Film Reviews
Amy
Saturday, July 4th, 2015 Film Reviews,There is a terrible sense of inevitability about Amy. We know where the story is going before it gets started but this doesn’t lessen the morbid fascination of Amy Winehouse’s descent into the abyss. Watching Asif Kapadia’s documentary is like watching a boxing match where the TKO should have been applied at round six or […]
The Mafia Kills Only in Summer
Saturday, July 4th, 2015 Film Reviews,To make a romantic comedy about the depredations of the Mafia in Sicily sounds like a recipe for cinematic oblivion. Could this be anything other than a grave error of taste and judgement? It might even prove dangerous if today’s crop of crime bosses took offence. Pierfrancesco Diliberto, better known as Pif, has attempted this […]
Jurassic World
Saturday, June 27th, 2015 Film Reviews,Far From the Madding Crowd may have induced feelings of melancholy, but I felt grief stricken upon reading that Jurassic World had broken all box office records in its first weekend. The revenue is now over a billion dollars, and rising, which speaks volumes about the state of popular cinema. Just because Jurassic World is […]
Far From the Madding Crowd
Saturday, June 27th, 2015 Film Reviews,Screen adaptations of great novels are like retrospectives of great artists. They come around every generation, recalibrated to suit the expectations of a younger audience. As one of the definitions of a classic is that it seems relevant to each successive generation, problems arise when directors (or curators) force an ‘innovative’ new reading onto the […]
Going Clear
Saturday, June 20th, 2015 Film Reviews,After last week’s interview with Alex Gibney I received my obligatory email from Vicki Dunstan, President of the Australian chapter of the Church of Scientology, warning me about the filmmaker’s one-sided approach in Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Gibney makes “outrageous claims”, peddles “blatant falsehoods”, and refuses to consider the documentation the […]
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Saturday, June 20th, 2015 Film Reviews,This is a particularly strong period for documentaries, which are filling the gap left by the decline of quality investigative journalism in the print media. There are as many different styles of documentary as there are filmmakers, but anyone who feels Alex Gibney is lacking objectivity, should take a look at The Emperor’s New Clothes, […]
Sydney Film Festival 2015
Saturday, June 13th, 2015 Film Reviews,A first glance the program for the annual Sydney Film Festival is like dipping into a voluminous menu written in a foreign language. You know there are lots of good things in there but it’s not easy to identify them. Experience dictates that films which sound like non-events may turn out to be masterpieces, and […]
Marshland
Saturday, June 6th, 2015 Film Reviews,Anyone desperately seeking filmic distraction would be better advised to track down Alberto Rodríguez’s Marshland, a gripping mystery-thriller set in a desolate part of southern Spain at the end of the Franco era. The problem is that this movie will only score a limited release while Aloha screens in every multiplex. A pair of ill-matched […]
Partisan
Saturday, June 6th, 2015 Film Reviews,With a brutal civil war, followed by three decades of dictatorial rule, there’s no denying Spain’s sufferings, but nowadays the Spaniards are making great movies. I wonder if Australian cinema, conversely, is showing the symptoms of decades of peace and prosperity. Compared to the wars and political upheavals that have beset other countries, Australia has […]
SFF & Aloha
Saturday, June 6th, 2015 Film Reviews,Preparing for the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, with its 12 days of screenings from morning till night, is a bit like training for a marathon. I’m prepared to watch four movies a day but many people think this is madness. Don’t they all run into each other, becoming an indistinguishable mess? I can only answer […]