jacki weaver

Holy Days

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Judy Davis, Elijah Tamati, Miriam Margolyes and Jacki Weaver

Holy Days is a twinkly and comforting National Treasure Road Movie about three New Zealand nuns who go on a road trip to try and stop their convent being pulled down by a nasty developer. Miriam Margolyes, Jacki Weaver and Judi Davis play the valiant sisters trying to locate the property deeds that will avert the disaster. Along for the ride is Brian, a motherless lad angry at dad’s new partner. A bit of a softie, maybe Brian will be annealed by time spent with Sisters Mary Clare (Weaver), Agnes (Davis) and Luke (Margolyes) as they pootle towards the South Island, where a former nun, now a lawyer, may be able to get … Read more

Memoir of a Snail

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Grace in her snail hat

“It doesn’t all have to be Disney,” is animator Adam Elliot’s rallying cry. And in Memoir of a Snail, with jokes about masturbation and death, paedophilia, arson and murder, he proves it. It’s refreshing and yet oddly familiar, as if Wallace and Gromit had been given a wipe down with a mucky cloth. But cute is the overriding impression, from the old-school ragged-edged stop-motion animation – Wallace and Gromit before Nick Park got the big bucks – to the characters on display. The “snail” is actually a girl in a snail hat called Grace, one of two twins with her brother Gilbert, born with a cleft lip to a mother who died in … Read more

Parkland

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Zac Efron about to pronounce the president dead in Parkland

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 30 March Ronald Reagan shot, 1981 On this day in 1981, after just over two months in office, President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton. His would-be assassin was John Hinckley Jr, whose attempt on the president’s life seemed to be part of a plan to impress Jodie Foster, with whom he’d become obsessed after seeing her in the film Taxi Driver. Hinckley’s intention was not to kill Reagan but the President – he’d been focused on killing President Jimmy Carter when Carter was in office until being arrested on a firearms charge. Reagan just happened to be the … Read more