Category Archives: Reviews

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

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It takes a while for this slow and quiet study of a man to hit its stride and to show its colours. We meet Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) as he goes about his job as a Boston janitor, at the beck and call of people in four apartment buildings. Lee seems shy and awkward but a few scenes show us it is perhaps a simmering anger that keeps him quiet. Interspersed with the monotony of his life, we see scenes of him on a boat with his brother and nephew and it is only gradually that we become aware these are flashbacks. A phone call brings him home to Manchester. His brother has died, leaving him the responsibility of his 16-year-old nephew Patrick. Continue reading →

Moonlight (2016)

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Image via moviescounter.com

After the delightful furore at the Oscars that saw La La Land‘s seemingly all white (and mostly male) entourage plough through their speeches for Best Picture only to be spectacularly replaced by Moonlight‘s nearly all black (and mostly male) contingent, it was with great interest that I sat down to watch this film. With Mahershala Ali being feted as the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar and Moonlight as the first LGBT movie to win Best Picture, I was expecting a film that would challenge white, conservative, heteronormative ideas. While Moonlight is a decent and worthy movie (if only for its all black cast), it was rather coy in its tackling of LGBT issues and Ali’s nomination, for what is a fairly small part compared to the substantial performances of the much lesser known Trevante Rhodes (Black) and Ashton Sanders (Chiron), says something, I think, about the benign paternalism of the Oscars.  Continue reading →

Arrival (2016)

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Image via motherboard.vice.com

I loved this film (thanks for the recommendation Kari). Sci-fi is not my favourite genre but this was directed by French-Canadian Dennis Villeneuve, who also made the superlative Incendies, so it is not your average US film. Stunningly beautiful, atmospheric, complex and emotional, it won’t be for everyone but I was clutched tight in its grasp and now, hours and days later, it still hasn’t let go. Continue reading →

Lion (2016)

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This is an unexpectedly beautiful and thought-provoking film based on the true story of five-year-old Indian boy, Saroo, who becomes separated from his family. He is lost amongst the millions, one of 80,000 Indian children who go missing every year, and it is a 25 year journey before he has the chance to reconnect with his home. Continue reading →

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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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 →