Film
Ava review - Sadaf Foroughi powerhouse drama about teenage rebellionSaturday, 22 August 2020
Canadian-Iranian director Sadaf Foroughi offers up a gut-wrenching tale of adolescent rebellion set against the strictures of an oppressive Middle Eastern society. It rivals the work of Asghar Farhadi in quality, telling the story of a 17-year-old... Read more... |
Random Acts of Violence review - study in horror lacks scaresThursday, 20 August 2020
The debate about whether violent films cause violent acts has been around for decades. From Mary Whitehouse’s puritanical crusade against films such as The Exorcist, to recent movies like Joker, pundits, columnists and even psychiatrists... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Man Who LaughsTuesday, 18 August 2020
Batman’s cartoonists cribbed the Joker’s face from Conrad Veidt’s rictus grin, backswept hair and crazed stare in this 1928 silent classic. Director Paul Leni’s film can’t though be reduced to either a supervillain’s footnote, or a prelude to... Read more... |
Yes, God, Yes review - coming of age, emphasis on comingMonday, 17 August 2020
It’s somewhat dispiriting to watch a coming-of-age rom-com that rarely rises above clichés and limps along as slowly as Yes, God, Yes. It's set in the early 2000s, and 16-year old Alice (Natalie Dyer) is struggling with sexual desire, idling on... Read more... |
Blu-ray: EquusSunday, 16 August 2020
It’s quite unusual for the extras on a DVD release to talk down the main attraction. But that appears to be the case with the BFI’s package for Equus, Sidney Lumet’s 1977 adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s acclaimed stage play. “I didn’t like... Read more... |
My Rembrandt review - hard cash and hubrisSaturday, 15 August 2020
In the gloomy splendour of Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch gazes up at Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading, 1655. The painting has belonged to the Scott family for more than 250 years, and like generations before him, the... Read more... |
Babyteeth review - teenage love and terminal illness in the Sydney suburbsFriday, 14 August 2020
Babyteeth gets off to a terrific start. A semi-naked, manic Moses (Toby Wallace, full of scabby charisma) almost pushes 15-year-old Milla (Eliza Scanlen; Sharp Objects, Little Women) on to the Sydney train tracks as she waits on the platform in her... Read more... |
Project Power - so-so attempt to reinvent the superhero genreFriday, 14 August 2020
What if there was a pill you could pop that gave you superpowers? The only catch is that, while it might make you invisible or bullet-proof, it might also boil your brain or make you explode with just one hit.That’s the premise of Henry Joost and... Read more... |
Spree review - a wild ride through social media madnessFriday, 14 August 2020
Allergic to that word “influencer”? Afraid that social media is the death of civilisation as we’ve known it? Then this movie may be for you.Despite its overt absurdity and compulsive over-the-topness, director Eugene Wobble Palace Kotlyarenko has... Read more... |
Pinocchio review - wooden heartThursday, 13 August 2020
This seems a perfect project for Matteo Garrone, a director who has found new ways to conjure old Italian dreams, and invests even his most grimly realistic films with fairy tale logic and wonder. Carlo Collodi’s 1883 story is here returned to its... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Buster Keaton: Three Films, Vol. 3Sunday, 09 August 2020
Every great artist can have an off day, and the the best moments in Eureka’s latest collection of Buster Keaton features are good enough to make one forgive the patchier stretches. Keaton’s first feature length comedy was the 1923 DW Griffith spoof... Read more... |
Perfect 10 review - a small movie with a big heartSaturday, 08 August 2020
We first see Leigh (Frankie Box), the cheeky heroine of Scottish writer-director Eva Riley’s debut feature Perfect 10, hanging upside down during a gymnastics workout. The image is appropriate given that the teenager’s Sussex life – an aimless... Read more... |
