Opening your tragic love story with a re-enactment of Romeo and Juliet is a bold move, but it’s the kind of decision that neatly encapsulates the strengths – and weaknesses – of Holding the Man, Neil Armfield and Tommy Murphy’s film adaptation of Timothy Conigrave’s memoir. This is a film that unashamedly tilts for the…
She’s Funny That Way, the new comedy from famed New York director Peter Bogdanovich, is achingly inauthentic from start to finish. In part, that’s a reflection of its inception as a refurbished script from last millennium dusted off for a contemporary setting. This explains why, in 2015, a part-time call girl (Imogen Poots) still takes…
The Gift opens on ominous shots of an abandoned, modernist mansion, grey stone and brown wood gleaming dully in the afternoon L.A. sun. Soon, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall), a professional couple from Chicago, will be escorted through the hollow house by a real estate agent. But for now it lies dormant, the…
Catching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on the tail-end of a Mission: Impossible marathon brings into focus how different Guy Ritchie’s latest feels from both the average spy thriller and today’s typical blockbuster. This isn’t to say there’s anything especially innovative going on here – outside of the ‘60s setting, it’s a pretty standard spy story…
This week marks the 40th anniversary of Peter Weir’s seminal Australian New Wave film Picnic at Hanging Rock. As part of my series of “cheat sheets” on films taught in secondary schools, unpacking their themes and detailing related texts, I examined the film for SBS Movies. Check it out via the link below! Read Picnic at Hanging Rock: Cheat…
The Loudness Wars are over. One of the last over the trenches were L.A. band HEALTH, though their contributions to the victorious effort – measured in the maximalism of modern pop music – were overshadowed by the final wave of reinforcements. In the wake of the searing synths of their compatriots Crystal Castles, the drum-machine…
What is the purpose of an international film festival? This is a tricky question, with many answers. It’s a question I’m not particularly qualified to answer, either, but as I see it, the primary responsibility of a film festival is to provide an opportunity for cinephiles to see films that they otherwise might not –…
Let me get this out of the way first: Trainwreck is a very good film. That needs to be said upfront, because this one of those reviews where I’m going to spend more time talking about what didn’t work rather than what did, and that imbalance might suggest that I didn’t enjoy the film. But…
You’d need a heart of stone to grow up in the ‘90s and come out without some environmentalist tendencies. You’d go to the movies and watch as cute rainforest animals had their home imperilled by oncoming bulldozers (in Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest) or cringe at the cruelty inflicted upon an innocent orca (in Free…
The opening minutes of Paper Towns, the latest instalment in the John Green Cinematic Universe, aren’t especially promising. Our middle-class white teenage protagonist explains, in faux-profound seriousness, that “everyone gets a miracle.” Maybe you win the lottery, maybe you “marry the Queen of England.” Said middle-class white teenager, Quentin (Nat Wolff), has already found his…
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