Tag: crime
Joe Cinque's Consolation
Friday, October 14th, 2016 Film Reviews,Notably absent from Sotiris Dounoukos’s film, Joe Cinque’s Consolation, is the voice of Helen Garner. In the best-selling book about the death of 26-year-old Joe Cinque and the murder trial that followed, we see everything through Garner’s eyes. She makes us party to her own fears and recriminations; her battles to be fair to Joe’s […]
Goldstone
Friday, July 8th, 2016 Film Reviews,In Goldstone, Indigenous director, Ivan Sen, explores a new cinematic sub-genre. Let’s call it Outback Noir. Instead of darkened rooms and night clubs, the action takes place in the blazing Australian desert. Sen’s characters don’t sit at a bar with shadows from a Venetian blind falling over their faces, they squint in the glare of […]
Money Monster
Friday, June 3rd, 2016 Film Reviews,At a Q & A last week, after the premiere of Money Monster, director, Jodie Foster spoke about her admiration for the films of Sidney Lumet. It was no revelation as her movie has resounding echoes of two Lumet classics – Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Network (1976). There’s also a more-than-passing resemblance to Spike […]
The Nice Guys
Thursday, May 26th, 2016 Film Reviews,Take Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, a sassy blonde teenager, and a salacious story that revolves around the Los Angeles porn industry circa 1977, and you have The Nice Guys. It’s not so much a formula film as half a dozen formulas that director, Shane Black, has mixed together to create a surprisingly fizzy cocktail. […]
Spanish Film Festival 2016
Thursday, April 14th, 2016 Film Reviews,In the days of the infamous Motion Picture Production Code, which stretched from 1930 until the 1960s, Hollywood’s movie makers were constrained from producing any film that might lower the moral standards of its audience. This meant crime could never pay, while law-breakers always suffered for their sins. Innocence and goodness were invariably rewarded. For […]
A Bigger Splash
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016 Film Reviews,Ten years ago Ralph Fiennes was the model of a stiff-upper-lip character actor, the epitome of English reserve. There was, however, another persona biding its time until it could be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. This Fiennes has given us a brutal warrior in Coriolanus, a sparkling portrait of Charles Dickens in The Invisible Woman, […]
The Hateful Eight
Friday, January 22nd, 2016 Film Reviews,Each new film by Quentin Tarantino generates a storm of anticipation. We know what to expect, but initially The Hateful Eight took me by surprise. It is a long movie, divided into chapters, with an old-fashioned intermission. Instead of the usual gore fest the first half is all dialogue and scene-setting. If this appeals more […]
Point Break
Thursday, January 7th, 2016 Film Reviews,There is no shortage of extraordinary nature cinematography in Point Break, but after watching The Revenant, it felt as artificial as a cartoon. The heavy imprint of CGI is all over this film, which is barely more than two hours of eye candy arranged over the flimsiest of plots. Before seeing this movie I would […]
Legend
Friday, October 16th, 2015 Film Reviews,Ronnie and Reggie Kray will forever be linked with the Monty Python sketch about the Piranha Brothers, Doug and Dinsdale. As you may recall, Dinsdale – “a cruel man, but fair” – liked to nail the occasional head to the floor, while Doug’s preferred weapon was sarcasm. There are plenty of moments in Legend, Brian […]
Black Mass
Friday, October 9th, 2015 Film Reviews,How many dud movies does it take before one can be over an actor? With his roles in films such as Mortdecai (2015) and Tusk (2014), Johnny Depp has been sailing close to the wind. It’s been a long time since he has worked harder on a character than he does with Boston gangster, James […]