MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
Latest editorial
Don't try this at home
Mom and Dad is a perversely enjoyable satire about domestic violence at its most extreme, says MARIA DUARTE
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
Mom and Dad (15)
Directed by Brian Taylor
★★★★
NICOLAS CAGE is at his crazy best in this deliciously macabre horror-comedy satire about the pressures of parenthood, middle-aged anxiety and broken dreams in middle America as, with a mysterious epidemic sweeping the country, parents turn violently on their kids.
Mom and Dad begins with a woman driving a car onto a railway line and, leaving a toddler on the back seat, walks away. A train crashes into the vehicle, killing the child, and this sets the dark and twisted tone of this bonkers horror film written and directed by Brian Taylor, who seems to be channelling George A Romero.
Cage plays Brent Taylor, a disillusioned middle-aged father of two, who's having a midlife crisis. He hates his humdrum job and daydreams of his younger self driving wildly fast with a half-naked woman riding him as he nestles his head between her breasts.
Similar stories
MARIA DUARTE recommends that this dramatic reconstruction of one instance of the Israeli killings in Gaza be seen as widely as possible
MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Friendship, Four Letters of Love, Tin Soldier and The Ballad of Suzanne Cesaire
MARIA DUARTE recommends the ambitious portrait of an agricultural community confronted by the trauma of enclosure
MARIA DUARTE recommends the creepy thrills of David Cronenburg’s provocative and macabre exploration of grief