Category Archives: Film Reviews

August 26

Magic in the Moonlight – Woody Allen slowly losing his magic. (Film Review)

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Woody Allen’s films are hit and miss, with his hits being little gems and his misses being endured for the sake of the hits. Sometimes he can make a truly brilliant heavy-weight film (Husbands and Wives) but then he can also make something superb out of light-weight fluff (Midnight in Paris). Sometimes his gems are […]

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August 25

The Essential Film reviews. Current reviews posted elsewhere.

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  I’ve covered some of the current films showing over at The Essential, so I thought I’d give all my lovely readers a heads up. Palo Alto A film I greatly enjoyed, even if it seemed as though Sophia Copola played it a little too safe: “Events shaping us are as meaningless as those we […]

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August 25

Locke – Steven Knight and the midnight flight. (Film Review)

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  It’s not quite the museum piece Steven Knight might have been hoping for, but Locke certainly is a remarkable one-man-show of a film that is smart and classy enough to be a game changer for Knight as a director and for Tom Hardy as a remarkably skillful leading man. One of those films that […]

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August 24

Boyhood – Richard Linklater over 12 years. (Sydney Film Festival 2014 Review)

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Boyhood is showing at The Sydney Film Festival 2014 – you can purchase tickets here.   The biggest miracle, and there are many to be had, in Richard Linklater’s epic twelve years in the making two and a half hour long bildungsroman Boyhood, is the understated execution of the project released with minimalism and a […]

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August 19

Bessons Women who Kick Ass – The very brilliant Lucy (Film Review)

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There is a poignant moment in Lucy, when having a brain that has ‘evolved’ way beyond the minds of those around her, Lucy (Scarlett Johanson) turns to Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked) the macho cop in the film, after he says to her “You don’t need me.” She kisses him in an agressive way and […]

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August 18

Begin Again – John Carney with more lost indie music souls. (Film Review)

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It’s an exciting experience when a film that looks predictable, that you expect to follow a certain set of rules, suddenly breaks out of its own self-imposed jail with a surprise that warms the heart so well, the rest of the film is made good. I am talking about one particular scene in Begin Again, […]

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July 29

Bessons Women Who Kick Ass – The Fifth Element (Film Review)

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So, on the heels of films as interesting and promising as La Femme Nikita, The Big Blue, Leon the Professional and Subway, Luc Besson comes up with what can only be described as a vanity project spawned from the days when it is easier to believe one is a genius (the early teen years) and […]

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July 27

Bessons women who kick ass – Leon The professional (Film Review)

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It is typical of a ill-informed critic audience to miss the primary point of Luc Besson’s breakout bildungsroman that centres around a female protagonist coming of age story, but Leon: The Professional is so exceptionally well cast that fortunately the cast never miss Bessons point – either that or Besson has a talent for choosing an […]

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July 26

Kvinden i buret (The Keeper of Lost Causes) – Dark Danish thrills. (Film review)

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The Scandie psych-thriller invasion of the new millenium continues with Kvinden i buret (The Keeper of Lost Causes), adapted this time from high-profile Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen ‘s novel of the same name first published in 2007 and then in 2011 in English. The film adaptation sees director Mikkel Norgaard with his second feature after the […]

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July 21

Snowpiercer – WTF? (Film Review)

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It has taken me more than a month to write my Snowpiercer review. It’s one of those moments where I can’t tell if it’s the film or me. It unapologetically taps into a cult film aesthetic, but it works so damn hard to tap into a cult film aesthetic, that it calls forth an internal […]

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