If you’re working with great material, what else do you need to do as a director other than recruit the right actors and shoot it well? Although Roman Polanski won’t blow your mind with a radical re-imagining of Oliver Twist, he will draw you in to savour the richness of Charles Dickens’ classic story so effortlessly that you might not even notice how brilliantly skillful a film-maker he really is. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Burton has a bright and bubbly personality, and his delightful new musical Sweeney Todd, will leave you smiling and laughing for days after you see it…. NOT!!!! Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the American Dream! Where would Hollywood be without it? Or where would the American Dream be without Hollywood? For surely, the old rags to riches fairy tale that has been bread and butter to the industry since its beginnings plays an important propaganda role to ensure that Americans know how lucky they are to live in the land of opportunity. But Gabriele Muccino’s film of Chris Gardner’s memoir keeps the hyperbole to a minimum to ensure that it comes across as a story from the real America, where opportunity exists but sometimes you have to work like a mofo to make it happen, and no one makes it easy for you. Read the rest of this entry »

You could miss it if you weren’t paying enough attention, but Clint Eastwood’s highly atmospheric 1973 film, High Plains Drifter, is as much supernatural thriller as hard-bitten western. To an eerie soundtrack reminiscent of horror films, The Stranger materialises from the desert to wreak vengeance on the inhabitants of the desolate township of Lago for their previous sins. Is he a man, or a ghost? Read the rest of this entry »

The 90’s was a bit of a golden age for crime films. Thanks to the Tarantino-mania that gripped film industries around the world, hardly a week would go by without a new gritty film about scary, desperate criminals fleeing from even scarier, more desperate criminals hitting the cinemas. Australia was no different. In fact, Bill Bennett’s Kiss or Kill even picked up Best Film at the 1997 AFI Awards - which is interesting because, these days, the film doesn’t stand out as one of the better Australian films of the decade, even within its genre. Read the rest of this entry »

How must it feel to go from being the ruler of a fantasy kingdom, in your early twenties and in the prime of life, only to find yourself transported back into your teenage body back in World War II London? I can’t help but feel it would be somewhat deflating. So imagine your mixed emotions to get back to said fantasy kingdom one year later only to find it’s been crushed under the heel of a tyrannical invader for the several centuries that have gone by there in your absence. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know what it was like to live in the 40’s, but that period sure looks great in film. It was the decade cinema came of age, after all, so perhaps its an appeal based in a sort of borrowed nostalgia. All the men wear hats, all the women have shoulder pads, and everyone speaks so elegantly to each other. There’s something to be said, too, for the value of the cigarette as a dramatic device. It’s an intimate prop actors can use to convey meaning, and nothing adds more atmosphere to a night scene than a miasma of cigarette smoke. But Married Life uses its 40’s setting as more than just window dressing - its mixture of social sophistication and personal restraint is a key driver in the story’s premise, involving love and passion, betrayal and murder. Read the rest of this entry »