Category Archives: Film Reviews

February 13

Ma Mere – Christophe Honoré and Bataille on the silver screen. (film review)

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I love Bataille for many reasons but one of the biggest is his ability to circle around the beautiful and the ugly as if each can be interchanged in a perpetual whirlpool or vortex slung over our base desires. When Christophe Honoré decided to make a film of Batailles unfinished novel published posthumously, he took […]

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February 12

Whity – Fassbinder and the dark side of the Western. (film Review)

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How interesting to see Whity just two weeks after I saw Django Unchained.  Both Fassbinder and Tarantino pay homage / deconstruct the Western in the two films, while Tarantino goes the Blacksploitation route and Fassbinder goes the gay/subteranean-fucked-up-route.  It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I preferred Whity.  It displays […]

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February 07

My American Uncle – Alain Resnais and the thing that drives us. (Film Review)

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My American Uncle is a metaphor for the happiness we all hope comes out of no where for no reason that we as human creatures for some strange reason think we deserve. There is a wonderful moment in the film when Janine (Nicole Garcia) is speaking with Zambeaux (Pierre Arditi) and she describes an assumption […]

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February 04

Night and Fog – Resnais asks who is to blame and reminds us we have to know. (Film Review)

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Night and Fog holds the illustrious place of being one of the most brilliant films I have ever seen and one of the most horrific. Resnais attempt to speak about the horrors of the Holocaust is a profound triumph of every aspect of film making, from the editing which Resnais is so brilliant at executing […]

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January 31

The Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell gives us a rom-com for the severely depressed. (film Review)

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I wasn’t’ sure if I would like The Silver Linings Playbook when I went in to see this film, and now that I am out I’m still not sure if I like it or not. There are some really great things about it:  A different take on the rom-com, Jennifer Lawrence, Jackie Weaver, Bradley Cooper […]

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January 30

Compliance – Craig Zobel and the Bullit County McDonalds Case. (Film Review)

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I just saw Compliance, a film I found very difficult to watch for several reasons.  I can completeoy understand why the film evoked anger and walk-outs.  I felt hugely manipulated while watching it. And yet, when I read up on the Milgram experiment and the completely bizarre account of the lengths human creates will go […]

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January 28

Le Gai Savoir – Godard teaches while we experience the Joy of Learning. (film review)

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And not of the fear of dying – I have always been reconciled to that – but of this expanse in front of me, on all sides, like a forgotten path. Terrified to find myself in front of a mirror without any images.  To feel the shadow on an absent being detached from me. Engaged […]

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January 24

Zero Dark Thirty – Katherine Bigelow takes out Osama bin Laden. (Film Review)

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A film maker as talented as Katherine Bigelow is absolutely aware that when you weave a fiction in film you work from point of view, and to give the role of torturer to the hero in the film with whom we don’t just sympathize, but either want to “be” or “fuck” is going to cause […]

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January 23

Damsels in Distress – Whit Stillman back after thirteen years. (Film Review)

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I barely knew this was on at the cinema last November, it got such limited released here in Sydney. It seems to have been floating about for a while, and if Wikipedia is to be trusted (and why wouldn’t it be?) it has barely grossed a third of its budget at the box office. At […]

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January 22

2 or 3 Things I know about her – Jean Luc Godard whispers meaningfully. (Film Review)

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The above scene is easily one of the greatest in the history of cinema. It is Godard’s beautiful lament as his character stares into the cup of coffee that looks like the active universe that gives this scene its power.  Godard whispers: “But since social relations are always ambiguous, since thought divides as much as […]

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