Time Out of Mind (2014)

Set amongst the iconic streets of New York, low-budget independent film, Time Out of Mind is a two hour social commentary on the life of a homeless man. It centres on George Hammond (Richard Gere), whose name we don’t learn until over halfway through the film. No ID, no home, no immediate contacts; George is truly…

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

I enjoyed this flick—but then again, I’m an X-Men disciple who worships at the altar of film series progenitor, Bryan Singer. Ordinary film-goers who don’t know their Wolverines from their Cyclopses may be inclined to mutter ‘X-Meh’ when leaving the theatre. And understandably so as, on this occasion, Singer fails to find cohesion with a…

Hashtag Activism and Bastille Day’s Unrelenting Cynicism

Action flick Bastille Day opens with a naked Frenchwoman (Stéphane Caillard) strolling through Paris. We soon learn that her nudity is intended to serve as a particularly dramatic distraction, allowing pickpocket Michael Mason (Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden) to pilfer a few wallets and passports at the orders of a local fence (Eriq Ebouaney). With…

Truman (2015)

Truman’s tone is set from its opening scene. Telling the tale of a long-term friendship between two men, Julián (Ricardo Darín) and Tomás (Javier Cámara), tested by the former’s terminal illness, it begins by chronicling the banal vagaries of Tomás’ lengthy transit from his home in Canada to Madrid, Spain. The weariness of Tomás’s journey…

Bad Neighbours 2

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to a cinema and done nothing but laugh for 90 minutes. Was this because laughter surround me from beginning to end? Or was it that Bad Neighbours 2 was simply a well-written comedy? You can judge for yourself but in my opinion the sequel surpassed the original in many…

Eye in the Sky (2015)

Are you in the mood for cutting edge military surveillance, white-knuckle tension and political intrigue? Then welcome to the best war film since 2009’s Hurt Locker. The plot interconnects disparate players, including politicians, generals and drone pilots in a mission to eliminate a terrorist cell in Kenya.  With an insightful look into modern military tactics,…

The Ground We Won (2015)

I’m a city boy at heart, but I’ve spent much of my formative years in country towns big and small. In Ararat – a Victorian town best known for being ‘the fattest town in Australia’ – I had friends and family on farms down the road. Toowoomba, where I spent my late school years, was…

Marguerite (2015)

Marguerite seems like an odd choice to make the move from the Alliance Français French Film Festival to a general Australian release. Granted, it did well at the Cesars, but its pedigree is paired with a lacklustre, sluggish heap of a movie, ambling through half-assed farce and undercooked politics while finding little of merit beyond…

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

You’d expect Marvel to be running out of steam by now, but this latest offering confounds expectations. Captain America: Civil War brandishes the series’ signature eye-popping visual spectacle in a package that skimps on neither heart nor wit. This is the best MCU film since the original Iron-Man. The screenwriters have managed to succeed in two key areas…

A Month of Sundays (2016)

A boy’s best friend is his mother. Not exempt is 50-something real estate flunkey, Frank Mollard (Anthony LaPaglia), who struggles to come to terms with the death of his biological mum. But fate intervenes in the shape of ‘surrogate mother’, Sarah (Julia Blake) who offers him friendship and closure. Sundays proves a decent contemplation of…