Human Capital is showing at The Sydney Film Festival You can grab your tickets here. Human Capital is the title given to the result of a process by insurance assessors to estimate a victim’s net worth at the point of pay out. It’s a great term for a film about the struggles of a middle […]
Category Archives: Film Reviews
December
06
Human Capital – Paolo Virzi and the layers under Human Skin. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
November
21
The Mule – Toilet humour with an art house touch. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
The challenge in contemporary toilet humour (which we can’t consider abandoning as giggling about our bowel movements and the unique ability they have to offend each of our five senses is a universal form of humour) is freshness; essential when you consider we’ve been laughing at our own toilet habits before we could talk, and […]
November
18
The Dark Horse – Chess as the game of life. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
A bi-polar chess master, tossed out of his brother’s house because of insurmountable differences, taking shelter under a memorial on Kaiti Hill, an obelisk that resembles a giant chess piece, is one of the many images that imbue the strikingly original film The Dark Horse with intelligence that acts as a panacea to the rather saccharine […]
November
11
20 Years Ago Today – Interview with the Vampire. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
Richard Pattinson was worried at one point there that his stint as Edward Cullen might hurt his career, yet he only needed to be reminded that Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas had all survived the “hot young vampire” curse and gone on to have very long term successful careers – not to […]
November
10
Interstellar – It’s better than you think. (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
Like Lucy earlier on this year, pseudo-science keyboard warriors have come out in droves to trash Christopher Nolan’s ambitious, long sci-fi flick Interstellar, and also like Lucy, it doesn’t matter how many times Kip Thorne (upon whose work Interstellar is based, and who acted as both scientific consultant and executive producer to the film) or […]
November
03
Kill The Messenger – Michael Cuesta and journalistic Integrity (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
If the general appeal of journalism is it’s necessity in a democracy to reveal a truth to voting citizens, then the corollary is also true, that anything a journalist has to say must be carefully fact checked on behalf of the enormous power the written word in a reputable newspaper commands. It is good that […]
November
02
30 Years Ago Today – The Killing Fields. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
I was surprised to find in my research for this post, that The Killing Fields rarely makes it in any “top lists” of war films, at least in those up to one hundred, which is as rich an indicator as you’ll find of the banality of internet “lists”, and their overall status as gatekeepers against […]
October
27
Decoding Annie Parker – women helping women. (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
There are many reasons why films exist, and just because it isn’t likely to be a brilliant work of art, doesn’t mean a film doesn’t have a role to play in it’s ability to connect people to each other and to important subject matter. Decoding Annie Parker has a great cast, an impossibly interesting true […]
October
20
Regarding Susan Sontag – Nancy Kates decyphers an icon. (Film Review Antenna Film Festival)
posted by lisathatcher
“Like a hyperactive Queen, I cruise culture daily. Have a thrill, a flash of ecstasy several times a week. My appetite is compulsive. Promiscuous.” Susan Sontag. Any story of Susan Sontag can’t help being the story of unfulfilled potential because that was the passionate belief of Sontag herself, that the race hadn’t been run and […]
October
14
The Case Against 8 – The long road of advocacy. (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
The legal system is impossibly convoluted, dry and surprisingly procedural over pacey and intelligent. It is the remarkable opposite of its pop cultural representation, where lawyers are presented as savvy think-on-your-feeters who outsmart the most brilliant opponents in court room battles that are won and lost on jurors biases, and judges moods. The true story […]
Lisa Thatcher 