A low-budget family affair with a crew made up of director Alexandre Rockwell’s film students, Sweet Thing feels like a home movie as seen through the eyes of children.
Continue readingSweet Thing (2020)
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Coded Bias (2020)
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At first, this look at the inherent bias of algorithms in our daily lives made me uneasy and tempted to ditch all my technology. I stuck with it, though it nearly had me nodding off with its ambling pace, and was rewarded with some third act gems,
Continue readingShe Dies Tomorrow (2020)
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Flashing coloured lights, an ominous score and an intense and tear-stained performance by a small ensemble cast make Amy Seimetz’s second feature a frustrating and memorable experience. Its seemingly prescient exploration of a pandemic of belief has many nuances that reflect current social crises.
Continue readingDingo (1991)
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Notable for being the most significant acting performance by Miles Davis, Rolf de Heer’s feel-good, boy-has-a-dream drama seems like a film from another era.
Continue readingThe Go-Go’s (2020)
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I wanted to like this documentary about “the first all-female band who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to reach number one in the Billboard album charts.” This fact in itself is worthy of celebration. That this feat occurred in 1982 and hasn’t been repeated is appalling and I was hoping that this documentary by Alison Elwood might shine a light on “why The Go-Go’s?”
Continue readingLong Day’s Journey Into Night (地球最后的夜晚) (2018)
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Image via miff.com.au
Ten minutes into this sophomore feature by Kaili Blues (2015) director Gan Bi, I remembered how much I struggled to engage with his first film. Continue reading
Daffodils (2019)
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Image via miff.com.au
I was primed for this New Zealand musical as a line of Maori singers serenaded the queue as we waited and they walked into the cinema. I was a tad disappointed when I realised they were there for For My Father’s Kingdom in Kino 1 and Daffodils was going to be a bit more pakeha. Continue reading
The Juniper Tree (1990)
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A black and white oddity, this restored copy of the 1990 film by American Nietzchka Keene is known primarily as singer Björk’s first feature film. Continue reading
Young Ahmed (2019)
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The Dardenne brothers are respected auteurs for their social realist dramas but it feels like they weren’t the right ones to tackle this story of young idealism turned into fundamentalism. Continue reading
Funan (2018)
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The Killing Fields (1984) was an influential movie for me. I was 19 when it came out and it was my first experience of the atrocities of Pol Pot in Cambodia and the eradication of 2 million people. Funan covers the same story, focusing on one family who are forced to flee Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge (or Angkar). Continue reading
