The Lara Croft: Tomb Raider video game was first brought to the cinema screen in the campy sexualised 2001 version starring Angelina Jolie. It was a ridiculous yet tolerable time-filler although hardly a film crying out for a remake. Yet a remake there is. Tomb Raider which is, in part, a Lara Croft origin story, tries to emulate the matinee
Read moreThe slow moving but deceptively powerful drama The Light Between Oceans features one of the strongest casts seen in an Australian film with Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Jack Thompson, Rachel Weisz, Bryan Brown and Gary McDonald. Michael Fassbender plays Tom a man traumatised by his experiences in the First World War who, in 1921, seeks solace through a new role
Read moreBack in 2002 The Bourne Identity established in Jason Bourne, a new kind of movie spy, one with the destructive skills and resourcefulness of James Bond but none of the imperialism, sexism or playboy antics. This approach was refreshingly gritty and confronting and not surprisingly has heavily influenced the style of recent Bond films. The Bourne franchise struck a major
Read moreThe Danish Girl sensitively depicts the life of Danish landscape painter Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) and his transition from male to female through gender reassignment. Einar was married to painter Gerda (Alicia Vikander) but came to the realisation that he felt more comfortable as a woman. In the mid-1920’s he underwent the first gender reassignment surgery and became Lili. While
Read moreIn 2001 Stephen Spielberg, picking up an incomplete Stanley Kubrick project, made the flawed but often very moving film AI: Artificial Intelligence. That film explored, within a modern-day Pinocchio story, the possibilities of artificial intelligence and of cyborgs who could think and feel. Alex Garland’s (writer on 28 Days Later) fascinating directorial debut Ex Machina takes the idea of artificial
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