Film
Cuck review - tediously nihilisticFriday, 17 April 2020
Deep from the heart of Trumpland comes Cuck, a deeply unpleasant film about a totally repellent character. Directed and co-written by Rob Lambert, the film opened simultaneously last autumn in the States with Joker, with which it shares an... Read more... |
Why Don't You Just Die! review - Russian rouletteFriday, 17 April 2020
It’s hard to feel sympathy for a young man plotting to stove his prospective father-in-law’s head in with a hammer. But when Matvei (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) discovers his quarry is bull-necked cop Andrei (Vitaliy Khaev), this simple plan inevitably... Read more... |
Who You Think I Am review - Juliette Binoche dazzles as she wrestles with dual identitiesThursday, 16 April 2020
With influences as diverse as Hitchcock’s Vertigo to 2010’s Catfish, Safy Nebbou’s genre-splicing French-language feature, starring Juliette Binoche, comes loaded with a heady mix of cheap thrills and surprising psychological depth.... Read more... |
The Host review - implausible suspense thrillerThursday, 16 April 2020
A camel is a horse designed by committee, they say; perhaps that explains why The Host, with several writing credits – adapted by Zachary Weckstein from a story by Laurence Lamers, screenplay by Finola Geraghty, Brendan Bishop and Lamers – doesn't... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Rio GrandeWednesday, 15 April 2020
Although it followed on from the previous hits Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande found director John Ford suffering from straitened finances. The third of his so-called “Cavalry Trilogy”, Rio Grande was made under a... Read more... |
Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Netflix review - a friendly provocateurMonday, 13 April 2020
Interviewed in isolation last week by Hollywood Reporter, music mogul Clive Davis revealed that he’s using his time “either by listening to the newest singles that make the charts or by watching hit music videos. First to be aware of them and then... Read more... |
Danger Close review - the Vietnam war from an Australian perspectiveSaturday, 11 April 2020
The battle of Long Tan in Vietnam isn’t well known to the casual observer, but it has entered the military folklore of Australia and New Zealand. On 18 August 1966, 108 men of Delta company, 6th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment found... Read more... |
Trolls World Tour review - a visual spectacle full of toe-tapping tunesThursday, 09 April 2020
The world might have changed drastically in the wake of Covid-19, but thankfully those hyperactive, candy-coloured Trolls haven’t. Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake are back as the delightful odd-couple, Poppy and Branch, for round two of pop-... Read more... |
The Beast review - bad cop bluesThursday, 09 April 2020
“They say we all have a beast locked up inside of us,” a character observes early in this Korean crime movie. Monsters are certainly chewing at the moral fibre of police captains Jung (Lee Sung-min) and Han (Yoo Jae-myung) as they corruptly pursue... Read more... |
The Iron Mask review - preposterous multi-national fantasyWednesday, 08 April 2020
Director Oleg Stepchenko’s follow-up to his 2014 yarn Forbidden Kingdom swaps the latter’s Transylvania for a fantastical computer-generated frolic round 18th century Russia and China, as pioneering cartographer Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) sets... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Buster Keaton - Three Films, Vol. 2Tuesday, 07 April 2020
These three films come from Buster Keaton’s mid-1920s purple patch, the high spots of which prompted critic Roger Ebert to describe Keaton as “arguably the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies”. High praise indeed. And while I’d rank... Read more... |
Camarón: The Film, Netflix review – the life story of an influential and passionate cantaorMonday, 06 April 2020
The scenes at flamenco legend Camarón de la Isla’s chaotic, thronged funeral which open this lovingly-made documentary give some idea of the singer’s popularity and the shock at his death at the age of just 41 in 1992. He began singing... Read more... |
