Film Reviews
Thor: Love and Thunder
Saturday, July 9th, 2022 Film Reviews,The Thunder God went for a ride Upon his favourite filly I’m Thor! he cried The horse replied: You forgot your thaddle, thilly! This little rhyme has remained lodged in my mind from the day I read it in a Marvel comic, when I was still in primary school This was decades before the […]
Lost Illusions
Friday, July 1st, 2022 Film Reviews,Everything is taxed, everything is sold, everything is manufactured, even success. […]
Elvis
Friday, June 24th, 2022 Film Reviews,There’s no mystery about a film by Baz Luhrmann. We know it’s going to be big and brassy, fast-moving, wilfully superficial, and packed with over-the-top theatrics. As a result, I go along to each new Baz film with a sense of diminished expectations. For me, everything started to go wrong with Moulin Rouge! (2001), which […]
Jurassic World Dominion
Friday, June 17th, 2022 Film Reviews,If Top Gun: Maverick took formula film-making into the stratosphere, Jurassic World Dominion has returned it to the primordial swamp. Whatever the shortcomings of the previous installment in this seemingly endless series, it feels like a classic alongside this new effort. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Spanish director, J.A.Bayona managed a few clever twists […]
Benediction
Thursday, June 9th, 2022 Film Reviews,Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. But the past is just the same–and War’s a bloody game… Have you forgotten yet?… Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget. […]
A Hero
Friday, June 3rd, 2022 Film Reviews,Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi, has forged an international reputation with a cinema of complex moral dilemmas. It’s a defining characteristic of Iranian movies in general, partly as a result of oppressive censorship that restricts the range of subjects and treatments available to filmmakers. The best directors have learned how to work within state-imposed limitations, making […]
Maigret
Friday, May 27th, 2022 Film Reviews,Not for the first time I feel as if my reading habits might be working against my ability to enjoy a film-as-film. The great Belgian crime writer, Georges Simenon (1903-89), is a personal addiction. By any standards, Simenon is one of the most remarkable authors of all time. He is said to have written in […]
Top Gun: Maverick
Friday, May 20th, 2022 Film Reviews,Top Gun: Maverick is a dangerous film. When the lights went up I swaggered out of the cinema and leapt into my car. Installing myself in the driver’s seat was like sitting in the cockpit of a fighter plane. I hit the ignition, slammed into gear and crawled out of the carpark. On Anzac Parade […]
To Chiara
Saturday, May 14th, 2022 Film Reviews,Thanks to The Godfather and then The Sopranos, we’ve become accustomed to the idea that a Mafia movie can also be a family drama. Yet these are fables of wealth and power set in the United States, where money buys a good deal of respectability. Jonas Carpignano’s To Chiara looks at Italy’s criminal underworld from […]
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Friday, May 6th, 2022 Film Reviews,For a long time the Marvel Cinematic Universe has resembled a global mystery cult that inspires fierce devotion among its acolytes and leaves outsiders bamboozled. While I was watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, trying to make sense of the kaleidoscopic swirl of images being thrown onto the screen, the person sitting next […]