Brad Furman knows his way around a legal drama. After all, he directed the much-admired The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) with Matthew McConaughey. But he bites off a bit more than he can chew with City of Lies, a fact-based drama about high-profile murder and police corruption. This mostly well-made film concerns the 1997 murder of…
I don’t often get excited about politics. I mean, look at the state of political discourse in this country! But when I see what’s going on in America, I sometimes think maybe we don’t have it so bad. The abyss that is current US politics obviously interests (maybe appals is a better word) late-night talk…
Victorian-era detective fiction gets turned on its head in Nexflix’s charming Enola Holmes. Based on the YA novels of Nancy Springer, this engaging – if a bit muddled – film sees the legendary Sherlock Holmes sidelined in favour of his precocious little sister. Throw in more than a liberal dose of danger, a foppish love…
Movies about music have had a rough trot recently. From the sugary Trolls: World Tour to the super-serious Echo in the Canyon, for me at least, few have inspired (except maybe Bill & Ted Face the Music). Now director Nisha Gantara (Late Night) dives into a music industry fantasy/rom-com with The High Note. But the…
What is it about Buffalo? The city on the shore of Lake Erie in western New York seems to provoke an uneasy blend of love and loathing in its residents – at least the ones who make movies. Like Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66, Buffaloed (a prologue explains the title) from Tanya Wexler mixes a fierce…
– RAMS – Only in cinemas from 29 October 2020 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Roadshow Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE In remote Western Australia, two estranged brothers, Colin (Sam Neil) and Les (Michael Caton), are at war. Raising separate flocks of sheep descended from their family’s…
Are you an Agatha Christie fan? Does nothing get you going quite like a drawing room mystery? If you said yes, then Régis Roinsard’s stylish mystery The Translators (Les traducteurs) will be catnip for you. But Roinsard and his screenwriting collaborators Daniel Presley and Romain Compingt give the genre a modern sheen with a comprehensive…
The ST. ALi Italian Film Festival is back and will screen (hopefully) nationally from 29 September. The flagship event will showcase Italian culture, stories and language in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra and Byron Bay at reduced capacity and then in Melbourne, when restrictions permit. The festival opens with a new live-action version of the…
Things no one will say about Charlie Kaufman’s new film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things: “Aww, that was sweet”; “What a cliched Hollywood ending”; “That movie made total sense”. Kaufman’s latest excursion into weirdness is almost Bergman-esque in its inscrutability. Indeed, it shares more than a little DNA with Bergman’s classic Persona (1966). But as…
Dudes, welcome to the most bodacious time-travel, rock music, metaphysical mind-warp of the year. Bill & Ted Face the Music – the loooooong (30 years or so) awaited sequel to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) – brings laughs, weirdness and “the greatest song ever written”. Director Dean…
