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Film Reviews

Film Reviews

Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story

Sunday, September 3rd, 2023 Film Reviews,

Michael Gudinski was a serious burner of candles at both ends. In describing the flamboyant record executive and concert promoter, most of his friends talk about his “energy” and “passion”. Director, Paul Goldman, who admits to a spiky relationship with his subject, says he set out to avoid making a hagiography. Nevertheless, this is what […]

Film Reviews

BlackBerry

Friday, August 25th, 2023 Film Reviews,

We’ve recently entered a new world of cinema in which product placement is the entire rationale for a movie. No longer is it sufficient for a character to swig a wellknown softdrink or flash an expensive watch – now the softdrink or the watch are the heroes of the film. We learn about their inventors’ […]

Film Reviews

Gran Turismo

Friday, August 18th, 2023 Film Reviews,

Not long ago, when people were asked to declare their hobbies and interests, they might list swimming or stamp collecting, visiting art galleries, or going to the opera. Nowadays, it’s increasingly likely the average person’s Number One pastime will be Shopping – with a capital ‘S’. The trend is reflected in our near-religious veneration for […]

Film Reviews

Asteroid City

Saturday, August 12th, 2023 Film Reviews,

Whatever Wes Anderson is doing it might be better classified as ‘art’ rather than cinema. This was confirmed when he received invitations from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Fondazione Prada in Milan, to create exhibitions in 2018-2020. The Prada had already shown its affection for the director by getting him to design a […]

Film Reviews

Chevalier

Friday, August 4th, 2023 Film Reviews,

Chevalier stretches the bounds of credibility from the very first scene. We are at a concert in Paris, in the late 18th century, where a cocksure Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is conducting his own music and playing the violin. When he invites requests from the audience, a black man in a periwig comes striding down the […]

Film Reviews

Oppenheimer

Friday, July 28th, 2023 Film Reviews,

No figure stands more squarely at the crossroads of 20th century science and politics than J. Robert Oppenheimer, forever known as “father of the atomic bomb”. An epic story requires an epic film, and Christopher Nolan has given Oppenheimer the treatment he demands, in a three-hour bio pic that manages to balance a portrait of […]

Film Reviews

Barbie

Friday, July 21st, 2023 Film Reviews,

Barbie is the most unusual feminist statement ever to hit the cinema. It’s also a bizarre advertorial for the Mattel corporation, and one of the most original movies you’ll see in this or any other year. A word of warning: there is an awful lot of pink. From the moment she appeared in March 1959, […]

Film Reviews

Dalíland

Friday, July 14th, 2023 Film Reviews,

“Dalí was never in the art business,” recalled Amanda Lear, “he was in showbusiness.” As his long-serving model and muse, the statuesque pop idol could speak with authority. She had been a regular member of the maestro’s entourage, a witness to the antics that earned him notoreity in the mass media and the contempt of […]

Film Reviews

Reality & Driving Madeleine

Friday, July 7th, 2023 Film Reviews,

Reality is a film that lives up to its title, with a script taken word-for-word from one woman’s experience of an actual FBI search. The protagonist is a young civil servant with the rather surreal name of Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) who arrives home from the supermarket to find two men waiting for her outside […]

Film Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Friday, June 30th, 2023 Film Reviews,

There are some sprightly octogenarians around, but nobody tops Indiana Jones. When we meet him in this long-awaited finale to the series, it’s during the last weeks of World War Two. A digitally rejuvenated Harrison Ford is battling the Nazis, getting out of one close scrape after another, while setting up the key plot device […]