Film Review: School Life
There are two kinds of people. Those who loved their schooldays and those who hated just about every moment. To a large extent, your experience probably depended on the school you attended. However, modern schooling seems more to do with SATs, GCSE results, school league tables and ticking boxes than being places of learning. Schools …
Incoming: Loving Vincent
On 27th July 1890 a gaunt figure stumbled down a drowsy high street at twilight in the small French country town of Auvers. The man was carrying nothing; his hands clasped to a fresh bullet wound leaking blood from his belly. This was Vincent van Gogh, then a little known artist; now the most famous …
LFF Review: AlphaGo
If you were a boy growing up in Europe in the late 1970s or early 1980s, there’s a good chance that at some stage you played chess. However, if you were born in Japan, China or Korea, it’s likely that Go was the game for you. Compared to Go, chess Is like playing snakes and …
Incoming: Blood Simple: Director’s Cut
A stylish, imaginative and hard-boiled neo noir, Blood Simple announced Joel and Ethan Coen as vital and distinctive new cinematic voices on its release three decades ago. A thrilling debut feature, the film possessed all the characteristics that propelled the Coens to later success – razor sharp dialogue; a predilection for lethal and futile violence; …
Incoming: The Glass Castle
Chronicling the adventures of an eccentric, resilient and tight-knit family, The Glass Castle is a remarkable story of unconditional love. Oscar winner Brie Larson brings Jeannette Walls’s best-selling memoir to life as a young woman who, influenced by the joyfully wild nature of her deeply dysfunctional father (Woody Harrelson), found the fiery determination to carve …
DVD Review: Freehold
There was a time when moving to London seemed quite attractive. Granted, it has always been ridiculously expensive and the thought of that commute doesn’t inspire anyone, but it’s one of the most exciting and vibrant capital cities in the world. However, over the last few years the balance has tipped. Affordable housing is all …
LFF Review: David Stratton: A Cinematic Life
In my humble opinion, Australian cinema is one of the most singular, gritty and strangely self-deprecating the world has to offer. Whilst in many ways it’s all so familiar, there’s a certain brutality and dark humour which sets it apart from their British or American counterparts. Films like The Castle, Wake in Fright, Mad Max, …
Blu-Ray Review: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Without a shadow of a doubt, Steven Spielberg is the most innovative, exciting and successful living blockbuster director. He’s made some of the most iconic films in the history of cinema. Jaws, The Indiana Jones movies, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan; the list seems endless. It is perhaps his science fiction films which …
LFF Review: Ava
Even though the central characters of most coming-of-age films may not start out as nice or good, they almost always eventually end-up that way. Whatever life has thrown at them, they have an unerring capacity to come out the other end and embark on a hopeful future. Not so the case in Léa Mysius’ ridiculously …
Incoming: The Mountain Between Us
Stranded after a tragic plane crash, two strangers must forge a connection to survive the extreme elements of a remote snow covered mountain. When they realize help is not coming, they embark on a perilous journey across hundreds of miles of wilderness, pushing one another to endure and discovering strength they never knew possible The …