First-time documentary director Catherine Dwyer starts her career off impressively with Brazen Hussies. This highly entertaining film charts the course of the so-called “women’s liberation” (the term is pretty dated now) movement between about 1968 and 1976. Over the course of the film’s crisp 93 minutes, Dwyer explores what motivated the movement, where it went…
Marie Curie is one of those people. Most of us have a vague idea about her, but her real genius remains elusive. Marjane Satrapi’s (Persepolis) handsome but slightly awkward Radioactive paints a fuller – if generally deferential – picture of the groundbreaking scientist. Lauren Redniss provides the source material via her “visual non-fiction*” book, Radioactive:…
Presented by Palace, the British Film Festival will screen from 10 November in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra and Byron Bay at reduced capacity and late November in Melbourne, when restrictions permit. The British Film Festival celebrates the finest filmmakers and acting talent British cinema has to offer and the 2020 program features some of…
John Hyams’ psychological thriller Alone has twists aplenty. This two-hander set in the Pacific Northwest kept me engaged throughout. Six months ago, Jessica (Jules Willcox) lost her husband in tragic circumstances. Now she’s decided to move away. Her parents were going to help her pack, but she decided to do it alone and avoid especially…
It’s Halloween, so we’re checking out a little spooky action with the Netflix movie, Vampires vs The Bronx. This fun excursion into the supernatural won’t test your brain, but never wears out its welcome. Director Osmany “Oz” Rodriguez has an impressive CV in television, notably on A. P. Bio and Saturday Night Live. And he…
While a largely enjoyable romp, The Mystery of Henri Pick becomes too convoluted for its own good. Henri Pick made pizzas for a living in France’s Brittany region. No one could have guessed was a gifted author (so much so that he could juxtapose Russian novelist Alexander Pushkin with the last throes of a relationship)?…
Cinematic exchanges between Australia and Iceland are, understandably, rare. But that hasn’t deterred director Jeremy Sims, who successfully translates Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 Icelandic hit Rams into RAMS (note the subtle difference). The tyrannies of distance and language prove no barrier for Sims. And when you think about it, maybe Australia and Iceland have quite a…
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa is world’s most famous painting by the world’s most famous artist in the world’s most famous museum. And it’s just one of the works featured in the remarkable, insightful documentary A Night at the Louvre: Leonardo da Vinci. The film is based around an exhibition that closed at the…
A mind-numbing comedy for senior citizens, Never Too Late relies on fanciful nonsense to move the story forward. A voice-over by Jacqui Weaver as Norma McCarthy sets the scene. Norma once met a handsome soldier Jack Bronson (played as an elderly gent by James Cromwell) the day before he shipped out to Vietnam. If he’d…
A Polish film about a teenage criminal might seem an odd vehicle to explore big questions of morality. But that’s what you get in director Jan Komasa’s extraordinary Corpus Christi. This deceptively simple story turns out to be one of the most inventive and profound films of the (admittedly disrupted) year. The film would almost…
