letter to zombie movies typed in Comic Sans, and it reminds you that Jarmusch’s best work has an invisible rigour, even at its loosest. Sadly, that’s missing here. In the spirit of Romero, the undead apocalypse arrives in the Midwestern town of Centerville via interrupted radio signals, daylight that lasts too long and, most alarmingly for this rural spot, a missing chicken. Is the cranky hermit outside of town to blame? (He’s played by Jarmusch lucky charm Tom Waits, 50 percent gravel-voiced omniscience, 50 percent beard.) Disturbing news bulletins about fracking knocking the Earth off its axis point to a bigger story. But at the urging of an obnoxious MAGA type (Steve Buscemi), cops Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) investigate, with the latter oddly certain that it all points to an invasion of the undead. Sure enough, said invasion arrives, presaged by a zombie Iggy Pop and a particularly chewy scene at the town’s diner. The shufflers themselves are a bla

Think Ocean’s Eleven with strippers and you’ve got the premise of Lorene Scafaria’s surprising, gripping Hustlers. Constance Wu stars as Dorothy, aka Destiny, the new girl at a hot Manhattan gentlemen’s club. The wildly successful Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) takes Dorothy under her wing and shows her how to get ahead in exotic dancing. But after the 2008 financial crash, the pair and their friends resort to criminal means to keep the cash coming in. This is a deeply feminist film, one where men are given less screen time than the cameoing Cardi B and Lizzo. These women are objectified by the world (though rarely by Scafaria’s camera) and they use that fact to scam money and take revenge on Wall Streeters. The director treats the women as flawed, fractious characters and folk heroes, not sex dolls. She packs in some visual flourishes too, like a shaky-cam shot of one of the crew’s walk of shame to her daughter’s school. It’s a reminder that there’s more at stake for these women than the ability to buy designer clothes. If Wu is compelling as Destiny, Lopez is magnetic as her savvy mentor. It’s her most authoritative role since Out of Sight. The plot, in contrast to the stars, sags in the middle and there are a few more celebratory hang-out scenes than we need, but the gang is so charismatic, it’s no great chore to spend extra time with them. Some people would pay thousands for just a few minutes.

Between 1990 and 1999, the number of babies named "Keanu" skyrocketed in the US. It’s no coincidence that these were the crucial ascendant years – beginning with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in ’89 and reaching the zenith of A-list Hollywood with the first Matrix movie in ‘99 – of the man, the mystery, the marvel that is, was and ever shall be Keanu Reeves. Whether you fell in love with his stoic, brooding portrayal of Jack Traven in Speed, his stoic, brooding portrayal of Neo in the Matrix trilogy, or perhaps his stoic, brooding portrayal of the anti-hero assassin John Wick, there’s no denying the stoic, brooding appeal of Reeves in whatever role he inhabits. Any Melburnians who are crazy for Keanu can now immerse themselves in an epic celebration of this modern-day matinee idol courtesy of the Lido Cinema in Hawthorn. Every Friday between October 18 and December 13, some of Reeves’ most beloved blockbusters will be getting an airing, including Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, My Own Private Idaho, Point Break, Speed, The Matrix, The Lake House and John Wick. If despotic robot overlords wanted to enslave our bodies by hijacking our minds, well, a Keanu Reeves film fest would be one surefire way to do it. So plug in, sit back, and surrender to the two-month Keanu Reeves-a-thon.

A decade after Zombieland became a hit film and a cult classic, the lead cast (Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone) have reunited with director Ruben Fleischer (Venom) and the original writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick (Deadpool) for Zombieland: Double Tap. In the sequel, written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and Dave Callaham, through comic mayhem that stretches from the White House and through the heartland, these four slayers must face off against the many new kinds of zombies that have evolved since the first movie, as well as some new human survivors. But most of all, they have to face the growing pains of their own snarky, makeshift family.

Screening a bunch of fresh new releases, golden oldies and critically acclaimed alternative films, American Express Openair Cinemas offers movie fanatics much more than the average cinematic experience. From October 9 until November 3, Yarra Park will be taken over by a packed program of live entertainment, dining, music and dog dates. Yes, that’s right, dogs. Proud puppy parents can snuggle up to their own wonder dogs while they settle in for a season of new release flicks, including Downton Abbey (Oct 25 and 27), Ad Astra (Nov 3), It: Chapter 2 (Oct 31), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Oct 9), Rocketman (Oct 10), Yesterday (Oct 18), Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (Nov 11), Abominable (Nov 2), The Australian Dream (Oct 22) and plenty more.  You’re sure to work up an appetite with all the excitement, so grab a slice of something covered in cheese from the Italian masters at Ladro. They're curating a menu for the evening, complemented by beers by Urban Alley Brewery, aperatifs by Pimms and wine from Giesen Wines. Speaking of wine, every Wednesday has officially been coined Wine Wednesdays at American Express Openair Cinemas. Guests can sample Giesen Wines' full range and even purchase bottles at Happy Hour prices.  If you have an American Express Card membership, this will be is your golden ticket to the exclusive lounge area at the event. You’ll receive the VIP treatment, complete with a comfortable bean bag chair, blanket, movie snacks and the best view in the hous

If you like your space odysseys brimming with formula-filled blackboards and quantum mechanics, consider this a trigger warning: Ad Astra is not that kind of sci-fi. Unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey or Interstellar, two obvious points of parallel, there’s no Arthur C Clarke or Kip Thorne behind the scenes to bring Nobel-worthy science to the fiction. This is a movie where a man travels to Neptune, a distance of 2.7 billion miles, without ageing a day – a reach even when that man is Brad Pitt. It features killer baboons in zero gravity. At one point, Pitt jacks a spaceship – while it’s taking off. On paper, at least, it’s just Moonraker with a PhD. Leave any disbelief at the door, though, and you’ll be rewarded with an often gorgeous, soulful sci-fi that’s charged with emotion and bursting with spectacle. It has meaningful things to say about letting go, dads and their sons, and the challenges of reconciling with the past. Sure, it’s set in “the near future” and mostly against the endless solitude of space – captured by Interstellar cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema with lunar greys and Martian ochres – and it boasts possibly cinema’s first moon-buggy chase (as awesome as it sounds), but director James Grey and his co-writer Ethan Gross never lose sight of its intimate heart. They’re aided in that by a terrific, nuanced performance from Pitt. For the most part, Ad Astra wears its near-future-ness with a light touch.

You’d have expected footage of a peak Aretha Franklin powerfully singing gospel to be protected at all costs. However, the singer’s intimate 1972 show, filmed over two days at a Baptist church in the Watts neighbourhood in Los Angeles, was fumbled by famed director Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa). He failed to properly archive the filming, which resulted in audio and visual footage that didn’t sync and a film that never saw the light of day. Amazing Grace is the result of music producer Alan Elliott and editor Jeff Buchanan remedying this issue by spending hundreds of hours in an editing suite fixing Pollack’s mistake. And their sacrifice is worth its weight in gold, with the result being one of the best music documentaries of recent times. Backed by the Southern California Community Choir, who are each bizarrely dressed in silver vests that look like the inside of a packet of crisps, and conducted by the enigmatic Rev James Cleveland, who fights back the tears as he watches Franklin hit frankly outrageous high notes, this documentary captures the Queen of Soul at her purest. It will make even the biggest atheist want to shout out ‘Yes Lord!’ from the back of the cinema – something that happened three times in my screening. One of the best moments in Amazing Grace captures Franklin as she struts through the church in a fur coat, a sparkily confident blueprint for the modern pop diva. Another brilliant sequence shows her forcefully instructing one of the musicians t

READY OR NOT follows a young bride (Samara Weaving) as she joins her new husband's (Mark O'Brien) rich, eccentric family (Adam Brody, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell) in a time-honored tradition that turns into a lethal game with everyone fighting for their survival.

More than two decades have passed since Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day, changed the future, and re-wrote the fate of the human race. Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is living a simple life in Mexico City with her brother (Diego Boneta) and father when a highly advanced and deadly new Terminator- a Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna)- travels back through time to hunt and kill her. Dani's survival depends on her joining forces with two warriors: Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced super-soldier from the future, and a battle-hardened Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). As the Rev-9 ruthlessly destroys everything and everyone in its path on the hunt for Dani, the three are led to a T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from Sarah's past that may be their last best hope.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a fantasy adventure that picks up several years after Maleficent, in which audiences learned of the events that hardened the heart of Disney's most notorious villain and drove her to curse a baby Princess Aurora. The film continues to explore the complex relationship between the horned fairy and the soon to be Queen as they form new alliances and face new adversaries in their struggle to protect the moors and the magical creatures that reside within.

Gemini Man is an innovative action-thriller starring Will Smith as Henry Brogan, an elite assassin, who is suddenly targeted and pursued by a mysterious young operative that seemingly can predict his every move.