Film Reviews
The Descendants
Saturday, January 28th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Less than a month out from this year’s Academy Awards, George Clooney is favourite in the Best Actor category for his role in The Descendants. It’s a big year for Clooney as he may also be nominated as Best Director for the political drama, The Ides of March. Do these awards stand for anything apart […]
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Saturday, January 21st, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,One can tell from John Le Carré’s espionage novels that he is fastidious about the smallest things. Our understanding of a character is built up piece by piece, until he or she begins to feel like an old acquaintance. The fact that these figures are usually snuffed out by the end of the book reveals […]
The Iron Lady
Saturday, January 14th, 2012 Film Reviews,There’s more than a hint of irony in the title of this film, because the Iron Lady looks decidedly rusty in her old age. Although a bio pic of Margaret Thatcher is inevitably a political drama, this movie might be best described as a study of dementia. Most of our time is spent with an […]
The Adventures of Tintin
Saturday, January 7th, 2012 Film Reviews,At the end of this film one has to admire Steven Spielberg’s self-confidence in the way he virtually announces a sequel. Before The Adventures of Tintin hit the screen it was always intended as the first of a trilogy, in collaboration with Peter Jackson, who produced this movie and will direct the next installment. Spielberg […]
New Year’s Eve & The Women on the 6th Floor
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 Film Reviews,A ‘star vehicle’ is a film in which the script and story are less important than the presence of a fashionable actor. As a vehicle, New Year’s Eve might be compared to a bus with no brakes, hauling a whole gaggle of celebrities towards a cliff. One expects these ‘feelgood’ films to feel bad, but […]
The Skin I Live In & Albert Nobbs
Saturday, December 24th, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Celebrated directors are invariably cinemaphiles who have watched favourite movies so often they can almost recite them. This is the case with Francois Truffaut and Jim Jarmusch, for instance, but few wear their influences on their sleeve as boldly as Pedro Almodóvar. His new feature, The Skin I Live In (La Piel que Habito) is […]
Melancholia
Saturday, December 17th, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Many would agree that Lars Von Trier is the perfect director to make a film about the end of the world. Anybody who has sat through Dogville (2003) might feel they have already experienced a cinematic catastrophe courtesy of the sadistic Dane. Neither is Von Trier a stranger to disaster in his private life, having […]
Decadence
Saturday, December 10th, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,‘Decadence’ is the kind of topic favoured by high school debating societies. Is western civilisation making progress towards a golden future, or are we in irreversible decline? It’s an issue that neatly divides us into optimists and pessimists. Pria Viswalingam may have debated this topic himself when he was a pupil at Aldenham, a British public […]
X
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,For some unknown reason Australian cinema has become mired in crime, violence, sadism and horror. This can’t be explained by the popularity of TV series such as Underbelly or the success of an earlier movie such as Wolf Creek. All of a sudden, this sunny, complacent, economically-successful country has gone over to the dark side. […]
Peter Crayford
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 Blog, Film Reviews,For 26 years Peter Crayford wrote the weekly film column for the Australian Financial Revew, an appointment he missed on only a handful of occasions. His consistency and the quality of his work become even more remarkable when one understands the circumstances of his life. When early on Sunday morning, Peter gave up his long, […]