Armageddon Time, which was the opening night feature at this year’s Jewish Film Festival, is a wonderfully poignant rites of passage drama based on the experiences of its writer/ director James Gray. (Michael) Banks Repeta plays a slightly fictionalised version of Gray named Paul Graff, a decent but precocious and trouble-prone 12-year-old living in Queens, New York in 1980. A
Read moreBarbarian is almost a really effective horror film. It’s stylishly shot, makes inventive use of familiar horror settings and is at times genuinely unnerving but it’s also infuriatingly erratic with some bizarre plot devices and clumsy tonal shifts. The film begins as an impressively tense and mysterious cautionary tale with a young professional woman Tess (Georgina Campbell) turning up to
Read moreBros, which was written by Billy Eichner (yes, Craig from Parks and Recreation) who also stars and Nicholas Stoller (who also directs) has been dubbed the first LGBTQI rom-com. Pasting a label on a film like that can feel a bit dubious but it does serve to remind us of one of the film’s key themes, the attempt by our
Read moreBased on Kate Kyriacou’s book, The Sting, which documented the events surrounding the elaborate police operation to capture the man who tragically abducted and murdered Queensland boy Daniel Morecambe, the gripping Australian crime drama The Stranger explores not only the depths of criminal behaviour but also the dark places it takes those who investigate these crimes. It’s important to note
Read moreThe 2018 Halloween reboot tapped into horror fans’ ravenous nostalgia for the original 1978 film while delivering a strong storyline that gave the franchise a credible place in today’s world. That film’s unadorned visual style made the scares more convincing and effective while interestingly exploring the traumatic impact of knife-wielding murderer Michael Myers on heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Read moreWith a string of successful and critically acclaimed films such as The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, David O Russell was poised to become one of the defining film makers of the 2010’s. But after 2015’s Joy, he seemed to disappear from our screens and became the subject of reports of controversial on-set incidents. One of those confrontations
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