Louise Brooks was one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. So you’d think a movie featuring Brooks as a character would delve into some of the mystique surrounding the star. Yet Michael Engler’s The Chaperone largely sidesteps Brooks’ career in favour of a stodgy love story. Julian Fellowes – best known for…
Gloria Bell is a deliberately awkward film about the difficulties of making your way in the world. Especially if you’re a divorced middle-aged woman yearning for something more. Julianne Moore embraces the title role in yet another stellar performance. She finds Gloria’s vulnerability and, conversely, her strength and resilience. Gloria is a free-spirited divorcée who…
I nearly decided not to review Avengers: Endgame. After all, the film is pretty much “review-proof”. If you have even the slightest interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU, for the uninitiated), you’re probably going to see it regardless. If you have no such interest, seeing it will be pretty pointless. But in the end,…
A throwback to a time of homophobia, paranoia and fear, 1985 is a heartfelt realist tale. Having been gone for three years, closeted advertising executive Adrian (Cory Michael Smith) returns to his Texas hometown for the Christmas holidays. As the title suggests, it’s 1985, during the first wave of the AIDS crisis. Burdened with an…
Who would have thought that infrastructure could be made into a compelling movie? The Hummingbird Project deals with the idea that saving a millisecond can make hundreds of millions of dollars. Cousins from New York, Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and Anton Zaleski (Alexander Skarsgård) are players in the high-stakes game of High Frequency Trading, where winning…
This quite unconventional Australian film is well worth a look. The combination of a story centring on an opera singer that takes place in an exotic north Queensland castle-like setting makes Celeste notable before the opening frames even commence. There’s a decidedly European flavour to the proceedings, but only up to a point. You can…
Things go bump in the night in the horror-thriller The Curse of the Weeping Woman. It’s the first feature film from director Michael Chaves. James Wan – one of the producers – made an art form out of exploiting the horror genre; specifically the Annabelle franchise. The Curse of the Weeping Woman references the spooky…
“One of the most internationally acclaimed films of the decade,” declares the advertising blurb. Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard that before, right? But in the case of Burning, the hype is real. This is absolutely one of the best films you’ll see this year. Asian cinema sometimes gets marginalised in our Hollywood-obsessed popular culture. But with…
The Trouble with You is an absurdist French comedy that’s both clever and silly. I didn’t know whether to delight in its eccentricities or howl at its stupidity, so I flipped from one to the other and back again. Let’s be clear on one thing – the plot is ridiculous. Detective Yvonne Santi (Adèle Haenel)…
California has gone to pot and Sister Kate is front and centre of the crusade in Breaking Habits. She calls herself a nun, but she created her own ministry after her husband blindsided her. Let’s just say life hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for this former corporate high achiever. As this doco written and directed…
