Tag Archives: 1.5 stars

The Light Between Oceans (2016)

Standard

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 →

Virtual Reality: VR Noir A Day Before the Night

Standard

VR-NOIR-A-DAY-BEFORE-THE-NIGHT-1Okay, maybe not all VR is brilliant. This overly complicated and clunky 20-minute ‘pilot episode’ of a private eye noir-esque story left me unsatisfied. Our group was worded up beforehand that there would be clues to observe, a puzzle to solve and moments where we must make a choice between two elements of the story. I was a bit worried that I would miss things and maybe I did because it didn’t really make much sense to me. Continue reading →

Julieta (2016)

Standard

JULIETA-2Oh Pedro, what has happened to the drama in your melodrama? This latest from Pedro Almodóvar is a dynamically flat story of Julieta, a woman whose daughter, Antía, has become estranged from her. Through flashback, we see Julieta meeting and falling in love with Xoan, a fisherman. We see their daughter growing up, the artist friend who is Xoan’s occasional lover, their disapproving housekeeper and Julieta’s father and ill mother. And we see the trauma that sets in train Antía’s rejection of her past. Continue reading →

Under Electric Clouds (Pod elektricheskimi oblakami) (2015)

Standard

When you miss the start of a film, you can’t help feeling you’ve missed some important aspect of the plot that would have made it comprehensible. That’s how I felt with this Russian film. The first twenty minutes consisted mainly of a guy wandering through a blighted ice-covered landscape carrying a radio. Enigmatic, beautiful in lots of ways, tragic. Then it cut to another chapter and another and it became clear that there was nothing really finished or linear about this film. There were a brother and sister grappling with change after their father’s death, a man who kept returning to his childhood in his dreams and disaffected, drug-affected youths searching for a 12 year old taken hostage. Maybe there were more, that’s when I left. Continue reading →