Love Eternal – not reviewed
This year I organised a fairly large group of friends to purchase tickets for the Sydney Film Festival. Together we purchased around 80 tickets. Some of us are seeing more than 10 films, others just a...
View ArticleHuman Capital – Review
Human Capital is set in a large city in Italy. It tells the story behind the accidental death of a poor cyclist riding home from work one night (with lights). The story telling of the events...
View ArticleEastern Boys – Review
The film begins with a gang of Eastern European boys working Gare du Nord train station in Paris. It looks as though they’re hustling and involved in petty theft, maybe even more. One of the boys is...
View ArticleJOE – Review
JOE proves that you don’t need to shoot a dwarf to succeed in a violent drama. Perhaps shooting a dwarf is the new jumping a shark? It is set in the US South and it is very Southern-gothic. Joe, played...
View ArticleThe Captive – Review
Atom Egoyan’s The Captive is a psychological thriller about pedophilia, kidnappers and voyeurs who are given great advantages today through technology. It is also about how the families of the victims...
View ArticleBlack Coal, Thin Ice – Review
Set in a contemporary northern industrial province of China, this award winning film is an entertaining and intriguing detective mystery. Our hero Zhang Zili played by Liao Fan starts the film as a...
View ArticleThe Two Faces of January – Review
This film is billed as a thriller and it is set in early 1960s Greece and Crete. I’m not really sure it is that thrilling, but it is an old fashioned drama adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel. It...
View ArticleFell – Review
Yet another film that I really wanted to like. It is visually really beautiful and mostly set in old-growth natural forests somewhere in Australia. The sound is also spectacular, particularly the sad...
View ArticleWish I Was Here – Review
And so we come to a film that I was not expecting to like, but I did. This is Zach Braff’s second film as director, as well as being this film’s screen writer and producer, and it was largely crowd...
View ArticleCold in July – Review
Cold in July was my final film of the 2014 Sydney Film Festival. It is a film full of violence and variously described as pulpy, dark, horror/thriller and funny. I didn’t find it very funny at all. It...
View ArticleWe Are Still Here – Review
My first film for Sydney Film Festival 2015. It was billed as a “chiller”. Apart from the awful late 1970s clothing and serial killer glasses that one of the fathers wears, it isn’t that horrific....
View ArticleSlow West – Review
The State Theatre in Sydney is a pretty large facility and I think we were sat way too far back in the stalls to fully appreciate the wonderful visuals in this film. The storytelling style is very...
View ArticleResults – review #sydfilmfest
Results is a dud film. I wanted to see it. It seemed to have good reviews, but it is a shocker. Even actors with records like Guy Pearce and Giovanni Ribisi could not save it. I cannot think why they...
View ArticleMr. Holmes – review #sydfilmfest
Mr. Holmes doesn’t disappoint. The pace isn’t fast, but the story telling is both elegant and interesting. An ancient Sherlock is well played by Ian McKellen, but I think the limelight is stolen by the...
View ArticleVincent – review #sydfilmfest
This film from France moves along at a gentle pace and effectively holds a fair bit back. There is very little dialogue, and the director, screen writer and lead actor Thomas Salvador pulls this off...
View Article99 Homes – review #sydfilmfest
Wow. Billed as an intelligent thriller, 99 Homes is more of a true-to-life horror story. It focuses on the home property foreclosures by banks in the US in 2008 during the GFC. It is powerfully...
View Article600 Miles – review #sydfilmfest
600 Miles does a number of things pretty well. It very effectively explores the absurd gun culture of North America. In this film I think you do get a sense of just how threatening and alarming hand...
View ArticleThe Tribe – review #sydfilmfest
So I decided to provide my review in a manner similar to the way the film was presented, with no dialogue, nor any subtitles for the Russian sign language. The first paragraph is presented in the form...
View ArticlePhoenix – review #sydfilmfest
Billed as a mystery, I thought Phoenix was more of a complex exploration of forgiveness, love, betrayal and rebuilding in Berlin immediately after the Second World War. It moves at a gentle pace,...
View ArticleThe Invitation – review #sydfilmfest
The Invitation is supposed to be a slowburn thriller or a “riveting horror film”, set around a dinner party reunion of a group of friends (plus two others). Our hero Will (Logan Marshall-Green) returns...
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