Tuesday, May 14, 2024

FILM

FILM

Civil War and Monkey Man

Lights, cameras, action. Okay, so photography is a significant focus of Civil War and isn’t a thing with Monkey Man but both films are sensually extreme, featuring lots of spectacular visual moments, heaps of action and awesome intense sound.

Dune Part Two

Can three sci-fi or fantasy novels fit into two or three movies? If you haven’t read the original Dune “series” of three books in one then following Dune Part Two will be as much a challenge as following the Lord of the Rings movies if you hadn’t read J.R.R. Tolkien’s three books.

Poor Things

Poor Things is surreal, deep and meaningful, tiptoes around political correctness, varies between darkly comic and slapstick, and is sexually complex. If that sounds like you, then Poor Things is your perfect film – and you’re an immense character much like most of the characters in the film.

Napoleon

The 2023 Napoleon film is truly an epic. It has awesome battle scenes and historical sequences. Indeed all 180 films featuring Napoleon Bonaparte since 1897 no doubt have epic elements.

Killers of the Flower Moon

When is an epic not epic? When it’s just long.

Past Lives

Past Lives probably comes down to sliding doors moments – those regrettable, questionable and/or unavoidable decisions and events which led to one thing happening instead of another. Past Lives prompts those memories and leads you to reflect on what could have been.

Barbie and Asteroid City

From a purely aesthetic perspective, Barbie’s comparison with Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City is real.

November

For a film inspired by true events, the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and the subsequent police hunt for the terrorists, no other film feels as real as November. Indeed, so edge-of-the-seat fascinating is the film it is almost more docudrama than biopic.

The Pope’s Exorcist

The Pope’s Exorcist shows early promise, which dives when the exorcism of a possessed American child in Spain goes “standard Devil horror” ...

Cocaine Bear

Cocaine Bear is ridiculous and crazy – and in a good way, writes SSH film reviewer Lindsay Cohen.

Triangle of Sadness

‘Where Triangle of Sadness does resemble Monty Python is that it operates at two levels, writes SSH film reviewer Lindsay Cohen. ‘Every comic scene is underwritten by social commentary, with insights into racism, sexism, socio-economics and politics.’

Decision to Leave

It is worth seeing Decision to Leave. It’s the official submission of South Korea for the Best International Feature Film category of the 2023 Academy Awards after all ...

Cannes’ hit ‘Armageddon Time’ to headline Jewish International Film Festival

Artistic Director of the Jewish International Film Festival (JIFF),...

Bullet Train

Bullet Train is a blatant attempt at style over substance. Alas, it has very little of either and so as a film fails miserably.

Dementia doco puts its maker to the test

Redfern-based filmmaker Renée Brack's new feature documentary Ticketyboo explores dementia from a very personal perspective: her father died from Alzheimer’s disease. The film received a standing ovation at July 30 premiere at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival.

Where the Crawdads Sing

It’s all the things that make Where the Crawdads Sing such a perfect date film that contribute to it being drawn out, laboured and unsatisfying.

Top Gun: Maverick

Everyone who told me they’s seen Top Gun: Maverick agreed that the action sequences are awesome and everything else is filler.

Queer teen tragedy wins Sydney Film Festival’s top prize

Belgian director Lukas Dhont has won Sydney Film Festival’s $60,000 Sydney Film Prize for his queer teen tragedy Close, which portrays a powerful friendship between two 13-year-old boys that is severed as they transition to high school — with tragic results.

The Northman

If your taste in film is Shakespearean drama, Tarantino level violence and Viking legend then The Northman hits your sweet spot.

Australian premiere of ‘Pissarro: Father of Impressionism’

The Australian premiere of Pissarro: Father of Impressionism is in May. The 90-minute documentary, celebrates an incredible artist, without whom the Impressionist movement may never have begun or endured.

The Batman

The Batman doesn’t want to be a superhero film but unfortunately ultimately is. It’s torn between standard Marvel and DC story lines and trying to be a deep and complex noir thriller.

House of Gucci

In House of Gucci, by corrupting a true story that would make for a great documentary so that it could fit a simpler and more standard movie arc, Scott has mangled everything so much that very little works.

Locals featured in smart phone festival talk about filmmaking

Two locals whose works will be screened in the...

Local makers star in smart phone film fest

Works from Redfern, Camperdown and Alexandria film makers have...

Nitram

Nitram is about Martin Bryant, the Port Arthur massacre killer. So unlike most films, you know how it ends.

Nine Days

It took only four months to see Nine Days. The week we went into lockdown was the week I was scheduled to see a critics’ screening of the film. So, to say I was eagerly looking forward to finally seeing it is an understatement.

International success for local filmmakers

Filmed over five years, I’m Wanita is the story of Wanita Bahtiyar, flamboyant country singer from Tamworth, as she heads to the US to realise her lifelong dream of recording an album in Nashville, honkytonk capital of the world.

‘The World’s Best Film’ at 15th Annual Sydney Underground Film Festival

The World’s Best Film Director: Joshua Belinfante 15th Annual Sydney Underground...

The Courier

The Courier is “based on a true story”. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Greville Wynne really was a businessman recruited by MI6 during the Cold War to undertake Soviet Union intelligence gathering activities.

Judas and the Black Messiah

Good films educate. They provide insight and cause reflection. Judas and the Black Messiah is a good film. It taught me important history lessons ...

Another Round

My fear about Another Round was that it would get all preachy about the dangers of drinking to excess and chart the inevitable descent of all involved ...

Nomadland

Nomadland is actually a gentle story about one woman’s lifestyle, partly thrust upon her by economic circumstances and partly chosen.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie is essentially a series of skits and pranks aimed at easy-target right-wing Trump-supporting Americans in an effort to demonstrate their ignorance.

Freeman

To say that Tenet is a time-travel sci-fi film really doesn’t do it justice. Time isn’t travelled so much as it is scrunched up and folded over multiple times.

Deerskin

To say that Tenet is a time-travel sci-fi film really doesn’t do it justice. Time isn’t travelled so much as it is scrunched up and folded over multiple times.

Tenet

To say that Tenet is a time-travel sci-fi film really doesn’t do it justice. Time isn’t travelled so much as it is scrunched up and folded over multiple times.

Honeyland

Lost ways. Lost bees. Lost serenity. It would be hard to watch this twice Oscar-nominated documentary and not feel devastated for Hatidze Muratova – one of the last Macedonian wild beekeepers.

Snowpiercer

The TV series Snowpiercer is great but may not reach the cult status of the film of the same name ...

The Last Dance, Sunderland ’Til I Die, Drive to Survive, The Test

In this weird sports-free world, sports junkies such as yours truly are looking far and wide for their fix. Bring on the sports documentary series, a relatively new phenomenon tailor made for the pay-per-view generation.

Unorthodox

1917 is not a great WW1 film, but is a great piece of film-making. You probably know by now that it was all filmed in one simulated shot, using some very clever CGI, pin-point editing and some technical wizardry. And it works.

Queen & Slim

Queen & Slim reminds us there are other issues, also of life and death, that will persist well past the time that Covid-19 becomes as common as the cold and they shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored.

1917

1917 is not a great WW1 film, but is a great piece of film-making. You probably know by now that it was all filmed in one simulated shot, using some very clever CGI, pin-point editing and some technical wizardry. And it works.

Judy & Punch

If you have a problem with the lack of strong female roles in cinema then Judy & Punch is the film for you. It’s overflowing with them.

Ad Astra

On the Kubrick-Lucas spectrum (trademark pending), where Kubrick sci-fi films are intense and moody and so deep you can’t see the bottom of them, and Lucas sci-fi films are operatic and melodramatic and fun, with plenty of weird looking aliens, Ad Astra definitely tends Kubrick.

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood

There’s not much that Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and The Nightingale have in common.

Toy Story 4

Toy Story 4 has pretty much ended its run in our cinemas, but that’s okay because this isn’t so much a review of Toy Story 4 but of how I viewed it.

Men in Black: International

If the preview I saw of Men in Black: International was a Sydney Film Festival (SFF) film rather than just showing at the same time as the SFF, people would have walked out on it.

Red Joan

Red Joan is probably the least thrilling spy film ever made.

The Favourite and Vice

Apart from the fact both films are nominated for the Oscars there’s little they have in common, apart from the hours spent in their make-up departments.