What a great pleasure it was to watch Seven Samurai! Despite the timeless beauty of Seven Samurai, it is when the film is seen in context that the power of its resonance through the ages is best recognised. This is a film made in 1954 at a time when Japan was reeling from the aftershocks of American […]
Category Archives: Film Reviews
High and Low – Akira Kurosawa asks which is heaven and which is hell?
posted by lisathatcher
High and Low is an adaptation of an American novel entitled Kings Ransom written by Ed McBain in 1959. The film is divided largely into three parts, using the crime thriller genre to give us a large dose of Kurosawa’s trade mark social criticism. In the balance between money and incorruptible life, everyone must choose and this is the question Kurosawa […]
Hysteria – Enjoyment at its peak.
posted by lisathatcher
Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the 19th century. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness […]
Bande à part – Godard celebrates the outsider.
posted by lisathatcher
The importance and influence of Bande à part on cinema today simply can ‘t be overestimated. That is if you think names like Quentin Tarentino and Jean Pierre Junet have much of a say in the direction cinema has taken in the last few decades. Without this film the concept of gangsters ‘hanging out’ and chatting about […]
The Rules of the Game – Greatest film ever made.
posted by lisathatcher
What a week – month – year – of viewing I have had! Cinema buffs may lament the day and age we live in, that film makers like Michael Bay can get funded, let alone watched, but what we do have over every generation before us is access, like there has never been before, to […]
Rashomon – Stories, lies, perspectives and human weakness.
posted by lisathatcher
“Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves. Even the character who dies cannot give up his lies. Egotism is a sin [and] the human heart itself is impossible to understand.” Akira Kurosawa speaking about Rashomon. Impossible to belive I know, but I just saw Rashomon for the first time last week. It’s been […]
SFF: Faust – Sokurov reads between the lines.
posted by lisathatcher
Easily my most challenging moment of the Sydney Film Festival was Alexander Sokurov’s Faust – a film I billed as the best of the festival until I saw Holy Motors, which for me just nudged Faust to the side. In some ways the two films are very similar, taking a dystopian, ultra contemporary view of […]
My son My son what have ye done – Lynch and Herzog team up.
posted by lisathatcher
“I mean I’m not going to take your vitamin pills, I’m not going to drink your herbal tea, I’m not going to the sweat lodge with a hundred-and-eight year-old Native American who reads Hustler magazines and smokes cool cigarettes. I’m not going to discover my boundaries; I am going to stunt my inner growth and […]
SFF: Captive – Brillante Mendoza goes Political
posted by lisathatcher
I saw Captive at the Sydney Film Festival last week and despite the fact that it is terribly clichéd, I had a reasonable film experience. Like so many of these sorts of films, based on true stories, it has received terrible press. I have to confess, the poor reviews are warranted. This is a terrifying […]
SFF: The Angels Share – Ken Loach and the power of feeling good through Whiskey.
posted by lisathatcher
Strangely, whiskey played a rather large role in my very enjoyable experience of the Sydney Film Festival. It started when I saw copious amounts consumed in On the Road and came full circle with The Angels Share last night. What a lovely film this was, filled with all the usual left-wing agendas we know and […]
Lisa Thatcher 