Anyone who’s endured the ignominy of grinding poverty with an alcoholic, out-of-work parent understands that there’s nothing ennobling about the experience. It’s something to endure, to escape if one can. The screen version of Jeannette Walls’ 2005 account of her impoverished youth entitled The Glass Castle, the viewer sees a cheery gloss on everything, as if all the excruciating history was somehow not as bad as it seems.

Awash in high-flown metaphysical hooey, director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel’s dull sci-fi fantasy The Dark Tower is inappropriate for the impressionable. As for grown viewers, they should be prepared to slog through an involved exposition of non-scriptural ideas borrowed from the series of novels by Stephen King on which the film is built. By John Mulderig.

Western Australia’s oldest Catholic primary school last month celebrated their 120-year anniversary with a Gala Evening on 29 July. By Josh Low.

A Ghost Story (A24) could be the best film about purgatory you’ll see this year.

For West Australian poet and writer Andrew Lansdown, Japan has long been a subject of fascination, for its literary styles, its history and landscape – and this is something he draws on again in his most recent release, Kyoto Sakura Tanka.

“Wars are not won by evacuations,” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously observed. As writer-director Christopher Nolan’s compelling historical drama Dunkirk (Warner Bros) demonstrates, however, fine films can be made about them.

The Kimberley region of far-north Western Australia has long been a place of faith, with churches and schools being established there from the late 19th century onwards, and a recent book, A Photographic History of the Catholic Church in the Kimberley, collates this well, with images and stories of the parishes and local people in the area.

Monkey business turns deadly serious in War for the Planet of the Apes, the climactic instalment of the rebooted film franchise based on the work of French science-fiction author Pierre Boulle (1912-1994).

Growing up in Perth’s western suburbs in the 1950s and 60s, becoming a priest seemed like any other career path, according to Father Vincent Conroy.

Throughout history, there have been numerous debates about the various aspects of Catholic belief and teachings, and a recent book by Australian theologian Tracey Rowland attempts to compile and explain these for a lay audience.