Tag: comedy
My Old Ass & The Critic
Friday, September 27th, 2024 Film Reviews,Margo Robbie is one of the biggest names in Hollywood today, so when she decides her company will produce the second feature by young Canadian director, Megan Park, it’s a huge endorsement. It might have been even better had Robbie acted in this movie, as a little star power would have added to its box […]
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
Thursday, September 5th, 2024 Film Reviews,Thirty-six years is a long time to wait for a sequel, but Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice feels like it was made immediately after the first film wrapped. The same characters reappear, while sets and props seem to have been carefully preserved against the day they were required for a second installment. Even Michael Keaton in […]
Touch & Kneecap
Friday, August 30th, 2024 Film Reviews,Although Icelandic creativity is appropriately volcanic, most of the films from this tiny country fall into the arthouse category. It may be that Baltasar Kormákur’s Touch is the movie that cracks the mainstream. Devoid of rugged landscapes, lurking demons and sheep, Touch is the kind of wellmade, sentimental drama that audiences tend to adore. The […]
Fly Me to the Moon
Friday, July 19th, 2024 Film Reviews,It’s said that Marguerite Duras’s brief for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) was to script a love story that would not appear inconsiderable alongside the dropping of the Atomic bomb. She succeeded so well with this unthinkable task that Alain Renais’s film is recognised as a cinema classic. Scriptwriter, Rose Gilroy, seems to have been given […]
I Know Where I’m Going
Monday, May 6th, 2024 Blog,I Know Where I’m Going, made during the last year of World War Two, was a film between films. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had been working together since 1939, when the Hungarian emigré was asked to help with rewrites for Powell’s The Spy in Black. Four years and three films later, Pressburger would be […]
Golda & Fremont
Friday, May 3rd, 2024 Film Reviews,If ever a film release could be said to be badly timed, it’s Golda, the bio-pic of former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, who led her country through the Yom Kippur War of 1973, after a surprise attack from their Arab neighbours, Egypt and Syria. It arrives at a time when another intransigent Israeli Prime […]
Challengers & Evil Does Not Exist
Friday, April 26th, 2024 Film Reviews,Challengers may be the first tennis movie that really takes us onto the court. When racket connects with ball it’s as if an exocet missile has been fired. Every contact between ball and court is explosive, as director, Luca Gaudagnino pumps up the volume and pushes us back into our seats. Sweat doesn’t drip from […]
Late Night with the Devil
Friday, April 19th, 2024 Film Reviews,“Ladies and gentlemen please stay tuned for a live television first, as we attempt to commune with the Devil… But not before a word from our sponsors.” With these words I knew I’d discovered one of the rarer marsupials: a new Australian film with a sense of humour. It may be considered ironic that we’re […]
Perfect Days
Thursday, April 4th, 2024 Film Reviews,If you thought Kenny (2006) would be the only film you’d ever see about a toilet cleaner, in Perfect Days Wim Wenders shows us there’s plenty of life in this universal subject. Like Shane Jacobson’s Aussie “waste management expert”, Hirayama, a middle-aged man with a neat moustache and salt-and-pepper hair, is completely satisfied with his […]
American Fiction
Friday, March 15th, 2024 Film Reviews,It’s difficult to satirise the United States today, as reality keeps going places fiction fears to tread. Wind back the clock ten years, and nobody could have predicted the proto-fascist excesses of the Trump era, in which every form of bigotry now seems to be a vote-winner. Hardly less alarming is the collapse of so-called […]