The Cannes Grand Prix award winning Finnish film Compartment No. 6 is a surprisingly and impressively gritty and moody take on the romantic drama genre. Here, young Finnish woman Laura (Seidi Haarla) leaves her lover, Russian academic Irina (Dinara Drukarova) in Moscow to travel to Russia’s frozen north in Murmansk to view ancient petroglyphs (i.e. rock carvings). The train journey
Read moreFrench drama, Haute Couture is an admittedly sentimental but genuinely charming and at times moving story of second chances and reconciliation. Set amid the highly skilled dressmakers of the elite French fashion house, Dior, the film also reveals a more working class element to the lofty elite world of high fashion that we don’t normally see. The film centres on
Read moreTaika Waititi’s previous instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor: Ragnarök was, at least for a while, a strikingly odd experience and refreshingly different flavour in what had become the bland cinematic equivalent of a fast-food franchise. Suddenly, droll, pisstaking Kiwi humour had entered the overblown Wagnerian Marvel superhero fantasy universe. At first, it felt quite subversive but the film
Read moreFrench film, After Blue is one of the weirdest movies of the year and one that shows that weirdness alone does not necessarily equal fascinating art or entertainment. In what might be glibly dubbed eco-feminist science fiction, it’s set in a future where humanity has fled an environmentally devastated Earth to the planet, After Blue where only women have survived
Read moreThe fun, inventive, hyper-energetic but sometimes (for adults) headache-inducing world of our little animated buddies, the Minions, continues with Minions: The Rise of Gru. This one takes us back to the mid-70 s and criminal genius Gru’s nascent years as an aspiring super villain. Here, the 11-year-old primary school student Gru (Steve Carrell) dreams of joining his heroes, a super
Read moreBaz Luhrmann is one of the least subtle directors of recent times. Perhaps only Michael Bay and Oliver Stone in the 90’s top him for obviousness and outrageousness. Having Baz direct a film about Elvis Presley who, at least in the latter part of his life, was known for excess and an extravagant lifestyle, promised to be a sensory assault.
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