For the first 15 minutes, Kriv Stenders’ Vietnam war drama Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan seems like a clunky attempt at an Aussie Platoon. We’re introduced to some painfully familiar characters: the intense, bullying veteran soldier, the wide-eyed innocent young grunts, the cocky guys playing cards and guzzling whisky and the pompous, uncaring commanding officer. Quickly, though, this
Read moreThe world of late-night TV talk shows has provided fruitful material for ‘behind the scenes’ satires and exposés with comedy classics like The Larry Sanders Show and tele-movies such as The Late Shift. Hosting a talk show appears to be an odd mix of empathy and narcissism in which the host is often a bigger star than the person they’re
Read moreExploring America’s destructive uber capitalism has been a frequent movie topic since Wall Street and particularly in the last few years in the wake of the GFC with films like The Big Short. The Hummingbird Project explores a high-stakes, corporate gamble and even though the film revolves around an infrastructure project it’s a surprisingly compelling, if at times irritating corporate
Read moreMexican director and cinematographer Alfonso Cuaron is renowned for his startling looking films such as Children of Men and Gravity not forgetting his superb contribution to the Harry Potter franchise, The Prisoner of Azkaban. In his latest film, the remarkable and apparently semi-autobiographical, Roma he turns his astonishing aesthetic talents to both his home country of Mexico and what appears
Read moreDirector Steve McQueen has distinguished himself with confronting and intelligent films that, while not highly experimental, avoid many of current cinema’s clichés. He impresses once again with a contemporary US adaptation – co-written by Gone Girl novelist Gillian Flynn – of Lynda la Plante’s 1980’s British crime drama Widows. Leading a superb cast, Viola Davis plays Veronica, the wife of
Read moreRestrained true crime drama The Old Man and The Gun is purportedly Robert Redford’s last film as an actor. It seems appropriate that it’s a meditation on ageing and the forces that defined a person’s life. This is apparently a true story based on the life of bank robber Forrest Tucker who, in 1981, led a trio of elderly crooks
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