Film Reviews
Italian Film Festival 2012
Saturday, September 22nd, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Although the French claim to have invented the cinema the Italians have done things with it no other nation can match. From silent epics such as Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria of 1914, through the Neo-Realist classics of Rossellini, De Sica and Visconti, to the arthouse movies of Fellini, Antonioni and Pasolini, Italy has spawned some of […]
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Saturday, September 15th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,This is a week that restores one’s faith in contemporary cinema. Left gasping by Monsieur Lazhar, I was completely floored by Beasts of the Southern Wild, the debut feature by young American director, Benh Zeitlin. This is a film that has everything: consummate story-telling, great performances from a largely non-professional group of actors, drama, pathos, […]
Monsieur Lazhar
Saturday, September 15th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,One approaches Monsieur Lazhar with the knowledge it has won numerous awards and gathered plaudits all over the world. If this wasn’t enough to raise one’s suspicions, the fact that the film was made in Canada is another cause for alarm. I don’t think any country is more adept at producing movies that promise so […]
Love
Saturday, September 8th, 2012 Film Reviews, Uncategorized,To imagine that a great cinematographer should make a great director is rather like saying a first violin should make a great conductor. Jack Cardiff had a long career as a leading cinematographer, but what did he leave us as a director? The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) – one of the most pretentious, and […]
Moonrise Kingdom
Saturday, September 8th, 2012 Film Reviews,Wes Anderson’s films are so doggedly idiosyncratic they will always leave a certain part of his audience feeling stranded. For the rest of us, they are one of the abiding delights of contemporary cinema. Mooonrise Kingdom is Anderson’s seventh feature, so by now you probably know whether you are a fan or not. One of […]
Film Festivals
Saturday, September 1st, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,National film festivals are one of the lesser-known growth industries in Australia. The big attraction is still the French Film Festival, but every year the German, the Italian, the Japanese and the Spanish seem to grow a little larger. Coming up quickly are those festivals devoted to films from Korea, Russia, Israel, Mexico, India, Iran, […]
Total Recall
Saturday, September 1st, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Philip K. Dick’s brief science fiction story, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1965) has travelled a long way since it was adapted for Paul Verhoeven’s film, Total Recall in 1990. In Dick’s original version, Doug Quail visits a business called Rekall that promises to provide its clients with a false memory superior to […]
Holy Motors
Saturday, August 25th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,It has been an excellent year for French cinema, but Holy Motors brings back memories of the brittle, self-consciously ‘poetic’ malaise that has infected so many gallic directors of the past. How alarming for all red-blooded Aussies that Our Kylie should be embedded in this piece of Parisian pastry. Kylie Minogue’s appearance comes at the […]
The Bourne Legacy
Saturday, August 25th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,One wonders what a cultural theorist such as Slavoj Zizek would make of the Bourne films? Beyond the lashings of action, suspense and skullduggery they are textbook lessons in the repressive power of the state, guaranteed to appeal to conspiracy theorists of both left and right persuasions. The world in which Jason Bourne, and new […]
Jackpot
Saturday, August 18th, 2012 Film Reviews,Like me, you may be wondering how many more ‘new Stieg Larssons’ are going to be thrown up by the vogue for Scandinavian crime fiction before the spotlight of fashion turns elsewhere. Perhaps South America is preparing a wave of depressed, alcoholic detectives. Maybe Kazakhstan has a new age crime fighter ready to go? For […]