One of the biggest surprises of this year’s Oscars’ nominations was Room, which picked up largely-unexpected nods for Best Picture and Best Director. Even Lenny Abrahamson, Room’s director, was surprised by his inclusion on the list (at the expense of Ridley Scott, if the pundits are to be believed). Abrahamson – who broke through with…
Argentinian film The Secret in Their Eyes has been idling sloshing around my watchlist for a couple years now, buoyed by strong word of mouth and an Oscar win for Best Foreign Language Film. But I decided to hold off after hearing of the impending American remake starring the likes of Julia Roberts, Chiwetel Ejiofor…
The opening scene of the Oscar-nominated Argentinian anthology film Wild Tales – in which a pilot deliberately crashes a plane occupied with all those who wronged him – plays decidedly uncomfortably in the wake of the Germanwings plane crash. But while that scene might make audiences uncomfortably shift in their seats, that sort of discomfort…
There’s a lot to like about In Bloom, Georgia’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film in last year’s Academy Awards. The storyline pairs the small-scale coming of age story of two girls, Eka (Lika Babluani) and Natia (Mariam Bokeria), with a nuanced interrogation of power in the midst of Georgia’s 1992 civil war. Directors Nana…
Finding Fela!, a documentary from Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) about legendary Nigerian singer/political dissident Fela Kuti, follows the model popularised by the Oscar-winning Searching for Sugar Man. That model, found in the likes of Finding Vivien Maier, The Last Impresario, A Band Called Death – tends to…
The Martin Luther King Jr biopic Selma is primarily composed of individuals undergoing impassioned debates. We watch King (David Oyelowo) and Lyndon B Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) verbally spar over voting rights; with segregation outlawed in 1960s America, African-Americans find their legal right to vote denied, and divided camps of activists argue about the best way…
Stephen Hawking is the perfect movie subject. He’s a world-famous physicist. He’s charming and funny. And he defied the odds to turn his motor neurone disease diagnosis – and the accompanying average life expectancy of two years – into fifty years of success. That probably explains why The Theory of Everything is, by my count,…
One of the unfortunate consequences of Australia’s long-delayed exposure to Oscar contenders is that the critical narrative around these films has coalesced long before they screen here. So it is with Still Alice, which the majority of critics have described as some variation of overly sentimental Alzheimer’s weepy that will win Julianne Moore the Oscar.…
In a couple weeks, Queensland heads to the polls to elect their State Government for the next few years. In the interests of preserving my mental health, I’ve avoided following the campaign too carefully. But as far as I can ascertain, it boils down to a choice between two decidedly unpalatable potential premiers: Campbell Newman,…
The title of The Imitation Game refers to Alan Turing’s method of determining whether a machine is capable of demonstrating human intelligence – more commonly referred to as “the Turing test.” Turing’s achievements go far beyond a simple artificial intelligence experiment, and those achievements are chronicled in this biopic from Norwegian director Mortem Tyldum. The…
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