Film Reviews
The Dinner
Friday, September 8th, 2017 Film Reviews,After watching Steve Coogan send up his own dramatic aspirations in The Trip to Spain, it requires a conscious readjustment to accept the tortured, bipolar character we meet in The Dinner. To play history teacher, Paul Lohman, Coogan not only has to find an American accent, he has to exude bitterness and self-pity in every […]
Maudie
Friday, September 1st, 2017 Film Reviews,In every bio pic one can’t help wondering what the subjects of the film actually looked like. Unless it’s a movie about another movie star it’s unusual for the lead actors to closely resemble the people they’re playing. In the case of Maudie it seems that director, Aisling Walsh, was never interested in getting leads […]
The King's Choice
Friday, August 25th, 2017 Film Reviews,Scandinavian history may not be a pressing concern for most Australians, but we can all recognise the importance of political courage – if only by its absence in Canberra. The King’s Choice deals with the dilemma that beset King Haakan VII of Norway when his country was invaded by the Germans in April 1940. Erik […]
Logan Lucky
Friday, August 18th, 2017 Film Reviews,Steven Soderbergh is one of Hollywood’s mavericks and one of its great professionals. A certain percentage of his films might be termed arthouse projects, while others embrace the mainstream, leaping from genre to genre with the enthusiasm of a life-long student of the cinema. It’s almost as if Soderbergh becomes wary of his own artistic […]
Atomic Blonde
Wednesday, August 9th, 2017 Film Reviews,For a snapshot of the way mainstream cinema has changed over the past 50 years try watching Guy Hamilton’s Funeral in Berlin (1966) before venturing into David Leitch’s Atomic Blonde. As a fan of those early Len Deighton espionage novels, I always thought Funeral in Berlin was a pretty shallow piece of work. The redeeming […]
The Trip to Spain
Thursday, August 3rd, 2017 Film Reviews,In 2010 Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon took us on a culinary tour around the Lake District, in 2014 they ate their way through Italy. Now, reunited with director, Michael Winterbottom, they’re off to Spain. Long may their travels continue. The premise, as ever, is for these two sometime friends to visit a series of […]
A Ghost Story
Friday, July 28th, 2017 Film Reviews,For the first half of A Ghost Story I felt sure it was being haunted by the spectre of Chantal Akerman (1950-2015), the renowned Belgian avant-gardist who loved shooting in real time with minimal camera movement. After watching a static shot of Rooney Mara eating most of a pie I could definitely feel Akerman’s presence. […]
Baby Driver
Saturday, July 22nd, 2017 Film Reviews,Baby Driver is one hell of a soundtrack in search of a film. A big step up for British director, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), it tells the story of a youthful getaway car driver named Baby, who can’t seem to get through any part of the day without musical accompaniment. The […]
The Beguiled
Saturday, July 15th, 2017 Film Reviews,It was a novel experience last week to see Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, followed a few days later by Eleanor Coppola’s Paris Can Wait. Eleanor is the wife, and Sofia the daughter, of the more famous Francis Ford Coppola, but the entire family seems to have cinema in their DNA. In 2013, grand-daughter, Gia Coppola, […]
Lady MacBeth
Friday, July 7th, 2017 Film Reviews,Never underestimate the power of boredom. In Nikolai Leskov’s novella, Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk (1865), we hear about “that peculiarly Russian boredom, the boredom which… it is said, makes even the thought of hanging oneself seem a cheerful prospect.” In his debut feature, British director, William Oldroyd, transposes the Leskov’s Gothic tale from provincial Russia […]