The Young Victoria (Review)

The Young Victoria is another visually lush period presentation of life within the parameters of luxury, beauty and power which constructs yet another entangled tale of drama and historical inaccuracy. Directed by French-Canadian Jean-Marc Vallèe, The Young Victoria is a snapshot of the Queen’s early days and her experiences with falling in and out of civil popularity up until the birth of her first child, where the film abruptly ends. Despite the fact that Emily Blunt steals the [...]

Stargate SG-1: Children of the Gods – Final Cut (Review)

Audiences have watched Richard Dean Anderson’s hair grow greyer with each new season of Stargate SG-1 since it first aired in 1997. As the longest running sci-fi series in TV history, creator Brad Wright has a lot to be proud of, but upon recently watching a re-air of the feature-length episode that started it all, he realised “he could do better”. It’s for this reason that Wright decided to return to the editing room twelve years later to [...]

The Cove (Review)

Imagine if Ocean’s 11 director Steven Soderbergh teamed up with documentary maker Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Sicko) to remake Free Willy…. except with dolphins. The result would look something like The Cove; an alarming documentary on the brutal dolphin slaughtering trade in Japan. Despite a title that could easily be mistaken for a horror film, The Cove is essentially all genres rolled in a single film that yanks away at every emotional string you’ve got. It’s thrilling [...]

Paper Soldier (Review)

I chose this film for perusal at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival simply because I had heard the (Venice Film Festival award-winning) cinematography was well worth the price of admission on its own. Call it seeking out inspiration for an upcoming filmic project. In this regard, I was not disappointed. Neither, did Paper Soldier fail to live up to the warning I had received before the screening, “EXPECT TARKOVSKY!”

For those not in the know [...]

Adam (Review)

Relationship struggles in films often centre on a clash of personalities when concerning one thing or another. When it’s hard to pay the rent or falling out of love, couples turn on each other to point the finger and find someone to blame. What Hollywood rarely depicts is the influence of a disorder in a relationship, especially those where social capabilities are limited. Perhaps it fails on their romantic scale, which is strange because there’s certainly enough emotive [...]

Balibo (Review)

If I ever needed a reminder as to why I love the art of film, I needn’t look further than Robert Connolly’s (Three Dollars, The Bank) political thriller Balibo.  Based on the true story of the five Australian journalists who went missing weeks prior to Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, Balibo is a momentous piece of storytelling, driven by powerhouse performances and sublime direction. Emotionally engaging from start to end, this is a profound cinematic experience [...]