Today we watched one of my favourite romantic comedies just because it was Valentine’s Day. It’s not up there with Love Actually but it has a similar sensibility, it shows us that love has many forms and doesn’t always work out as we planned, it just does it in a slightly cheesy Hollywood style. It still makes me feel good though when I watch it. Continue reading
Category Archives: Bechdel pass
The Danish Girl (2015)
StandardOh goodness me. Another film inspired by a true story. This one couldn’t be more different from The Revenant in style and sensibility, although I reckon it might also be playing to the Academy Award crowd. Eddie Redmayne plays Einar Wegener, a Danish artist in the 1920s who was the first publicly-known person to undergo gender reassignment when he became Lili Elbe. The Danish Girl focuses on him/her and Gerda, Einar’s wife and fellow artist. The story is…nice, palatable, inoffensive. Transgender packaged up neatly for a heterosexual world. Continue reading
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Standard“Let me pitch you this idea. We’ll take a movie that was made 20, 30, 40 years ago and we’ll remake it, using pretty much the same story, but with a modern twist. We’ll make the token female role much tougher, although, don’t worry, she’ll still need saving by a guy lots of times. And we’ll bring back some of the original actors so the old fans feel included and we’ll make a joke of the fact that they’re really old. We’ll show everyone how much better CGI is nowadays and we’ll make the story line much more complicated with lots of ‘science’ to explain all the things that don’t make sense. And we’ll fill it with white guys.” Terminator Genisys or Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Continue reading
Love Actually (2003)
StandardLove Actually has become our Christmas Eve tradition. It used to be just the adults watching it while we wrapped presents and ate mince pies but this year it was the whole family (although the youngest looked away during all of the kissing bits, and there were quite a few of these). This is not a standard romantic comedy though, which stands or falls by the credibility of the main couple and their narrative, this is an ensemble piece that shows us love in its many guises. Continue reading
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
StandardHow have I managed to get through 50 years without seeing this classic Christmas film? I don’t know. The Deniliquin Film Society screened it this month and so, with mince pies clutched in our hands, my whole family and several friends reclined on the sofas at the front of the venue and submitted to a good dose of Frank Capra wit and sentimentality. It’s a cracker of a film and much less saccharine than I was expecting. Continue reading
Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)
StandardI will admit right from the start that I think the recent fashion of splitting the final book of a series into two films is a good thing. Harry Potter was my first experience of the final-book-into-2-films trend. The cynical part of me knows that the purpose is to maximise revenue – from film-goers, through merch and DVD sales and ‘tie-ins’ – but I don’t really care as finally you can see a book brought to life mostly intact. And when it’s a great book, or at least a really good one, there is much jubilation and filmic enjoyment. So yes to The Deathly Hallows and Mockingjay, a ‘meh’ to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn and an ‘oh my goodness what on earth were they thinking’ to The Hobbit. In fact that’s a great example of where it can all go wrong. If you have to pad a book out with misappropriated and invented characters then maybe you’ve gone too far. Continue reading
The Lobster (2015)
StandardI’m going to write a lot about this film because I loved it. This is the one film I most wanted to see at MIFF but it sold out within the first few days and I missed out. I had high hopes for it as I loved Dogtooth, the previous film from this director, Yorgos Lanthimos. His films are not for everyone. They can be black and bleak and devastating but they are incisive and profoundly moving satires about our self-imposed limitations and fears. Continue reading
Shortbus (2006)
StandardIf you like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, you’re probably going to like this film. If you don’t know what Hedwig and the Angry Inch is, go and watch it as soon as you can. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it is delightfully irreverent and full of pathos and catchy tunes. Shortbus shares the same director, John Cameron Mitchell who also stars in Hedwig but takes a back seat, so to speak, in this one. Other than the credentials of Mitchell, all I knew about Shortbus was that it contained unsimulated sex! Yowza! That was a reason to watch it when the kids were safely in bed. Continue reading
Winter’s Bone (2010)
StandardThis film has been on my list to watch for quite a while. The reviews were good and the Oscar-nominated lead role by a young Jennifer Lawrence had me intrigued. It is a bleached and gritty movie about the harsh realities of poverty and there is a realness to it that pulls you right into the world of Ree, a 17 year old eking out an existence in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri. You could perhaps dub this one ‘The Real Hunger Games’. Continue reading
Tracks (2013)
StandardI wasn’t the only woman who, as the lights went up after our Film Society screening of this Australian film, said, “I want to do something like that!” There is much to be said about this beautiful and lyrical film but the real heart of it, at least for me, was a woman doggedly following a dream, despite the discomfort and disapprobation of all those around her. Continue reading
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