With the obvious exception of writer/director Adam McKay, I find it hard to believe that anybody believed a biopic about former US Vice-President Dick Cheney would prove particularly interesting, let alone funny. Then again McKay has a history of making the mundane amusing and, with Vice, he has delivered insight into a notoriously private individual, […]
If you like your science-fiction filled with warp speed action in galaxies far, far away, then Arrival might not be your cup of tea. However, if you like intelligent sci-fi set on present-day Earth, this may well be exactly what you are looking for. More akin to Close Encounters of the Third Kind than War […]
If nothing else, Nocturnal Animals tells us that money most certainly does not buy happiness. A ridiculously wealthy art gallery manager, Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) lives in a stark modernist mansion that possesses all the (superficial) trappings of success, yet she is seemingly devoid of any joy in her life. She is no longer passionate […]
Whilst a far from conventional story, Big Eyes may just be the most conventional film that Tim Burton has ever made. More a movie about ego and emotional manipulation than about art, Big Eyes tells the story of painter Margaret Keane and her battle to be rightfully acknowledged as the creator of artwork for which […]
Thank god for filmmakers like Spike Jonze. At a time when more and more movie releases are becoming more and more predictable in the hands of paint-by-numbers directors, along comes Jonze to dispense with the formulaic and offer up something completely different. With Her, Jonze has constructed a captivating, unconventional love story in which Joaquin […]
Sometimes movies arrive in Australian cinemas on the back of intense critical acclaim and it can be difficult to reconcile the hyperbole with the reality of what you see. Often it seems that the involvement of a flavour-of-the-month director or the procurement of several A-list stars automatically renders the film something special regardless of whether […]
It has been one of the most anticipated and, subsequently, most hyped film releases of the year, but unfortunately Man of Steel fails to deliver on many fronts. Superman is an iconic character in print, in film and on television, so it is not surprising that studios still see him as a potential cash cow […]
