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Tag: sci-fi

Film Reviews

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 […]

Film Reviews

Alien: Romulus

Friday, August 16th, 2024 Film Reviews,

Now in its seventh installment since 1979, the Alien franchise delivers a predictable product. Ridley Scott’s Alien of 1979, was a ground-breaking – or rather space-breaking – sci-fi horror flick that made an indelible mark on cinema history. It was seven years before a sequel arrived, partly because science fiction writer, A.E.van Vogt, claimed the […]

Film Reviews

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Saturday, May 25th, 2024 Film Reviews,

All great film series have their highs and lows. A masterpiece is followed by a dud, a long sequence of flops suddenly comes up trumps. One can never be confident that a great film will be followed by an equally compelling sequel, or that a franchise that resembles a dead horse might not spring to […]

Film Reviews

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 […]

Film Reviews

The Hunger Games: the Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Thursday, November 23rd, 2023 Film Reviews,

It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since the last Hunger Games movie, the fourth part of a ‘Hollywood trilogy’. Those films drew on the star power of Jennifer Lawrence as heroine, Katniss Everdeen, but the actor’s light has dimmed in recent years, the low point being the dismal sex comedy, No Hard Feelings […]

Film Reviews

Foe

Friday, November 10th, 2023 Film Reviews,

For a director who cut his teeth making short, snappy TV commercials, Garth Davis’s features are remarkably ponderous. One wonders for how long he can subsist on the glamour of the six Academy Award nominations he received for Lion (2016). Despite the fanfare, I thought it was a very ordinary film and suspect a lot […]

Art Column

Liam Young: Planetary Redesign

Saturday, September 30th, 2023 Art Column,

Climate anxiety is the neurosis of our age. According to a recent study, one in ten Americans report symptoms of anxiety because of global warming. For those between the ages of 16-25, the number jumps to an alarming fifty percent. In Australia, a survey of last year found that 38 percent of young people were […]

Film Reviews

The Creator

Friday, September 29th, 2023 Film Reviews,

Made for a mere US$80 million, The Creator is a cut-price Hollywood blockbuster. The usual bill for one of these extravaganzas is north of US$ 300 million, but British director, Gareth Edwards, has managed to eliminate the waste that causes those pesky budgets to blow out. In the process, he may have made himself the […]

Film Reviews

The Survival of Kindness

Thursday, May 4th, 2023 Film Reviews,

Plenty of people will tell you that Rolf de Heer’s The Survival of Kindness is a “weird” film. That’s probably an understatement considering that all the dialogue is muttered in an incomprehensible language – or set of languages, and that most of the characters walk around wearing large, clunky gasmasks. Nobody has a name, and […]

Film Reviews

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once & All Quiet on the Western Front

Friday, February 24th, 2023 Film Reviews,

With another Academy Awards looming, I’m taking the opportunity to look at the two remaining candidates for Best Picture. Both have form. The first, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, leads the pack in 2023 with 11 nominations. The second, All Quiet on the Western Front, has been nominated in nine categories, and won seven BAFTAs this week, […]