Film Reviews
On the Rocks
Friday, October 9th, 2020 Film Reviews,Born into Hollywood aristocracy, Sofia Coppola was playing small roles in her father’s films while still in nappies. She made a promising directorial debut in 1999 with The Virgin Suicides, but it was her second movie, Lost in Translation (2003), that established her as a rising star. A beautiful, melancholy, funny film about an impossible […]
St. Ali Italian Film Festival 2020
Friday, October 2nd, 2020 Film Reviews,This year the celebrations are slightly muted, but the Italian Film Festival is back. Normally the wine and coffee would be flowing freely, with a few glamorous movie stars on hand for premieres. In place of the usual demonstrative Italianisms, director, Elysia Zeccola, says audiences will have to be content blowing kisses to each other. […]
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
Friday, September 25th, 2020 Film Reviews,If we were asked to nominate the world’s most admired human being, David Attenborough would be near the top of everyone’s list. At the age of 94, Attenborough is a secular saint of the natural world, a figure of immense moral authority. It’s almost inconceivable that anyone could be dismissive of this revered documentarian. Even […]
The Translators
Friday, September 18th, 2020 Film Reviews,For a writer to have a world-wide, runaway best-seller is like winning the lottery. If it were purely a matter of talent Dan Brown would be stacking shelves at Walmart. The genius behind The Da Vinci Code wasn’t the author but the editor who decided to leave in all the aimless bumpf downloaded from the […]
Hillary
Friday, September 11th, 2020 Film Reviews,In his classic study, In Defence of Politics, Bernard Crick argued the case for a messy but flexible political discourse underpinned by ethical beliefs. The art of politics maintains both social order and personal freedom, standing guard against those ideologues who seek to pervert the process. One can only wonder what Crick, who died in […]
I Am Woman
Friday, September 4th, 2020 Film Reviews,There should be a warning issued with this bio-pic of singer, Helen Reddy: after the film you’ll be humming I Am Woman for the next week or so. This might sound harmless enough, but in the wrong context it could raise uncomfortable questions about masculine identity. Reddy’s unofficial anthem for the women’s movement is easily […]
Tenet
Friday, August 28th, 2020 Film Reviews,Christopher Nolan enjoys a charmed life among the ranks of Hollywood directors. He may have a reputation for bringing in projects on-time and on-budget, but few of his peers could hope to get away with such complex plots and abstruse ideas. If you thought Interstellar (2014) was incomprehensible, brace yourself for Tenet, a sci fi, […]
La Belle Époque
Friday, August 21st, 2020 Film Reviews,When the Alliance Française French Film Festival was suspended earlier this year because of the pandemic it seemed as if Sydney would miss one of its favourite events. It turns out there was no need for concern, as the AFFF came roaring back for a return season towards the end of July, and has seen […]
Deerskin
Friday, August 14th, 2020 Film Reviews,Until Deerskin came along, the ultimate cinematic love story between a man and an item of clothing must have been F.W.Murnau’s The Last Laugh (AKA. Der letze Mann). In this silent classic of 1924, a German doorman falls in love wth his uniform, suffering all the pangs of an abandoned suitor when he is laid […]
Echo in the Canyon
Friday, August 7th, 2020 Film Reviews,It may seem a big call to suggest that one day historians will mention Laurel Canyon in the late 1960s alongside Vienna fin-de-siècle, and the Paris of the 1930s, but Graham Nash has no doubts. It’s even more startling to bracket Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys with Mozart, but Tom Petty manages this feat […]