Film Reviews
High & Low: John Galliano
Sunday, June 2nd, 2024 Film Reviews,In December 2010, John Galiano, one of the most celebrated British designers of all time, murdered his own career with a drunken anti-Semitic tirade in a Paris café. Kevin Macdonald’s feature-length documentary, High & Low: John Galliano, features footage of Galliano’s meltdown, and it’s not a pretty sight. The same could be said of Galliano’s […]
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Saturday, May 25th, 2024 Film Reviews,All great film series have their highs and lows. A masterpiece is followed by a dud, a long sequence of flops suddenly comes up trumps. One can never be confident that a great film will be followed by an equally compelling sequel, or that a franchise that resembles a dead horse might not spring to […]
The Taste of Things
Saturday, May 18th, 2024 Film Reviews,Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin is famous for the statement, “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are”. It appears in The Physiology of Taste (1825), a book in which cooking becomes a subject of philosophical and sociological reflection, an artform and a science. No-one has ever taken their food quite so seriously […]
Monster & Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Friday, May 10th, 2024 Film Reviews,Some directors are known for their car chases, Hirokaru Kore’eda is celebrated for his portrayals of families – big, small, sometimes barely recognisable as such. In Monster, the family consists of only a single mother, Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando), and her 11-year-old son, Minato (Soya Kurokawa), living in a provincial Japanese city. As they sit […]
Golda & Fremont
Friday, May 3rd, 2024 Film Reviews,If ever a film release could be said to be badly timed, it’s Golda, the bio-pic of former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, who led her country through the Yom Kippur War of 1973, after a surprise attack from their Arab neighbours, Egypt and Syria. It arrives at a time when another intransigent Israeli Prime […]
Challengers & Evil Does Not Exist
Friday, April 26th, 2024 Film Reviews,Challengers may be the first tennis movie that really takes us onto the court. When racket connects with ball it’s as if an exocet missile has been fired. Every contact between ball and court is explosive, as director, Luca Gaudagnino pumps up the volume and pushes us back into our seats. Sweat doesn’t drip from […]
Late Night with the Devil
Friday, April 19th, 2024 Film Reviews,“Ladies and gentlemen please stay tuned for a live television first, as we attempt to commune with the Devil… But not before a word from our sponsors.” With these words I knew I’d discovered one of the rarer marsupials: a new Australian film with a sense of humour. It may be considered ironic that we’re […]
The First Omen
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 Film Reviews,When it appeared in 1976, Richard Donner’s The Omen was acclaimed as one of the all-time great horror films. It was an era of classic horror, led by The Exorcist (1973) and Carrie (1976), movies that still set people raving. Oh my God, these were the scariest things they’d ever seen! If these classics no […]
Goodbye Julia
Sunday, April 7th, 2024 Film Reviews,For a debut feature, Mahomed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia is an astonishingly mature work. One of only a handful of movies to originate in Sudan, it’s an instant classic that sets a high bar for a future national cinema – when the civil war in Khartoum allows films to be made once again in that ravaged […]
Perfect Days
Thursday, April 4th, 2024 Film Reviews,If you thought Kenny (2006) would be the only film you’d ever see about a toilet cleaner, in Perfect Days Wim Wenders shows us there’s plenty of life in this universal subject. Like Shane Jacobson’s Aussie “waste management expert”, Hirayama, a middle-aged man with a neat moustache and salt-and-pepper hair, is completely satisfied with his […]