Film Reviews
Love is All You Need & Trouble with the Curve
Saturday, December 15th, 2012 Film Reviews,Danish films have come a long way since the days of Dogme 95. Zentropa, the film production company started by Lars Von Trier and Peter Aalbaek Jensen, was known for initiating the controversial movement that banned the use of background music and special effects; refused to credit the director and required the exclusive use of […]
Pitch Perfect & Love Story
Saturday, December 8th, 2012 Film Reviews,There’s nothing more gruesome in the cinema than films that are “just good fun”, and Pitch Perfect is a textbook example. Even as I write this I can imagine readers thinking I’m a terrible old curmudgeon for not responding positively to a movie that aims to be nothing more than light entertainment. “What could be […]
The Perks of Being a Wallflower & Howzat!
Saturday, December 1st, 2012 Film Reviews,It’s hard to believe some people actually look back on their teenage years with nostalgia. That terrible state, when one is half-way out of the chrysalis of puberty – not quite an adult but no longer a child – is an ordeal we have to overcome if we are to take our place in the […]
Skyfall & Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
Saturday, November 24th, 2012 Film Reviews,In his James Bond Dossier of 1965, Kingsley Amis wrote: “Not much mind is needed to notice that Bond’s adventures have been getting more fantastic all the time and some critics have actually done it.” After fifty years and some 23 features, it would be an understatement to say Bond’s cinematic adventures are getting more fantastic […]
Seven Psychopaths & Robot and Frank
Saturday, November 17th, 2012 Film Reviews,Psychopaths are so commonplace nowadays they almost qualify as normal. Not only does the media serve up one mad gunman after another, glaring at us from page one, we also read about the ‘corporate psychopaths’ who make their way to the top of huge businesses, bring them down in flames, then move on to another […]
You Will be My Son
Saturday, November 10th, 2012 Film Reviews,Blood may be thicker than water but it runs a distant second to fine wines. At least that seems to be the way, vigneron, Paul De Merseul, views the world. Paul, played by veteran actor, Niels Arestrup, is the stern patriarch in Gilles Legrand’s You Will be My Son, a taut, lean story of tensions […]
The Master
Saturday, November 10th, 2012 Film Reviews,By now you have probably heard a great deal about The Master, which has dominated the early chattering about next year’s Academy Awards. Director, Paul Thomas Anderson, has already given the Oscars a shake in 2007, with There Will Be Blood, which secured the Best Actor award for Daniel Day-Lewis. With The Master it would […]
Paul Kelly: Stories of Me
Saturday, November 3rd, 2012 Film Reviews,Archie Roach reckons Paul Kelly is Australia’s “bard”. It’s what people used to say about Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson back in the days when poetry was a popular art. But for every man-in the-street who could recite parts of The Man from Snowy River in the 1890s, there must be thousands today who can […]
Jewish International Film Festival 2012
Saturday, November 3rd, 2012 Film Reviews,There may be a limit to the number of culturally specific films one should watch in quick succession. After spending most evenings last week previewing movies from the Jewish International Film Festival, when I answer the phone now I feel like saying “Shalom!” For the 23rd year of the Jewish Film Festival in Australia, time, […]
Shadow Dancer
Saturday, October 27th, 2012 Film Reviews,With so much carnage in the Middle East and the rise of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, we tend to forget how vicious and bloody the conflict was in Northern Ireland barely a decade ago. Shadow Dancer looks back on this time, as if through a veil of tears. Director, James Marsh, has made […]