The adaptation of video games to the cinema screen has generally been an unhappy one. Without the thrill of interaction and with a game’s wafer thin plot barely providing a decent film narrative, video games adaptations – from the execrable Super Mario Brothers to last year’s lumbering Warcraft – have usually been silly and dull. Assassin’s Creed promised a little
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 moreThere have been countless big screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s works and they’ve varied in quality from stunning (Roman Polanski’s Macbeth and Franco Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew) to hideous (the recent Kiwi caravan park version of Romeo and Juliet). Australian director Justin Kurzel’s adaptation of Macbeth falls somewhere in the middle, it’s an ambitious attempt to capture the raw
Read moreDirector Steve McQueen’s films often confront and disturb the audience with their depiction of characters driven to physical and emotional extremes. Hunger saw imprisoned IRA member Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) forced to the edge of starvation and mental breakdown while Shame saw sex addict Brandon (also Fassbender) held hostage by his uncontrollable desires. In McQueen’s latest film, 12 Years a
Read moreSome films look amazing on paper but suck on the big screen. The Counselor is one such film. Helmed by one of Hollywood’s most artistically inspired directors in Ridley Scott, scripted by one of the most acclaimed authors of the last 50 years in Cormac McCarthy and featuring a dream team cast of Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Cameron
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