Camelot & Luna: Get set for some of the best summer outdoor cinema you’ve seen in years

By creammagazine, December 8, 2021

During Covid times, we’ve gotten pretty used to staying glued to the sofa, streaming Netflix, Stan and Paramount+ and getting lost in quality television. Indeed, it takes a lot – like, a really good movie – to get us off our couches, out of our houses, and into a traditional movie theatre.

But what if that theatre was outdoors? In a cosy set-up – like a quarry setting, on a blanket or beanbag on lush grass, relaxing beneath a starry sky? It sounds too good to be true, right? In fact, it’s very real at Camelot Outdoor Cinema and it’s something worth drawing you off that couch and out of the house.

Situated in the heart of the posh suburb of Mosman, Camelot has been drawing movie-loving crowds for decades. Since 1921, in fact, the premises have acted as a movie theatre, even when they were being shared by the government as Council Chambers in the early days.

Today, over summer, Camelot Outdoor Cinema plays host to a program of excellent independent films, and some blockbuster classics thrown in for good measure. Highlights in this summer’s program are the sumptuous story of France’s first restaurant, Delicious; the flamboyant feature about reinvention, Swan Song; and the latest Bond flick, No Time To Die.

One film that has many movie-goers excited with anticipation is the new Wes Anderson film, The French Dispatch. It’s the director’s 10th film and one best descried as a multi-layered love song dedicated to the art of journalism. Set in a fictional French city over the course of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, everything is stylistically perfect – in typical Anderson style. The costumes are brilliant, the mise en scène colourful, the characters each one of kind, and there’s even an animated segment that pays homage to the playful art of Hergé (The Adventures of Tintin).

The French Dispatch is packed with wit, irony and sentimentality – a film that honours its characters’ passion and vehemence as much as it pokes fun at them. It’ll be appreciated by media industry, for sure, but just about everyone will get much joy out of seeing it. And the cast is star-studded as you’d expect, with plenty of Anderson regulars back for more frivolity: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton in one of the most gloriously eccentric roles we’ve seen her in yet.

Other films on our must-see list at Camelot this year are Parallel Mothers – the new movie by Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar; West Side Story (a cinematic reboot of the classic stage musical); House of Gucci (about the famous designer house, starring Lady Gaga); and The Eyes of Tammy Faye (a biopic on the rise, fall and redemption of a pair of true-life televangelists starring Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye).

If you’re closer to the north of Perth than the south, you can always venture to Luna Outdoor Cinema whose program is packed with many of the aforementioned films, along with Denis Villanueve’s reboot of Dune; Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley; 1970s Hollywood snapshot Licorice Pizza; and the effed-up cult favourite The Room.

Visit lunapalace.com.au for the full program for Camelot or Luna and get set for your best summer in cinema in years!

Antonino Tati

Camelot Outdoor Cinema is situated 16 Lochee Street, Mosman Park.

Luna Outdoor Cinemas is situated 155 Oxford Street, Leederville.