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Tag: drama

Film Reviews

Io Capitano

Friday, March 22nd, 2024 Film Reviews,

Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano is the kind of film everyone should see before making hasty statements about borders and refugees. The film begins in Dakar, Senegal, following two teenage boys who set out for a new life in Europe. Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and his cousin, Moussa (Moustapha Fall), are not victims of war or natural […]

Film Reviews

American Fiction

Friday, March 15th, 2024 Film Reviews,

It’s difficult to satirise the United States today, as reality keeps going places fiction fears to tread. Wind back the clock ten years, and nobody could have predicted the proto-fascist excesses of the Trump era, in which every form of bigotry now seems to be a vote-winner. Hardly less alarming is the collapse of so-called […]

Film Reviews

Academy Awards 2024

Saturday, March 9th, 2024 Film Reviews,

Over the past couple of years, I’ve found myself wildly out of step when it comes to picking winners at the annual Academy Awards. Naturally I’m convinced it’s the world, not me, that keeps getting it wrong. My mistake has been to try and nominate the best film, when it would have been smarter to […]

Film Reviews

Subtraction

Friday, March 1st, 2024 Film Reviews,

When I have to choose between two new releases the crucial consideration is often which movie has the best chance of reaching a wide audience. I thought initially that Ethan Coen’s Drive Away Dolls would be a bigger crowd pleaser than Mani Haghighi’s Subtraction, but after watching both features, I’m not so sure. At their […]

Film Reviews

Fallen Leaves

Friday, February 16th, 2024 Film Reviews,

You’ll have to wait until the credits roll to hear Fallen Leaves sung in Finnish, but like all Aki Kaurismäki films, there’s no shortage of music along the way. This bittersweet story about two ordinary people who find each other, in the most hesitant fashion, is one of Kaurismäki’s typical working-class fables. If you’re already […]

Film Reviews

Force of Nature: The Dry 2

Friday, February 9th, 2024 Film Reviews,

 “Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight!” wrote Shelley, in a remarkable premonition of the Australian film industry. “Wherefore hast thou left me now, Many a day and night?” Australian cinema has reached such an impasse that I go along to each new feature hoping for something worthy and tradesmanlike. Occasionally there appears a film […]

Film Reviews

May December

Saturday, February 3rd, 2024 Film Reviews,

In May December, Todd Haynes suggests there may be worse things than being a convicted sex offender. One could, for instance, be a TV actor prepping for a starring role in a movie. The film derives its inspiration from the story of American teacher, Mary Katherine Schmitz, who in 1997, at the age of 34, […]

Film Reviews

Anatomy of a Fall & The Color Purple

Friday, January 26th, 2024 Film Reviews,

 “My job is to cover the tracks, so fiction can destroy reality,” says novelist, Sandra Voyter, not directly, but in a quote attributed to her by the presenter of a TV literary program. The context is significant, because Sandra, played by German actress, Sandra Hüller, is on trial for the murder of her husband, Samuel […]

Film Reviews

The Iron Claw & Priscilla

Friday, January 19th, 2024 Film Reviews,

If ever a film proves it’s possible to make a powerful story out of anything, it’s The Iron Claw. Those who spent their childhood watching World Championship Wrestling on TV may have distant memories of large, flabby men in tights roaring threats, jumping off turnbuckles, and thumping each other in a peculiarly unconvincing manner. The […]

Film Reviews

The Boys in the Boat & The Holdovers

Friday, January 12th, 2024 Film Reviews,

In those heady days when John Wayne was dispatching hostile injuns by the dozen, no-one could have envisaged Hollywood making clean-cut white Americans into the bad guys. It would have taken a clairvoyant to predict the tide of identity politics that has swept over the United States in recent times, engendering a new generation of […]