This really was a perfectly MIFF film to start the 2025 festival. Pretty, quirky, occasionally obtuse, with long narratively disconnected shots and a bit of magical realism.
Continue readingThe Love That Remains (2025)
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Wicked (2024)
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You know life is tough when you’re in Melbourne for the weekend and you run out of films to see at the Cinema Nova because you’ve already seen them all.
Continue readingParis, Texas (1984)
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I am grieving a little bit for my 24-year-old self. Paris, Texas was the movie for me in the 80s. I was living in London with a lot of time on my hands and not that big a social circle. I discovered arthouse cinemas in Soho and Brixton and would go on my own to see these weird and wonderful films.
Continue readingThe Apprentice (2024)
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I think it says a lot that a film like this can be made about someone who is now the sitting president of the United States of America.
Continue readingPerfect Days (2023)
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A ad for an anniversary screening of Wim Wenders’ Paris Texas played before the session of his latest film Perfect Days. I lived in London for a few years in my early 20s and it’s where I discovered non-mainstream films. I would go to art house cinemas, particularly one in Soho, and watch films on my own. This is where I discovered films like Paris Texas, Diva, Betty Blue, Down by Law, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing and The Kiss of the Spiderwoman. I fell in love with cinema.
Continue readingIron Island (جزیره آهنی)(2005)
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Mohammad Rasoulof keeps his political critique subtle in this early drama set almost completely on a rusting hulk of an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.
Continue readingThe Lesson (2023)
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Director Alice Troughton has a TV pedigree; she directed two of my favourite Doctor Who episodes – The Doctor’s Daughter and the iconic Midnight.
Continue readingSaltburn (2023)
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Emerald Fennell gives us Brideshead Revisited and The Talented Mr. Ripley dragged screaming into a fantastical modern world where desire perverts everything.
Continue readingThe Royal Hotel (2023)
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Director Kitty Green has some worthy documentary subjects under her belt and it’s no surprise that the excellent Hotel Coolgardie (2016) inspired her in this outback noir fictionalisation.
Continue readingHead 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).
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