Frank Zappa, musician, composer, band leader, producer, visual artist, the list goes on, was a perplexing and brilliant figure and perhaps appropriately but still frustratingly, the lengthy and detailed documentary, simply titled Zappa, doesn’t allow us to gain a complete handle on that brilliance. The film comes from director Alex Winter, yes Bill from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure who,
Read moreAs cinemas reopen, one of the great annual events is back, the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival and this week on ‘Built For Speed’ we speak to Johanna Durand, the Director of the Melbourne branch of the Alliance Francaise about the selection of movies on offer this year. We’ll also take a look at the Frank Zappa documentary and Australian
Read moreSlasher film Wrong Turn is a little like a cinematic Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from bits of other films. There’s the backwoods inbred redneck menace of The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance (minus the pig squealing), the ‘forest as a threatening alternate world’ horror of The Blair Witch Project and the kidnapping nightmare of Wolf Creek. Derivative as it is,
Read moreThe Nest, starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, is a potent and disturbing look at ambition turned toxic, the price of deception and the breakdown of family. Jude Law plays Rory a British ex-pat finance broker living a seemingly idyllic life in New York in the 80’s with his wife Allison (Carrie Coon), sensitive son Ben (Charlie Shotwell) and snarky
Read moreSet in Australia’s colonial past and focused on the pursuit of an aboriginal man by white police, High Ground plays like a companion piece to Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country. While its plot lacks the nuance and complexity of Sweet Country, its visual artistry is almost as impressive and this confronting story of white brutality and aboriginal resistance is nearly as
Read moreSix years after what was believed to be beloved Japanese filmmaker Studio Ghibli’s swansong, the wonderful When Marnie Was There, comes a new offering, Earwig and The Witch. While at times evoking a number of the studio’s classics, this meandering film is unlikely to satiate the cravings of Ghibli obsessives who have desperately awaited the studio’s return to production. What
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