Emerald Fennell gives us Brideshead Revisited and The Talented Mr. Ripley dragged screaming into a fantastical modern world where desire perverts everything.
Continue readingSaltburn (2023)
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Head Wind (باد دبور) (2008)
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ACMI in Melbourne is running a retrospective of the films of Mohammad Rasoulof, an Iranian director who has made some of my favourite films (Manuscripts Don’t Burn, A Man of Integrity, There is No Evil).
Continue readingDream Scenario (2023)
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Kristoffer Borgli (sick of myself 2022) takes a delightful premise and then drains it of joy and drama.
Continue readingArcadian (2024)
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Okay full disclosure, I have a bias towards Nicolas Cage films. He won me over with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and now I get as much enjoyment out of his films that are badly scripted and acted as I do from the good ones.
Continue readingAll of Us Strangers (2023)
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I still feel suffused with the golden light and intense motion of Andrew Haigh’s masterful exploration of individual and generational grief.
Continue readingThe Way, My Way (2024)
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This isn’t the easiest film to like. A quasi documentary based on the memoir by writer director Bill Bennett about his pilgrimage along ‘the way’ to Santiago de Compostela.
Continue readingA Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
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Sequels come with expectations, perhaps of inevitable disappointment. The two predecessors to this film were solid, tense and imbued with the adorable coupledom of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt who further burrowed into our hearts during Covid with their goofy charm.
Continue readingFuriosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
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Having seen two exemplary films exploring war and the nature of evil just the day before (Civil War and Zone of Interest), I felt unprepared for the kaleidoscopic onslaught of the latest iteration of the Mad Max saga.
Continue readingThe Small Back Room (1949)
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I’m a bit of a fan of a good 1940s film, specially when it is restored and shown up on a big screen. This one was scheduled because there was a Powell and Pressburger documentary at the festival this year and it was a pleasant way to pass the last Sunday morning of MIFF 2024.
Continue readingVulcanizadora (2024)
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It’s quite possible that I should’ve given this film a miss. It started at 11:45 pm and I knew I had a morning film the next day. I kind of got caught up in the rush to get there and enthusiasm to see something a little bit weird late at night, something that I would never have the chance to see elsewhere.
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