Ex Machina was a compelling science fiction thriller concerning artificial intelligence. Morgan – which is in the same sphere – starts with promise. A corporate troubleshooter, Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) is sent to a remote, top-secret location, where an A.I. experiment has been underway with a skeleton crew for seven years. But something has gone…
Who would have thought that the formation of McDonald’s would make for such an eye-catching yarn? As told in The Founder, it is a forceful drama that tells the true story of how Ray Kroc, a salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Impressed…
Sand Storm is a family drama that takes place in a Bedouin Village in the desert in southern Israel. Two women, mother and daughter, are dealing with life changing events at the same time. Jalila is a 42-year-old with four children. Her eldest child is an 18-year-old university student, Layla (Lamis Ammar). Jalila is coping…
Rarely does a superbly staged and executed film have the impact I, Daniel Blake had on me. The 59-year-old titular character (played by Dave Johns) has worked as a carpenter most of his life in Newcastle in the UK. He is a man who enjoys and takes pride in what he does. He is honest,…
With the lucrative Harry Potter franchise done and dusted, author J K Rowling has expanded on her Potterverse with this stand alone tale set some seven decades before the adventures of the boy wizard. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them serves as the launching pad for a new post-Potter franchise set against the world…
Stunning, finely rendered and detailed animation in the Japanese anime style is the hallmark of Your Name, a youth fantasy written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, who also wrote a novel of the same name. It concerns a mysterious connection between two pupils – strangers – living different lives in disparate parts of Japan. Mitsuha…
Cinematographer David Parker has, with his wife writer/director Nadia Tass, created some of the best Australian comedies, with the classics Malcolm and The Big Steal. But when branching out as a filmmaker on his own the results have been a little less spectacular. With The Menkoff Method Parker steps back into the director’s chair for…
Korea’s official entry into the Best Foreign Language film category for the 2017 Oscars, The Age of Shadows is a mix of spy thriller and action movie that was inspired by the real life 1923 bombing of Seoul’s police headquarters by the resistance movement. The Age of Shadows is set in Seoul in the 1920’s,…
Award-winning Irish born, British raised, writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s (Calvary) latest effort on the silver screen is stylised, dark humoured and ultra violent. The buddy crime caper was filmed on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a final week in Reykjavik, Iceland. It is about two corrupt cops in New Mexico (Alexander Skarsgård and Michael…
Happiness is the name of the game for two inpatients at a progressive psychiatric institution, both of whom are trying to attain it in Like Crazy. Beatrice speaks at a thousand miles an hour and is easily worked up. She is a self-styled billionaire countess who likes to believe she is on intimate terms with…
