Tag: thriller
Zero Dark Thirty & The Impossible
Saturday, February 2nd, 2013 Film Reviews,Zero Dark Thirty arrives at our cinemas with a readymade controversy: “Should director, Kathryn Bigelow, and scriptwriter, Mark Boal, have included the scenes of the CIA torturing prisoners?” Although it was driven home by the scandal of Abu Ghraib, surely noobdy will be surprised to learn the Americans practised torture. Indeed, it would have been […]
Looper
Saturday, October 20th, 2012 Film Reviews,Ever since 1895 when H.G.Wells sent his Time Traveller into a bleak, dystopian future, science fiction writers have been imagining the ways civilisation can progress and decline at the same time. Before Wells the vogue was to use a vision of the future to show the ‘earthly paradise’ the world could become under socialism. If […]
Total Recall
Saturday, September 1st, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Philip K. Dick’s brief science fiction story, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1965) has travelled a long way since it was adapted for Paul Verhoeven’s film, Total Recall in 1990. In Dick’s original version, Doug Quail visits a business called Rekall that promises to provide its clients with a false memory superior to […]
The Bourne Legacy
Saturday, August 25th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,One wonders what a cultural theorist such as Slavoj Zizek would make of the Bourne films? Beyond the lashings of action, suspense and skullduggery they are textbook lessons in the repressive power of the state, guaranteed to appeal to conspiracy theorists of both left and right persuasions. The world in which Jason Bourne, and new […]
Get the Gringo
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,South of the border, down Mexico way. We’ve been here before, but never in the company of Mel Gibson, working to restore a reputation that has taken a dive in recent years. There have been slight problems with alcohol, domestic violence, and anti-Semitic pronouncements delivered to officers of the law. “Sick to his empty core […]
Headhunters
Saturday, March 17th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,To what extremes would you go to preserve life and limb? Roger Brown, the protagonist of Headhunters goes about as far as can be imagined in escaping a would-be assassin. There are many moments in this film when most of us would settle for a bullet and the big sleep. Roger, played by Norwegian actor, […]
Gone
Saturday, March 3rd, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Always beware of the film that sells itself on the appearance of some fabulous lead actor you have never previously encountered. So when one reads the proud announcements that Gone features no-one less than Amanda Seyfried (!), there is the slight, lingering question: “Who is Amanda Seyfried?” Previous to this film, Amanda’s big break was […]
The Skin I Live In & Albert Nobbs
Saturday, December 24th, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Celebrated directors are invariably cinemaphiles who have watched favourite movies so often they can almost recite them. This is the case with Francois Truffaut and Jim Jarmusch, for instance, but few wear their influences on their sleeve as boldly as Pedro Almodóvar. His new feature, The Skin I Live In (La Piel que Habito) is […]
X
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,For some unknown reason Australian cinema has become mired in crime, violence, sadism and horror. This can’t be explained by the popularity of TV series such as Underbelly or the success of an earlier movie such as Wolf Creek. All of a sudden, this sunny, complacent, economically-successful country has gone over to the dark side. […]
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Saturday, November 19th, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Contrary to popular belief, this is not a film in which Tilda Swinton plays Julia Gillard, with John C. Reilly as Bill Shorten. That particular episode in Australian political history was a horror movie that has not yet run its course. We Need to Talk About Kevin is less than two hours of concerted horror, […]