With a life span approaching that of many a dinosaur (30 years), the Jurassic saga comes to an end with Jurassic World Dominion. And as T. S. Eliot presaged, this fictional world ends not with a bang but a whimper. The franchise – having received a shot in the arm with Jurassic World in 2015…
Asghar Farhadi (A Separation – which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012) is an Iranian filmmaker of extraordinary insight and skill. He writes and directs movies involving ordinary people that have moral quandaries. So it is with his latest film, A Hero. Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi) is a man whose wife…
A creepy, well-made horror movie, Hatching bites. Young gymnastics student Tinja appears to have the perfect Finnish family. At least her social media obsessed mother wants the outside world to believe that. It is all about perfect smiles and beautiful things. She is also one of those pushy parents who desperately wants her daughter to…
Mothering Sunday is a period drama about doomed love which comes across like an edgier variation on Upstairs Downstairs. The film is set mainly in the spring of 1924. The central character is Jane Fairchild (played by Australian actress Odessa Young), a maid working for the aristocratic Niven family. Jane is an orphan and although…
Hercule Poirot step aside; for Chief Inspector Jules Maigret is on the case. In director Patrice Leconte’s Maigret, Gerard Depardieu takes on the title role as an ageing, unwell cop trying to track down a murderer. It’s Paris, 1953 and a young woman has been found dead. The victim, Louise Louviere (Clara Antoons), is no…
What do women want? Writer/director Renee Webster explores the question in her debut feature film How To Please A Woman. Webster has worked extensively in television on series like The Heights. Gina (Sally Phillips) is a middle-aged woman stuck in a loveless marriage. Her husband Adrian (Cameron Daddo) is a stuffy workaholic attorney who has…
I feel the need… the need for a sequel! And 36 years after the original, director Joseph Kosinski (Only the Brave) delivers a sequel that fans have been craving with Top Gun: Maverick. The film deftly walks the line between paying homage to the past while moving the franchise forward – if you can call…
Based on a true story, Firebird is a heartbreaking queer romance is set on an air base in Soviet controlled Estonia in the late 70s. It centres around a young soldier who embarks on a clandestine romance with a handsome fighter pilot. The film is based on the 1996 memoir written by Russian actor Segei…
Rosalind Ross’s directorial debut Father Stu is based on the true story of Stuart Long. He was a struggling boxer from Montana forced to quit the fight game after suffering too many blows. He ultimately found religion and after many setbacks became an ordained Catholic priest. The conversion came much to the surprise and chagrin…
Revered children’s author Roald Dahl and Academy Award winning actress Patricia Neal had a tumultuous marriage. And director John Hay puts it under the microscope in To Olivia. Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) and Neal (Keeley Hawes) brought up a family in Buckinghamshire. The highly imaginative Dahl revelled in vocalising off-the-wall stories to his children. That was…
