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In her films, Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women, Meek’s Cutoff, Wendy and Lucy) immerses you in the life of a handful of people over a day or two. In Certain Women, it was four women in rural America, in Meek’s Cutoff it was settler women in the 1840s Oregon desert. In Old Joy we follow old friends Kurt (Will Oldham) and Mark (Daniel London) as they reunite for an overnight camping trip in search of some hot springs. Continue reading
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It is Poland in 1945 and, at an isolated convent, a novice escapes and treks across country in the snow to find a doctor. A Red Cross nurse, Mathilde (Lou de Laâge), follows reluctantly and finds a nun in labour. As she stays and then returns to help, she discovers that the sisters hold a secret that has left none of them unscathed and will, in turn, profoundly affect Mathilde. Continue reading
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Who makes the best action hero, Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) or Alice (Mila Jovovich) in Resident Evil (2002)? Made a year apart and both based on female protagonists in popular video games, this week we watched both for some vicarious bad-ass women thrills. Continue reading
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Tara, Kat, Abigail, Ben, Christian, Ollie – if you’ve got children who love dance, you will know the Australian series Dance Academy. Four years after the end of the third and last season, the imaginatively titled Dance Academy: The Movie revisits our favourite student dancers as they try to make their way in the professional world.
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I wasn’t expecting much from this live action musical remake of the 1991 animation and, at 2.5 hours long, I was thinking I might get a bit of shut eye. Surprisingly I stayed awake for the whole thing and I didn’t hate it. Continue reading
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I wasn’t expecting this documentary about the Melbourne suburban and Victorian rural sect The Family and leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne to pack such an emotional wallop. It begins as a blow-by-blow retelling of the investigation into the cult in the 80s and takes a while to build a coherent story but ends as a devastating insight into the repercussions for the children involved and the inability of investigators to breach the protective wall of privilege around the cult to obtain justice. Continue reading
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Some films have great potential; an unexpected premise, a storyline that raises challenging questions and a direction that could take you down one or more interesting paths. The Family Fang, the second feature film directed by actor Jason Bateman, is such a film. Camille and Caleb Fang are avant-garde performance artists who only hesitate momentarily when they become parents, quickly incorporating their children Annie and Baxter into their performances. Their aim is to upset the status quo and watch as innocent participants become drawn into their elaborately orchestrated social mischief. Continue reading
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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
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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
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I recommend seeing a film you know nothing about on a Sunday morning. I was the only person in one of Nova’s subterranean cinemas for this black and white Colombian journey into the Amazon and a history of cultural decimation. There are two overlapping stories, both of white scientists on a search for a rare healing plant, guided through the jungle by loner Karamakate and separated by 30 years. Continue reading
