Highly regarded Australian journalist Peter Greste was arrested by Egyptian authorities in Cairo on 29th December, 2013. He was working there for Al Jazeera as a two-to-three week Christmas cover for another journo. Greste was taken into custody alongside two other Al Jazeera reporters, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. Written by Peter Duncan, The Correspondent…
Shocking, racially motivated fires – arson – in Germany in 1993 resulted in the death of five Turks. More than 30 years later, Mehmet Akif Buyukatalay’s clever satire Hysteria – the centrepiece of the German Film Festival – fans the flames of discontent. Buyukatalay’s second film focuses on a movie being made about those real-life…
Set in Tehran, this Oscar nominated film for Best International Feature is a distressing, but compelling watch. For the past 20 years, lawyer Iman (Missagh Zareh) has worked for the authoritarian regime in Iran. Now, to the delight of his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), he has been rewarded with an upgraded position as an investigator…
Evil pervades in the fifth collaboration between writer and director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther, Fruitvale Station, Creed). We’re in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932, which is where identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return after seven years away. They were part of the Chicago gangland scene,…
An entertaining psychological thriller, Drop involves menacing trolling in the most unlikely of circumstances. Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a widow and psychologist with a five-year-old son, Toby (Jacob Robinson). She is still traumatised by the domestic violence she experienced, to which Toby was privy. Since her husband died, she hasn’t been on a date, but…
With charming characters and impressive special effects, the reimagined Snow White is delightful. The original 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, helped established Disney as an animation powerhouse. Based on the classic fairy tale by The Brothers Grimm, the movie introduced the iconic characters of Snow White, the Evil Queen and the…
Oh, Canada is a confessional … a reckoning for a dying man. Writer and director Paul Schrader collaborated with actor Richard Gere 45 years ago on American Gigolo and it has taken them this long to reunite. Gere plays feted Canadian documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife at the end of his life, while Jacob Elordi is…
I cringe when I have to say this, but here is another one man against the world movie. Think quiet assassin. Action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Liam Neeson, Keanu Reeves and Jason Statham all do it. I speak of taking out hordes of adversaries on their own, while living to tell the tale….
British intelligence is under the microscope in Black Bag. George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is an elite operative at Britain’s closely guarded National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). He can’t stand liars. He seeks them out an exposes them. That has included his own father. Now there appears to be a mole in the ranks of the…
The filmmakers have dipped back into the well and reprised an iconic Australian character. I speak of Johnny Spitieri (aka Johnny Spit), played by David Wenham in Getting’ Square (2003). With a new story, Spit brings together several of the actors and key behind the scenes creatives from the movie released in the early noughties….
