Tag: crime
The Batman
Friday, March 11th, 2022 Film Reviews,Many readers will have been introduced to Batman through that incredibly camp afternoon TV program of the late 1960s in which Adam West played Bruce Wayne (Batman), with Burt Ward as his ward, Dick Grayson (Robin). Has anybody ever heard of these two actors since? The supporting cast was more high-profile: Cesar Romero as the […]
The House of Gucci
Friday, January 14th, 2022 Film Reviews,Shakespeare allegedly set tragedies and comedies in Italy because the stereotype of the excitable Italian was engraven on the Elizabethan mind. One finds the same view at the end of the 18th century in the memoirs of playwright, Vittorio Alfieri, who, caught in an adulterous affair with an English woman, was astonished by the calm, […]
The Many Saints of Newark
Thursday, November 4th, 2021 Film Reviews,It’s said that crime doesn’t pay but movies about crime seem to do very nicely. This may be the main reason why anyone would attempt a film based on a successful TV series such as The Sopranos. When viewers have spent weeks, months, even years in the company of favourite characters, the standard two hours […]
Nitram
Friday, October 8th, 2021 Film Reviews,Justin Kurzel may have a taste for dark, unhappy subjects, but he is a cut above most contemporary Australian directors. His first feature, Snowtown (2011), told the true story of serial killer, John Bunting, and those he drew into his orbit. It was a brutal but amazingly sophisticated debut. Ten years on, Kurzel and scriptwriter, […]
The Dry
Saturday, January 23rd, 2021 Film Reviews,As Australia Day looms so does another round of Australian movies. If you’re feeling patriotic you can now watch Glendyn Ivin’s Penguin Bloom, in which a disabled Naomi Watts finds new hope through a magpie. Coming soon is Stephen Johnson’s High Ground, an historical drama set in Arnhem Land, where Simon Baker treads a blood-stained […]
Jean-Pierre Melville
Thursday, October 15th, 2020 Film Reviews,With Hollywood saving its blockbusters for better days the cinemas are turning to classic and foreign films to fill the void. This is not a stopgap, but a great opportunity. If only a small percentage of regular cinema-goers take the chance to broaden their horizons it would be marvellous thing for film culture in this […]
The Translators
Friday, September 18th, 2020 Film Reviews,For a writer to have a world-wide, runaway best-seller is like winning the lottery. If it were purely a matter of talent Dan Brown would be stacking shelves at Walmart. The genius behind The Da Vinci Code wasn’t the author but the editor who decided to leave in all the aimless bumpf downloaded from the […]
Greed
Thursday, June 25th, 2020 Film Reviews,Greed was the title of one of the cinema’s most legendary productions – an 8-hour silent epic of 1924, by Erich von Stroheim, cut by MGM to two-and-a-half hours. Movie historians have been searching for the missing six hours ever since. Greed, by the prolific British director, Michael Winterbottom, is a mere 104 minutes, and […]
Motherless Brooklyn
Saturday, February 29th, 2020 Film Reviews,Edward Norton acquired the rights to Jonathan Lethem’s novel, Motherless Brooklyn, in 1998 but didn’t finish writing the script until 2012, by which time Lethem had published another six books. Filming would finally commence in February 2018 but a fire on set and resulting lawsuits set the project back by a further nine months. It […]
Where’s My Roy Cohn?
Friday, December 6th, 2019 Film Reviews,On meeting Roy Cohn, we are told, “you knew you were in the presence of evil.” This statement occurs within the first few minutes. The rest of Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary adds support to the proposition. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how American politics attained its current level of crazed amorality, Where’s My Roy Cohn? […]