Reviews

Aided by a sense of retro charm and bathed in a yellowy hue that appears to be the go-to filter for Hollywood’s take on anything Middle East, Brad Anderson‘s Beirut is an absorbing thriller that doesn’t break convention, but manages a certain robustness that keeps it sailing along with intrigue. Opening in 1972, the titular…

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist shares some things in common with David Bowie’s song, “Fashion” and not just for the obvious fact that Vivienne Westwood is a fashion designer. Consider Bowie’s “Listen to me- don’t listen to me/Talk to me- don’t talk to me/Dance with me- don’t dance with me, no” lyrics. It’s a curious dance…

A bio-pic can be a tricky beast. When a person has achieved so much in their lifetime what part of the story do you focus on? If you’re Italian director, Susanna Nicchiarelli you eschew the obvious and omit the lauded days. Nicchiarelli instead focuses on later life and this is precisely the scene we are…

It’s fair to say that most of us home cooks are more like Nailed It! contestants than MasterChefs. So imagine how surprising it is to see a young child cooking up fine dining dishes with aplomb. Chef Flynn is a documentary about Flynn McGarry, this particular child prodigy. While it’s an entertaining story you can’t…

When light finally filled the theatre at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema I could see that the older man sitting next to me was visibly shaken. In fact, I could see many people who looked like they were in desperate need of a good, long hug and maybe a bathtub full of bright yellow rubber ducks…

Despite scene-swallowing work from Annette Bening (fabulous, as to be expected), the quiet mastery of Saoirse Ronan, and a brilliantly comical Elisabeth Moss, Michael Mayer‘s The Seagull (adapted from Anton Chekhov‘s classic play) fails to deliver them material worthy of their considerable talent. The story has all the right ingredients to be a farce of…

BAFTA-nominated documentary director Tim Wardle has an enviable subject with the highly publicised reunion of long-lost-triplets Robert Shafran, Eddy Galland and David Kellman, who found each other at the age of 19, tracking three identical New Yorkers separated at birth by a prominent Jewish adoption agency. It’s the kind of stranger-than-fiction story that the most…

If one were to describe this film briefly, The Heiresses could be seen a cross between Wong Kar-wai‘s Happy Together and Albert and David Maysles‘ Grey Gardens. As Kar-wai says about the title of his film, being happy together is being happy with oneself, and it is within that context is where the journey in…

In a small town in Kansas the residents kept their doors locked until the day a brutal, quadruple murder rocked the neighbourhood. The scene is a tragic and hard one to fathom but in a complicated turn of events these also became famous thanks to the writer, Truman Capote and his seminal book. Cold Blooded:…

Whilst it may not quite boast as impressive an ensemble as the original Ocean’s trilogy managed to concoct (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts to name a few), Ocean’s 8 still steers ahead on charm and glamour, proving that an octet of women can do anything just as capable as an eleven-strong…

To say that the expectations for this film are quite high is quite superfluous, but it has to be said nonetheless. We have Rachel Weisz, one of the most talented actresses in Hollywood, who’s had a great run of recent films ever since starring in the weird and sweet quasi-dystopian romance The Lobster, and still…

There are some viewers who might dismiss Tea With The Dames as “Anecdotage by those in their dotage.” But they’d be wrong. This documentary starring four great dames of the British stage and screen is a fascinating look at some brilliant careers and a revealing look into their respective personalities. There’s also lots of gossip…

Isabel Coixet has always been a talented filmmaker, making understated drama films dealing with issues like existentialism and inner turmoil to great aplomb. Although there have been some highs in her filmography like My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words (both starring the talented actress/director Sarah Polley), her last few films have…

Once again we return to a galaxy far, far away for another installment in the “A Star Wars Story” films. This time we explore the back story of one of our favourite rogues Han Solo, the people and aliens he meets up with, and their misadventures aboard the iconic Millenium Falcon. We first meet Han…

Considering the risks 20th Century Fox took in greenlighting Deadpool, the 2016 film was released and became a global success, it seemed the risk now fell on the shoulders of its sequel. Deadpool 2 markets itself as “it feels bigger” and in some ways this is true and in others it’s not. The film leans…

If there’s one creative collaboration that many look forward to, it’d have to be between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody. Their first collaboration was the 2007 comedy-drama Juno. With its hip dialogue, wonderful performances and a refreshing view of the coming-of-age genre (for that time), it was a critically-acclaimed hit that was a…

After a near two-decade absence from the Australian film industry, Simon Baker makes a glorious (ahem) splash with the soulful Breath.  Taking cue from the evocative descriptions set about in Tim Winton‘s 2008 novel, Baker proves both assured and affectionate as he takes directorial duties for an equally vivid and placid coming-of-age tale that benefits…

The last ten years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building up to this, Avengers Infinity War, and this film is nothing short of a non-stop juggernaut of a blockbuster that refuses to hold back its punches. Strap yourselves in because this may turn into a blithering emotional crazed over-analysed mess… but I promise…

With films like Sex, Lies and Videotape and King of the Hill, Steven Soderbergh is known to be one of the greatest filmmakers to come from independent cinema. But he became a bigger name when he ventured into commercial filmmaking with crime films like Out of Sight, The Limey and the Ocean’s film series. Since then,…

The average woman is said to criticise herself around eight times each day. It is in this headspace and society that a rom-com like I Feel Pretty exists. The film had the best of intentions and tries to tackle some complex topics like how hard we women can be on ourselves and the feelings of…

With high replay value and some clever pacing, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson have transposed their West End play Ghost Stories to the big screen with a refreshing eye for originality, spinning a grand three-part horror anthology into one thoroughly entertaining and unpredictable film that never stops subtly building towards its tremendous finale. And that’s…

With Gurrumul, director Paul Damien Williams has created a striking and emotive portrait of one of Australia’s greatest musical talents – Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. But more than that, Gurrumul also affords us all a glimpse into the cultural life and traditions of the Yolngu people in North Eastern Arnhem Land, in what are some of…

First and foremost it must be noted that Super Troopers 2 is indeed a film made for a particular audience. The original 2001 comedy came and went theatrically without much notice, but over the years it earned rightful cult status as its receptive audience came to appreciate its random, low brow humour. As successful as…

Before Truth or Dare even begins, you know exactly what kind of movie you’re about to see.  Hoping to be some sort of new-era Final Destination, but failing miserably in the process, Truth or Dare follows every beat you expect it to, and it’s in this predictability that the film succeeds in being a massively entertaining ride for all the…

Director Wes Anderson has gradually been making a name for himself as a quintessentially quirky auteur with his unique but meticulously detailed style. So it is no surprise at all that his latest stop-motion animation feature, Isle Of Dogs, is probably his most fine tuned film to date. Bringing a heartwarming tale about love, loyalty…

You anticipate a film to be vogue when millennial buzzwords and Internet culture forms the first ten minutes. You probably wouldn’t expect that film to be any good either. I didn’t. But by the time Wobble Palace had reached its epilogue, it had convinced me of a couple of things. The first, that it wasn’t…

Black comedies can be a very hard genre to pull off. Since it dwells within serious issues that could potentially be seen as taboos within the genre, it requires a certain balance between empathy, humour and darkness. But like all films, they have to have a certain amount of humanity for the audience to cling…

Even when working off a plot device that doesn’t exactly test the limits of originality, a clever script and utter dedication from its workers can transform the familiar to something beyond our expectations.  Such is the case with A Quiet Place, an impossibly eerie chiller that presents civilisation as a fallen project, and those who…

Dear Blue, Queer cinema has came through quite well back in 2017. We’ve had great examples like Call Me By Your Name, Battle of the Sexes and Moonlight; foreign entries like BPM (Beats Per Minute), Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman and BAFTA-winning The Handmaiden and hidden indie gems like Princess Cyd, Beach Rats and God’s Own…

Directed by Australia’s own Sarah Daggar-Nickson and starring Olivia Wilde, A Vigilante is a powerful drama that sees Wilde play the titular role – Sadie, a vigilante who helps domestic abuse survivors get out of their situation by literally bringing the abusers to their knees. Spurred on by her own experiences and a tragedy, the…