Robbed! Not just poorly criticised in its time, but reviled and even hated, Marnie, situated just after Hitchcock’s Psycho and The Birds is something of a sleeper masterwork by the brilliant director that may still be revealing it’s multilayered brilliance fifty years on. In fact Marnie is so intelligent, so complex, so laced with conflicting […]
Category Archives: Film Reviews
January
03
50 Years ago Today: Marnie – Hitchcock’s unrecognised masterpiece. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
January
01
You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet – Alain Resnais and the refusal to limit reality. (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
The title You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet is a lusty incitement from a ninety-one year old director at its surface, possibly designed to hush the eulogic rumblings from reviewers and film commentators over his last film Les herbes folles (2009) but when the director is not only one of the greatest living, but one of the greatest […]
December
30
2013: A Magic Year in Film – My favourite films of 2013.
posted by lisathatcher
I said in my first post on this topic that 2013 is being touted as one of the best years for film, and after searching through archives for my “X years ago today series” (new to this blog) I can tell you we have been truly spoilt in 2013 with the wonderful films on offer. […]
December
30
Saving Mr Banks – Disney’s unapologetic hagiography v’s the critical thinker. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
Saving Mr Banks is not the first film to shamelessly re-tell history through the eyes of a victor, nor is it the first film to reduce a person of brilliance and talent to petty details that render them unrecognisable, nor is it the first unapologetically capitalist venture to use the precision timing of advertising acumen […]
December
22
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – Peter Jackson steps into the light. (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
I have a perverse loyalty issue with TLOTR / Hobbit franchise, and that is I’m a sucker for these ground-breaking, mythologized pictures that are so huge and big and enormous and massive that you can’t remember who you are or where you are or why you are, nothing in your mind making sense because of […]
December
22
August: Osage County – Tracy Letts homage to American theatrical dysfunction. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
Lett’s opening lines in August: Osage County, voiced by patriarch Beverly (Sam Shepard – of course) from T.S. Elliot ‘Wasteland’ (because he didn’t write anything else), come with the disclaimer that Elliot wasn’t the first to say them, nor the last, but because he wrote them down formally (copyrighted them) we have to pay him homage […]
December
21
2013: A Magic year in Film – Films that were duds, dodgy or just bored the hell out of me.
posted by lisathatcher
2013 is already being touted as a magical year for film, and I agree with that. The Sydney Film Festival hops on the back of Cannes and Sundance and so this city often see the years best films in that tremendous tw0-and-a-half week marathon, a just compensation for the appalling difference in release dates we […]
December
19
Frozen – The cold never bothered me anyway! Disney’s princess’ go feminist. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
Please note there are spoilers in this review. Frozen is purportedly based on the Hans Christian Anderson children’s story, ‘The Snow Queen‘, but it actually seems more like Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee and Shane Morris had a moment of inspiration when they heard “Let It Go” written by the wife and husband team of Kristen […]
December
17
Philomena – Stephen Frears and Steve Coogan give us the chance to feel extremly comfortable. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
Stephen Frears is hit and miss when it comes to female characters but Judi Dench isn’t – she was the female M for chrissakes – so to come at us with the strangely written, safely stereotyped Philomena Lee at the end of a career that saw her totally own female characters like Lady Catherine deBurgh, […]
December
16
Kill Your Darlings – John Krokidas and the vision with a beat(ing) heart. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
The elephant in the room for the beat generation heroes (I’m talking Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs) was that they were privileged white boys indulging in the most conformist of empty gestures – youth rebellion. Its taking us a while to come to terms with this uncomfortable fact, though Pynchon declared his discomfort with the beats […]
Lisa Thatcher 