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Film Reviews

Film Reviews

Crazy Rich Asians

Thursday, August 23rd, 2018 Film Reviews,

Crazy Rich Asians arrives on a wave of hype that would put Hokusai to shame. We are told with great fanfare that it’s the first Hollywood film to feature an all-Asian cast since Wayne Wang’s The Joy Luck Club (1993). It’s seen more broadly as an antidote to Hollywood’s phobia about using Asian actors, which […]

Film Reviews

BlacKKKlansman

Friday, August 17th, 2018 Film Reviews,

“There are certain values we feel to be absolute,” wrote Aldous Huxley, in an essay of 1932. “Truth is one of them. We have an immediate conviction of its high, its supreme importance.” Not any more we don’t. Not in a world of alternative facts, in which inconvenient words and deeds are written off as […]

Film Reviews

On Chesil Beach

Friday, August 10th, 2018 Film Reviews,

Ian McEwan has complained about the difficulty of writing screenplays, and may have even sworn he’d never do it again. Nevertheless, here he is, adapting his own slender novel of 2007, On Chesil Beach. The book is not one of his best, being largely a sketch that revolves around a single, terrible night that changes […]

Film Reviews

The Wife

Thursday, August 2nd, 2018 Film Reviews,

What becomes of that comfortable old cliché: “Behind every great man there’s a great woman” in the #MeToo era? Surely it was always a euphemistic way of saying: “Behind every self-important male there’s a self-effacing female.” Nowadays to be politically correct we might have to say: “Behind every great LGBTQIA there’s a great LGBTQIA” – […]

Film Reviews

Whitney

Friday, July 27th, 2018 Film Reviews,

Whitney Houston’s story is horribly familiar – which doesn’t make it any less compelling. We’ve been to a very similar place with Amy (2015), Asif Kapadia’s documentary about doomed pop star, Amy Winehouse. We’ve been there with Whitney herself only last year, with Whitney: Can I Be Me, a documentary by Nick Broomfield and Rudi […]

Film Reviews

The Breaker Upperers

Saturday, July 21st, 2018 Film Reviews,

The Breaker Upperers, which screened on opening night of this year’s Sydney Film Festival, got a riotous reception on an evening when everybody was in the mood for a party. Will it survive more sober assessments? It’s crude, vulgar and slapdash, so don’t go along expecting the Lubitsch touch. The film is a two-hander for […]

Film Reviews

The Gospel According to André

Friday, July 13th, 2018 Film Reviews,

Those who watched The September Issue – the 2009 documentary that sparked a wave of fashion movies, will remember André Leon Talley as a larger-than-life presence in Vogue magazine’s inner circle. Loud, camp and flamboyant, Talley is the big black guy who seems to hang around the office doing nothing in particular. If Vogue’s uptight […]

Film Reviews

Mary Shelley

Thursday, July 5th, 2018 Film Reviews,

During her lifetime Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was considered a minor player in the colourful lives of the Romantic poets, but her literary legacy has overshadowed them all. For every contemporary reader who admires the poetry of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, or their friend, Lord Byron, there are millions who have thrilled to the story […]

Film Reviews

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Friday, June 29th, 2018 Film Reviews,

If this were one of those reviews that run in a box at the side of the page it would read: “A relentlessly brutal and stupid film that does no-one any favours.” The chief difference between this sequel and the original Sicario of 2015, comes down to two significant absences. Canadian Director, Denis Villeneuve, has […]

Film Reviews

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Friday, June 22nd, 2018 Film Reviews,

Spanish director, J.A.Bayona has made a horror film about a creepy old house (The Orphanage), a full-on disaster flick (The Impossible), and a monster movie (A Monster Calls). These must have seemed like excellent credentials to a Hollywood studio looking for someone to helm the fifth installment in their ever-popular dinosaur franchise. If only Bayona […]