Film Reviews
Sleeping Dogs
Saturday, August 10th, 2024 Film Reviews,If the word ‘thriller’ conjures up thoughts of car chases, shootouts, martial arts contests and desperate last minute escapes, you might not want to bother with Sleeping Dogs. The most thrilling moments in this film are when a tiny snippet of recovered memory comes flashing through the lead character’s mind. It might not sound especially […]
Deadpool & Wolverine
Friday, August 2nd, 2024 Film Reviews,In the Marvel Comics Universe anything less than a billion dollars at the box office is considered a disappointment. The firm’s record is held by Avengers: Endgame (2019) which made a staggering US$2,797,501,328 (AUD $4,267,311,612), placing it a narrow second to James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) on the all-time top earners list. It must have been […]
Birdeater & MaXXXine
Friday, July 26th, 2024 Film Reviews,There seem to be only two certainties about contemporary, non-Indigenous Australian films: they will be dark and unpleasant, and greeted with exaggerated enthusiasm that quickly subsides into silence. The latest movie to test this thesis is Birdeater, written and directed by Jack Clark and Jim Weir, which won the audience award at last year’s Sydney […]
Fly Me to the Moon
Friday, July 19th, 2024 Film Reviews,It’s said that Marguerite Duras’s brief for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) was to script a love story that would not appear inconsiderable alongside the dropping of the Atomic bomb. She succeeded so well with this unthinkable task that Alain Renais’s film is recognised as a cinema classic. Scriptwriter, Rose Gilroy, seems to have been given […]
The Bikeriders
Friday, July 12th, 2024 Film Reviews,Assuming that much of the hooning around on motorbikes in The Bikeriders was done by stunt doubles, Austin Butler’s major contribution to this film is to look pretty and stare blankly at everyone else, and the camera. In his role as the young hoodlum, Bennie, the new Hollywood heartthrob has relatively few lines, even though […]
Kinds of Kindness
Friday, July 5th, 2024 Film Reviews,Yorgos Lanthimos is the supreme example today of an arthouse director who has made his way into the mainstream on the back of a couple of popular successes. The period romp, The Favourite (2018), and last year’s Poor Things, propelled him from the shadows into the bright lights of the Oscars. With his new film, […]
A Silence & Spanish Film Festival 2024
Sunday, June 30th, 2024 Film Reviews,A Silence doesn’t announce that it’s Based on a True Story, but its origins are not hard to find. In this film by Belgian director, Joachim Lafosse, the crime that looms in the background is that of paedophile, rapist and serial killer, Marc Dutroux, who kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured a series of young girls from […]
The Sitting Duck
Friday, June 21st, 2024 Film Reviews,As we’ve recently seen with Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof having to flee his native land to avoid imprisonment and a flogging, the cinema still has the capacity to send tremors down the corridors of power. Although films on social justice issues are not much appreciated in authoritarian states, those same regimes recognise the immense propaganda […]
Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024 Chinese Art, Film Reviews,When a rock band enjoys a career of 45 years and sells more than 20 million albums, they probably qualify as legends. They may also be overdue for a documentary, an omission that has now been supplied by director, Paul Clarke, who has spent the past seven years making Midnight Oil: the Hardest Line, which […]
The Three Musketeers
Saturday, June 8th, 2024 Film Reviews,Why did I wait so long to read Alexandre Dumas? One of literature’s all-time best-sellers, he had to be doing something right. The grandson of a French nobleman and a African slave, Dumas (1802-70) was as unlikely as one of his own plots, and no less successful. He spent money as fast as he made […]