Film Reviews
Highly Strung
Thursday, May 19th, 2016 Film Reviews,In the rarefied world of classical music the blood-letting is not so obvious, but it can still get nasty, as shown by Scott Hicks’s documentary, Highly Strung. This film has at least four different narratives that don’t always interact smoothly. The first is a portrait of the Australian String Quartet, beginning in late 2013, when […]
X-Men Apocalypse
Thursday, May 19th, 2016 Film Reviews,Not having bothered to watch the past seven – or is it eight? – X-Men films, I feel at a disadvantage when it comes to reviewing this latest installment in a long-running franchise. I didn’t avoid the previous films for any special reason, merely a lack of interest in the overblown superhero genre that has […]
The Man Who Knew Infinity
Thursday, May 12th, 2016 Film Reviews,There may be no Afghans in lead roles in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, but The Man Who Knew Infinity does manage to insert a few genuine Indians in key places. Who else but Dev Patel, known for his work in Slumdog Millionaire, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Neill Blomkamp’s underrated Chappie. Patel has become the […]
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Thursday, May 12th, 2016 Film Reviews,If The Martian can be classified as a comedy in last year’s Golden Globes, I suppose the same applies to Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Co-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa strive mightily to keep the tone light in a film in which there is a significant amount of carnage and bloodshed, but it’s never laugh-out-loud material. […]
Mia Madre
Friday, May 6th, 2016 Film Reviews,Mia Madre is an example of a favourite cinematic sub-genre: the film about a director making a film. Fellini’s 8½ is the grandfather of the lot, but every year there are new installments. This time it isn’t Fellini’s alter-ego wading through a surrealistic cavalcade of memories, or Wim Wenders’s bleak evocation of a stalled film […]
Florence Foster Jenkins
Friday, May 6th, 2016 Film Reviews,Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) entered my consciousness in the early 1990s when I first heard her rendition of the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute. This shrieking, tuneless performance of one of the most challenging pieces in the soprano’s repertoire is the stuff of high comedy. In 2003 Naxos issued an album […]
A Month of Sundays & Pawno
Friday, April 29th, 2016 Film Reviews,‘Fun’ is not a term one associates with contemporary Australian cinema, which has mistaken humourlessness for high seriousness. I’m not pining for slapstick comedy, only for films that can hold an up-tempo mood for more than a minute at a time. The Dressmaker came close last year, while Last Cab to Darwin – a film […]
Eddie the Eagle
Friday, April 29th, 2016 Film Reviews,Eddie the Eagle may be the year’s most shameless piece of feel-good filmmaking. Many viewers, myself included, usually feel pretty bad at the prospect of another feel-good film, but it would take a special kind of wowser to deny the entertainment value of this tale of glorious failure. What do I mean by a “feel-good” […]
Marguerite
Thursday, April 21st, 2016 Film Reviews,It’s a little surprising it has taken filmmakers so long to catch up with Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944), the New York socialite who aspired to be a great soprano but couldn’t hold a tune. The story has all the makings of a great tragicomedy, as a wealthy, kind-hearted woman is allowed to indulge her delusions […]
Midnight Special
Thursday, April 21st, 2016 Film Reviews,Midnight Special begins in the middle, as if we had just loaded up episode two of a series. It’s late at night in a seedy motel room, and there is an item on the TV about the kidnapping of an eight-year-old boy named Alton Meyer. We swiftly realise that we are looking at the boy […]