Tag: Fantasy
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
Friday, October 28th, 2022 Film Reviews,One wonders what the late Jean-Luc Godard would have made of Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. When the famous avant-garde director died last month, the tributes were predictably fulsome, but I can’t believe anyone actually enjoyed sitting through anything Godard made after about 1965. For the vast majority of people there is only one reason […]
Don’t Worry Darling
Friday, September 30th, 2022 Film Reviews,Don’t worry darling, you can look it up when you get home. This is the best advice I can offer to those who walk out of Olivia Wilde’s much-discussed movie, wondering what on earth it was all about. No film this year has been more thoroughly picked over by the gossip columnists, following reports of […]
Three Thousand Years of Longing
Friday, September 9th, 2022 Film Reviews,It’s widely believed the genie in a bottle who grants three wishes to the one who sets him free is a story from The Arabian Nights. In fact, nobody quite knows how this classic tale originated. There’s an element of The Arabian Nights, which was first translated into English in the early 18th century, along […]
Jurassic World Dominion
Friday, June 17th, 2022 Film Reviews,If Top Gun: Maverick took formula film-making into the stratosphere, Jurassic World Dominion has returned it to the primordial swamp. Whatever the shortcomings of the previous installment in this seemingly endless series, it feels like a classic alongside this new effort. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Spanish director, J.A.Bayona managed a few clever twists […]
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Friday, May 6th, 2022 Film Reviews,For a long time the Marvel Cinematic Universe has resembled a global mystery cult that inspires fierce devotion among its acolytes and leaves outsiders bamboozled. While I was watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, trying to make sense of the kaleidoscopic swirl of images being thrown onto the screen, the person sitting next […]
Spencer
Friday, January 28th, 2022 Film Reviews,When a movie begins with the words “based on a true story”, it’s usually a coded warning that what you are about to see is fantasy. The disclaimer bestows an appealing suggestion of reality while allowing the filmmakers to let their imaginations run wild. So when Pablo Larraín begins his bio-pic about Princess Diana with […]
Antlers
Thursday, October 28th, 2021 Film Reviews,After months at home sampling streaming menus Australia is ready to go back to the movies. In November the floodgates will open with the Sydney Film Festival, the Italian Film Festival and the British Film Festival. The most high-profile new releases will include the long-delayed James Bond flick, No Time to Die; the latest superhero […]
Free Guy
Thursday, August 12th, 2021 Film Reviews,If you’re not currently in lockdown there are a handful of new releases to be sampled at the cinema. This includes Disney’s latest attempt to barnstorm the box office: Free Guy. Not the worst movie you’ll see this year, it’s almost wilfully shallow. There’s no shortage of promising themes but the filmmakers seem determined to […]
Black Widow
Friday, July 30th, 2021 Film Reviews,Over the years I’ve never found it a hardship to watch a movie that stars Scarlett Johansson, but with Black Widow any lingering spark of male fantasy went under the steamroller. Every time I sit through one of these superhero flicks I find myself asking: “Is it me, or is it the rest of the […]
Wonder Woman 1984
Friday, January 8th, 2021 Film Reviews,No movie in 2017 was more overrated than Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman. It was as if critics and fans were responding to the film they’d hoped to see, rather than whatever ended up on screen. The movie’s one saving grace was the luminous Gal Gadot as the embodiment of everyone’s fantasy Amazon. The inevitable sequel, […]