Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
This is a different kind of New York film.
Isla Bonita (2015)
Every now and again, I find myself drawn to films not for any particular artistic or narrative merit, but simply because I’m for an evocation of a mood and place. With an extended European holiday on the horizon, Isla Bonita certainly scratches the itch of idle European tranquillity, set pretty well entirely on the –…
Double Feature: Listen Up Philip (2014) and Queen of Earth (2015)
So it turns out I’m not much of an Alex Ross Perry fan. I watched Listen Up Philip, Perry’s third feature, with high expectations. I’d heard positive things about this intelligent indie film, and its cast – Elisabeth Moss, Krysten Ritter, Jonathan Pryce and Jason Schwartzman as the titular Philip, a self-obsessed semi-successful New York…
Defending Jurassic World or: Do Critics Need To Justify Liking Bad Movies?
Everyone seems to love Jurassic World. It’s earned a respectable seventy-so percent on Rotten Tomatoes, that famously flawless barometer of taste, and pretty much everyone I’ve chatted to about the film thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Everyone seems to love the film; everyone except precisely every film critic I’ve spoken to about it. My conversations –…
Sydney Film Festival: Love is Strange (2014)
Love is Strange resembles a gay version of Tokyo Story filtered through Woody Allen’s wry, New Yorker worldview except, unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as great as that sounds. After thirty nine years together, George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow) take the opportunity to legally recognise their relationship in matrimony. Legal acceptance doesn’t necessarily translate…
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* asks a lot of questions. Questions like “Do Aphrodisiacs Work?” and “What Happens During Ejaculation?” and “What is Sodomy?” If you’re looking for answers – or a coherent feature length film – you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking to watch Woody Allen’s series of sketches loosely parodying…
Bananas (1971)
Woody Allen’s third feature film, Bananas, finds the famously neurotic comedian playing Fielding Mellish, a hapless product tester who ends up becoming the president of a small Latin American nation … all because he wanted to impress his radical girlfriend. How exactly did he get to that position? Well – who cares? It’s hardly the…
Manhattan (1979)
Woody Allen’s Manhattan is a dark mirror image of his Oscar-winning triumph Annie Hall. Both are romantic comedies set in New York and both feature Allen and Diane Keaton delivering hyper-literate and observational one-liners. Manhattan is filmed in black-and-white (unlike Annie Hall) and it suits the disparity between the two; Annie Hall is colourful, idiosyncratic…
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