Sydney Film Fest

Sydney Film Festival Review: Pain and Glory (Spain, 2019) is one of Pedro Almodovar’s best films

Viva Almodovar! If that opening didn’t clue you in, I am a huge fan of the work of acclaimed Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar. His filmmaking is an extravagant blend that is both wondrously idiosyncratic and entertainingly melodramatic; capped off with a colourfully vibrant eye. Even his supposedly disappointing films have won me over time,…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Under the Shadow (Iran/United Kingdom, 2016)

A little bit of a confession before I start this review: I am not overly familiar with Iranian cinema. Apart from films by Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farahdi, I haven’t seen a lot of films from Iran, especially genre films. However, I saw a film called A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, a Persian-language film…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Devil’s Candy (Australia, 2015)

Satanism has been a film trope in horror films for many years, and it has paid off with fantastic offerings like Rosemary’s Baby, The Devil’s Advocate and The Omen. However, it has also produced some terrible films like End of Days, The Devil Inside and Jennifer’s Body; films that tried to be different but failing for different…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Alice in Earnestland (South Korea, 2015)

The dark comedy is, in my opinion, one of the hardest genres to accomplish. To take serious and taboo themes and put a humourous view on it requires an assured hand on all aspects of the storytelling. If the story is shown too serious, the humour will be seen as out of place. If the…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The BFG (USA, 2016)

Like many people in the world, Roald Dahl has been one of my favourite authors during my childhood. His twisted sense of humour, his unique whimsical touch and its warm-hearted tone have delighted kids as well as adults all around the world and even the film adaptations of his works have all been well-regarded by…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Julieta (Spain, 2016)

What would an Almodovar film be like without the major presence of women? Certainly not an Almodovar film, that’s for sure. And it is a delight to see him back in his normal ways of female-centric stories that made him renowned and acclaimed around the world by audiences and critics over. Films of his like…

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