It’s a bug bear of mine that poorly made “male oriented” films such as the Furious franchise are marked up by the 80% male critical audience under the assumption that they are light hearted fun and need not be judged by the usual critical criteria, while female oriented films like Fifty Shades of Gray are […]
Tag Archives: Film Reviews
June
24
A Scanner Darkly – Richard Linklater and the separation of left and right brain. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
A Scanner Darkly is easily one of Linklaters best films, and one of the best science fiction films I’ve ever seen. I haven’t read any Phillip K Dick novels or short stories, but according to my reading around, A Scanner Darkly was what he considered to be his best and the work his had been […]
June
24
Dazed and Confused – Richard Linklater and the horrors of teenage life. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
If I ever say these were the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself. – Dazed and Confused As far as I can tell we’re pretty much done with teen nostalgia. This is partly due to films like Richard Linklaters Dazed and Confused, overdone now-a-days but important and poignant in its day; […]
June
22
Satelite Boy – Catriona McKenzie brings the land to our laps. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
A strange thing happened in Sydney a few years back. A surprisingly gentle wind lifted the orange dust that coats the outback and carried it in an enormous cloud and dumped it on the city. We woke to a strange apocalyptic world where the sky was orange, the sun a muted red ball and all […]
June
16
Antichrist – Lars Von Trier and extreme grief. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
It’s difficult with Lars Von Trier. A part of me wants to adore him, but a part of me knows he panders to women, so another part of me looks upon that with suspicion. But not as much as I look with suspicion on men who hate his films – or women who passionately adore […]
May
23
The Hangover 3 – What’s not to love? (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
I saw The Hangover part three earlier this week. I took a demographically appropriate eighteen year old white male along with me, and he laughed all the way through, as did all the people around me, and claimed the film to be an almighty success by the end. As for me, I laughed also and for […]
March
24
Katzelmacher – Fassbinder makes his first “bourgeois” film. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
When Fassbinder called Katzelmacher his frist “bourgeois” film (it was made in August 1969 over nine days and is his second feature ever made) word has it he called it that because it is a film conceived against real life rather than other films. The first film he made, Love is Colder than Death (a […]
March
12
Camille Rewinds – Noémie Lvovsky realises sometimes bad things happen for good reasons. (film review from the French Film Fest)
posted by lisathatcher
Noémie Lvovsky has had quite a year. With a leading role in the uber french hit Farewell my Queen, she also released to much critical acclaim, her project (with HER stamped all over it – she directs, writes and stars in this) Camille Redouble, or Camille Rewinds in English. No wonder she’s the name on […]
March
01
Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) – Bertrand Tavernier and the dark comic side of French Colonialism. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
Hot on the heels of my watching Dead Man, I saw Coup de Torchon. Where Jarmusch depicts a savage landscape shaping and creating its previously half dead inhabitants, Bertrand Tavernier gives us a very dark show of law men plonked in French occupied Senegal just before the outbreak of world war two. These films have […]
February
28
Dead Man – Jim Jarmusch, William Blake and the death of America. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
Some are born to sweet delight, some are borne to endless night. William Blake In 1793, William Blake wrote America a Prophesy which amounts to a kind of formula for revolution. One of the subplots of the work is oppression of the mind – what we might call ‘unconsciousness’ in pop terminology today. Blake had […]
Lisa Thatcher 