Film Reviews
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Saturday, July 14th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing, Uncategorized,Once upon a time in Anatolia… a minute passed. And then another minute passed, and another. Finally, after two –and-a-half hours, the film was over. Nuri Birge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is not for those with a low threshold of boredom, but like many slow films it has a mesmeric quality. The […]
Spanish Film Festival
Saturday, July 7th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing, Uncategorized,Spain has always been known as a land of poverty, piety and cruelty, with a dark, fatalistic streak. The great break came with the Movida of the late 1970s – the counter-cultural awakening that followed the death of Franco. In the cinema the figurehead for this movement was Pedro Almodóvar, who has gone on to […]
Polisse
Saturday, June 30th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,It’s sheer coincidence that both this week’s films are by female directors with French connections who play a role in their respective features. The difference is that Polisse, by Maïwenn, has all the drama, the humour and the acting that one misses in Where Do We Go Now? While the latter has a story that […]
Where Do We Go Now?
Saturday, June 30th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,“A pretty silly film,” said my spouse, as we left the theatre. This was a damning verdict, as Where Do We Go Now? is essentially a chick flick with political pretensions, designed to appeal to educated, middle class women of a small-l liberal persuasion. When the target audience declares the movie a failure this makes […]
Elena
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Do the Russians make teenage slob films? I had this thought as I was watching Elena, the new production by Andrei Zvyagintsev, while reflecting on the preview I had attended the day before – That’s My Boy. It’s fairly obvious which movie will achieve the biggest box office, but it’s also a depressing thought. That’s […]
A Royal Affair
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,There’s something well made in the state of Denmark. A Royal Affair is one of those films that never seems to lose its way, or take flight. Danish director, Nikolaj Arcel, has gone about his task with consummate professionalism, for which one might be thankful in light of the awful mess Sofia Coppola made of […]
The Chef
Saturday, June 16th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,With a film about food and cookery, a director can hardly fail. Whatever the deficiences of the script, the acting or camerawork, the subject has such an intrinsic attraction an audience will keep watching just to see the next dish. Daniel Cohen’s The Chef is better than that – a slick French farce as predictable […]
Prometheus
Saturday, June 16th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,No film this year has arrived with such high expectations as Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, the long-awaited prequel to Alien – a movie that spawned a franchise and a cult. I attended a preview at the iMax in Darling Harbour on a night when the wind and rain were causing mayhem all over Sydney. The place […]
Frankenstein
Saturday, June 9th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Frankenstein is one of those rare stories that seems to grow more meaningful with every passing year. Written by the eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley, in 1816-17, it has the distinction of being both a literary classic and the ancestor of the two popular genres we know as horror and science fiction. It has always been recognised […]
The Duel
Saturday, June 9th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Ivan Andreyevich Laevsky is a superfluous man (lyishniy chelovek) – one of a breed of indolent, selfish characters that haunt the pages of 19th century Russian novels. A minor civil servant by profession, Laevsky has run off to the Caucasus with Nadia, another man’s wife, where their illicit relationship can blossom in close proximity to […]