Please note: Belle opens in Australia this Thursday 8th of May, and this review contains a perspective that could constitute a spoiler. At the heart of Amma Assante’s Belle is a great story, no doubt about it, but it suffers in credibility by trying to have a bet both ways – a problem, it seemed, […]
Category Archives: Film Reviews
April
30
52 Tuesdays – Sophie Hyde and a fresh take on coming of age. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
The very criterion by which we judge a person to be a gendered being, a criterion that posits coherent gender as a presupposition of humanness, is not only one which, justly or unjustly, governs the recognizability of the human, but one that informs the ways we do or do not recognize ourselves at the level […]
April
29
20 years ago today – When a Man Loves a Woman. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
There have been several top-notch films about alcoholism and there have been hundreds of terrible ones. When A Man Loves A Woman is one of the better ones, underrated even all these years later as it is being more appreciated for its depiction of the complications of sobriety after a person leaves rehab. We know […]
April
28
Soft In the Head – Nathan Silver and the Idiot. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
Following on from the superb Exit Elena, comes Nathan Silvers ode to Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, Soft in the Head, and true to the multiple narrative chaotic blur Silver creates symbols from The Idiot – such as Prince Myshkin – slivered and distributed, so that one character carries the naive beauty of goodness, while another […]
April
28
Exit Elena – Nathan Silver and the perpetual anxiety. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
“The only way anything gets done is if I do it. Like with the cat. We needed a cat, so I brought home a cat. We needed a nurse… and now there’s Elena.” Cindy from Exit Elena. Does it take an outsider to reveal how nutty our families really are? Characteristic of his passion […]
April
27
The Invisible Woman – Ralph Fiennes breathes fresh life into period drama. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
It’s about time period pieces examined political perspective and its impact on sexuality with more depth. The Invisible Woman is a film that shows the impact of political constraints on relationship with a measured perfection that underlies the subtlety of its subject matter, but it moves deep enough so that these constraints enter the mind and […]
April
27
The Other Woman – Critical analysis out of step with contemporary thinking. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
I wasn’t going to review this film, or watch it, but this weekend it outsold Captain America against all expectations in the States, and I felt the financial gesture of the female public was too strong for a (sometimes) feminist perspective film reviewer to skip, particularly given Cate Blanchette’s appeal for a round earth perspective on […]
April
25
Any Day Now – Sequins, schmaltz and film making brilliance. (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
Rule of law is one of the statutes that elevates the human animal above all creatures of lower consciousness. At the same time, it has the peculiar character of reducing the quality of freedom in the individual, its manifestation becomes the formulation that seeks to subvert the individual crises of morality, but instead transfer that […]
April
25
Transcendence – Antiquated technology meets Antiquated theology. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
The Hollywood black List is old enough (nine years – this is not to be confused with the McCarthy era blacklist) that it is gaining traction in the mainstream these days, and if you pop over here, you can even submit a script to it. For the three of you who don’t know, it all […]
April
09
Black Swan – Darren Aronofsky and philosophy porn or how jouissance gives and takes life. (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
An unadulterated philo-fest, for the lay film philosopher, there is no doubt that Black Swan is one of the best things to hit the cinema in years. So many philosophical points of view are immaculately represented, culminating in the directors enormous courage in the bent-leg scene, a shocking moment similar to the break in […]
Lisa Thatcher 