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A credible source told me that director Hong Sang-soo doesn’t mind if you nap in his films. Hotel by the River’s quiet contemplation lulled me into a few lengthy blinks so I missed a little of its wry, slow narrative. Continue reading
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The film that should have won the best picture Oscar, Alfonso Cuarón’s sublime meditation on the life of an indigenous maid in 1970s Mexico city is filmmaking at its best. Continue reading
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Sari Braithwaite’s hour long introspective documentary built from clips cut out of films by the Australian Censor Board goes some way to exploring the notion of censorship. Continue reading
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Revisiting this gorgeous example of an era in Hollywood when women’s films gave women agency, though with limitations, was an indulgent treat. It is one of my favourite films of the time and beautifully captures how women can be contained and yet will always seek to subvert their boundaries. Continue reading
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The chance to see Marlena Dietrich, in a tuxedo, kiss a woman was enough to get me to Morocco. I love punctuating my MIFF experience with the nostalgia of a classic and any of the 30s black-and-white dramas and melodramas are like entering a different universe. Continue reading
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Pawel Pawlikowski has crafted a bleak and beautiful tribute to the joys and violence of love and ideology. Continue reading
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This unusually constructed documentary is an illustrated recitation of the words of James Baldwin, American writer and social critic. It begins with a letter to his agent about an idea to write the stories of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, all men who are outspoken about civil rights and all assassinated in the 60s. Continue reading
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This clever and stylish black-and-white satire from Sally Potter plays out like a drawing-room comedy with on point performances from the cream of British actors. Continue reading
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Some films seep into your bones and only slowly fade away. I wasn’t expecting this François Ozon film to have such poignancy. On the surface it seems conventional, not withstanding its artful and at first unnoticed shifts from black-and-white to colour. In a German village in 1919, families are freshly wounded from the recent war and anti-French emotions run high. Bereaved Anna (Paula Beer), whose fiance Frantz died on the front line, regularly visits his grave. One day she finds fresh flowers there and discovers that a French man, Adrien (Pierre Niney), is also marking his grief at the grave. Continue reading
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“What will you give me for a basket of kisses? A basket of kisses? Why I’ll give you a basket of hugs.” A discussion with two good friends lead to an afternoon where each brought along their favourite ‘bad movie’. Bad movies are the ones you love to watch, even though you know they fail to meet many standards of cinematic quality. I had never heard of the 1956 The Bad Seed; it is based on a successful Broadway play and from where Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds took its name. What a melodramatic gem it is; predating Hitchcock’s Psycho in its Freudian exploration of horror that comes from within a family. Continue reading
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