The Nightingale (2018) rewrote the rules around brutal representations of Australia’s colonial past. Now The Furnace follows in its footsteps, albeit less successfully. In remote Western Australia circa 1897, a young Afghani cameleer, Hanif (Ahmed Malek), is determined to escape the outback and return home. Hanif has witnessed a white man murder his mentor. Now…
In the Name of the Land is the first feature fiction film for Edouard Bergeon, a former photojournalist and documentarian. It has been largely inspired by the life of his own father, a farmer who passed away in 1996, and to whom the film is fittingly dedicated. This is a grim – often bleak –…
Slow to ignite, The Witches is an uneven adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel of the same name. It’s 1967. Eight year-old Hero Boy (newcomer Jahzir Bruno) loses his parents in a car accident and goes to live with his Grandma (Octavia Spencer) in rural Alabama. Clearly hit hard by their passing, he says little and…
Words on Bathroom Walls is an important movie. This mainstream dramatic teen romance normalises schizophrenia. While it’s often disturbing, it has an authenticity about it. That has much to do with the balance in the script by Nick Naveda – based on a novel of the same name by Julia Walton – and the calibre…
A low-rent Australian drama in which very little happens, How Do You Know Chris? is strictly film festival fare. It is the year 2000. Nineteen year-old (nearly 20) Emi Mustafi (Tatiana Quaresma) meets Chris (Luke Cook), 28, in a laundromat. Even though they’ve just met, the older copywriter invites the commerce student to a small…
In 2016 A Street Cat Named Bob introduced audiences to a stray ginger cat (Bob) who helped a recovering drug addict turn his life around. That movie was based on an international best seller co-written by the man whose story it told, James Bowen. It was a charmer. Now Luke Treadaway returns as Bowen in…
True crime has been “flavour of the month” for a while now (at least since the Serial podcast burst into public consciousness). And nothing fuels the imagination like an unsolved mystery. Director John Dower (My Scientology Movie) skillfully combines the two in The Mystery of D. B. Cooper, producing arguably the best documentary of 2020….
The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart takes a detailed and profound look at the legacy of the Bee Gees. In my opinion this is one of the finest music documentaries yet made. It charts the brothers’ meteoric rise to stardom and the many highs and lows that followed. Hearing the hits…
What a top actor, Robert De Niro. Most of the films in which he played the lead, became film classics. Memorable roles that will still impress in decades to come. From Taxi Driver to Goodfellas. From The Deer Hunter to Casino. Unforgettable masterpieces. The only thing De Niro should have avoided in all these years…
How tough a job is teaching and disciplining a bunch of lively, but often disinterested and unmotivated students? The engaging French dramedy School Life (La Vie Scolaire) explores that question. A new vice-principal, Samia Zibra (Zita Hanrot), arrives at a school in economically disadvantaged Saint-Denis. She wants to do all she can to make a…
