Tag: Fantasy
Joker: Folie à Deux
Saturday, October 12th, 2024 Film Reviews,If you’ve been hanging out for the most depressing musical of all time, rejoice, that moment has arrived! Todd Phillips’s Joker of 2019 was a surprising film which was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and earned Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar for Best Actor. The sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, is no less surprising, but so […]
Megalopolis
Sunday, October 6th, 2024 Film Reviews,It’s hard to recall a film being greeted with more perplexity than Francis Ford Coppola’sMegalopolis. A production that has been 40 years in gestation, cost US$120 million, and failed to attract support from the major studios, it’s like no movie ever made. As the director is one of Hollywood’s all-time greats it seemed incredible that […]
The Substance
Thursday, September 19th, 2024 Film Reviews,Wild. Demented. Shocking. Bizarre. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance is all of the above. It’s difficult to achieve an R rating in Australia nowadays but this movie clears the bar with ease. Along with the blood and full-frontal nudity, there’s a ferocious energy that propels the story forward, and a brand of comedy that leaves one […]
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 […]
Deadpool & Wolverine
Friday, August 2nd, 2024 Film Reviews,In the Marvel Comics Universe anything less than a billion dollars at the box office is considered a disappointment. The firm’s record is held by Avengers: Endgame (2019) which made a staggering US$2,797,501,328 (AUD $4,267,311,612), placing it a narrow second to James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) on the all-time top earners list. It must have been […]
The Three Musketeers
Saturday, June 8th, 2024 Film Reviews,Why did I wait so long to read Alexandre Dumas? One of literature’s all-time best-sellers, he had to be doing something right. The grandson of a French nobleman and a African slave, Dumas (1802-70) was as unlikely as one of his own plots, and no less successful. He spent money as fast as he made […]
Monster & Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Friday, May 10th, 2024 Film Reviews,Some directors are known for their car chases, Hirokaru Kore’eda is celebrated for his portrayals of families – big, small, sometimes barely recognisable as such. In Monster, the family consists of only a single mother, Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando), and her 11-year-old son, Minato (Soya Kurokawa), living in a provincial Japanese city. As they sit […]
Dream Scenario & Ferrari
Sunday, January 7th, 2024 Film Reviews,Another year, another burst of films released in time for the awards season. To cover the field expeditiously I’m going to look at two of them: Kristoffer Borgli’s engaging indie, Dream Scenario, and Michael Mann’s bio-pic, Ferrari, which – surprisingly enough – is also an independent production. Dream Scenario may have the smaller budget, but […]
Poor Things
Wednesday, December 27th, 2023 Film Reviews,Imagine Frankenstein remade as a Scottish sex comedy and you’ll be slightly better prepared for Poor Things. I say “slightly” because Yorgos Lanthimos and his favourite scriptwriter, Tony McNamara, have created another bizarre, indefinable production that juggles extremes of vulgarity and profundity. Pay too much attention to the foul language and bare flesh, and you […]
Wonka
Thursday, December 21st, 2023 Film Reviews,Have you ever had that feeling, a few minutes into a film, that you are not its target audience? Welcome to Wonka, a movie so sugary it should carry a health warning for diabetics. Never a scene slips by without some fulsome reference to chocolate, in an endless appeal to the viewer’s “sweet tooth”. It […]