Monthly Archives: December 2016

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

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How is it that you can have a film that centres around a woman and fill it brimful with a story about men? There’s something about this film that makes me deeply uneasy. It begins with audacious slow-motion imagery of naked, gyrating, overweight women over the opening credits and I was hoping that there would be a point to it. If there was one, other than to build a case for the shallowness of Susan (Amy Adams) right from the start, it was lost on me. Continue reading →

The Impossible (2012)

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Image via athenacinema.com

This is the film about the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, centred around a couple in Thailand, played by Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, and their three sons. It starts off well, with a dramatic and effective recreation of the tsunami that puts you right in the centre of the action; feeling what it might be like to struggle for survival and what choices you would make about saving others. From there it descends into a mawkish melodrama that is heavy on violins and implausible dramatic twists. Continue reading →

Lantouri (2016)

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Lex talionis; this is a judicial term I will not quickly forget. In the Iranian justice system it is the right of a victim to retaliation, to demand that the punishment inflicted correspond in degree and kind to the offence. This was touched on in Sound and Fury, where a victim’s family had the power to forgive or to ask for the death penalty. In Lantouri, retribution and forgiveness are at the core of the story and we get to see it from many viewpoints. Continue reading →

The Light Between Oceans (2016)

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Or how to take a good Australian book and turn it into a mediocre film. Ingredient #1: Squash all the major plot points into 2 hours. It might be a bit rushed but the scenery will be really great so no one will mind. Ingredient #2: Employ some famous US and European actors to play Australians and, just in case no one realises its provenance, get Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson and Garry MacDonald to play small parts and get the leads to dance to Waltzing Matilda. Continue reading →

Fukushima, Mon Amour (Grüße aus Fukushima) (2016)

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Screening as part of the German Film Festival (that finishes this week in Melbourne), Doris Dörrie writes and directs this homage to the Alain Resnais film Hiroshima Mon Amour and a love letter to the people of Fukushima. Shot in black and white, this begins as a slight tale of a German girl, Marie (Rosalie Thomass), trying to escape her memories amongst those cast adrift in the wastelands of Fukushima, two years after the earthquake and nuclear disaster. Continue reading →