It’s a story as old as time – a rising star burns bright but is cut down before achieving greatness. But Gary Hart’s fall – at least as depicted in Jason Reitman’s compelling The Front Runner – is more spectacular than most. Reitman has always been an astute observer of human nature. From his exploration…
In The Hate U Give, 16 year-old Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is caught between two worlds. She lives with her African-American family in the ironically named Garden Heights, an impoverished black neighbourhood in Georgia; but she attends Wilmington Prep, a prestigious primarily white school in a more affluent neighbourhood. At school, Starr carefully protects her…
Not to be confused with the 2014 Australian comedy of the same name, The Mule is the latest from prolific filmmaker Clint Eastwood. The Mule tells the semi-fictional account of a 90-year old man who ran drugs for a powerful Mexican cartel. The film was inspired by the New York Times article “The Sinaloa Cartel’s…
A filmography featuring Dumb and Dumber To and Shallow Hal doesn’t exactly scream Oscar. Yet director Peter Farrelly finds himself as an Oscar frontrunner for his crowd-pleasing film Green Book. This conventional take on race relations in the American South of the 1960s seems to be carefully designed to push the right buttons. Of all…
In Free Solo, American Alex Honnold attempts to climb a 3,200 foot sheer rock face without any safety gear – no ropes, no harnesses, no protective equipment. It’s never been achieved before at Yosemite’s El Capitan Wall. One wrong move and there is every chance that this free solo climber will plunge to his death….
Coming-of-age stories about the unconventional but uplifting friendship between children and animals have been a staple of cinema for years. Henry Safran’s 1976 film of Storm Boy was a heartfelt classic from the period of the re-emergence of the Australian film industry and it touched a generation of filmgoers. Adapted from Colin Thiele’s beloved 1964…
The wonderful observational documentary Pick of the Litter follows five cute puppies on their journey to become seeing eye dogs for the non-profit organization Guide Dogs For The Blind. Every year in America some 8,000 dogs enter into a rigorous training program to become seeing eye dogs, but less than 30% make the cut. The puppies…
Loro is a bloated two and a half hour indulgence that serves up pure unadulterated hedonism. Co-written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), the film is about Italian media tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi (Toni Servillo) between 2006 to 2010. In this fictional account, Sorrentino speculates on what may or may not have taken…
It’s one of history’s great rivalries. The intriguing story of Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary Stuart certainly has all the elements of a great movie – war, intrigue, family ties and treachery. But while Josie Rourke’s feminist retelling of the tale in Mary Queen of Scots hits the high points, it strays from the…
In Glass, filmmaker M Night Shyamalan brings together the central characters from 1999’s Unbreakable and 2016’s Split for a climactic showdown that brings this unofficial trilogy to a close. At the end of Split, Shyamalan did include a post-credits sting hinting that the film was a part of the Unbreakable universe. But he had to…
