Film Reviews & More
★★★★☆ A swift but singular filmmaking self-portrait, Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me reflects on the French auteur’s 40-year directorial career, as well as his many cinematic – and canine – influences.
★★★★☆ Ralph Fiennes approaches top form as a spiritually and morally-conflicted cardinal during a Vatican Conclave in Edward Berger’s gripping, oft-humorous follow-up to the multi-Oscar-winning All Quiet On the Western Front.
The 77th Cannes Film Festival concluded with a shift to the new generation. Notable awards went to Sean Baker’s Anora and Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
★★★☆☆ When the legend becomes truth, print the legend. So goes Matt Eskey’s directorial debut, The Mojo Manifesto, a documentary in thrall to its subject. Luckily for us, its subject is Mojo Nixon (née Neill Kirby McMillan), the cartoonishly raucous musician and one of cow-punk’s leading proponents.
★★★☆☆ How do we balance modern faith with the often unsavoury legacies of religion, and how are those legacies used to excuse immoral behaviour in the present? Filmmaker Mariana Bastos gestures at these questions in her second feature (her first as solo director), a compelling magical realist drama.
★★★☆☆ In her debut feature, Canadian filmmaker Elizabeth Ayiku has a crafted a thoughtful and tender drama. Marshalling an excellent performance from A’Keyah Dasia Williams as protagonist Mya, Me Little Me is moving, if a little disjointed in its construction.
★★☆☆☆ Bill Posley’s debut feature sees its world premiere at this year’s festival. With its stylistic flourishes, one eye on social commentary and a solid genre premise, Bitch Ass shows potential for the writer-actor turned director.
★★☆☆☆ Told in a loose beginning, middle and end, Jacques Audiard’s criss-crossing Paris, 13th District revolves principally between the film’s three central characters: Émilie (Lucie Zhang), Camille (Makita Samba) and Nora (Noémie Merlant).
★★★★★ A visionary crossover of the theatrical and the cinematic, ear for eye demonstrates writer-director debbie tucker green’s remarkable creative versatility and clarity of expression.
★★★★☆ Fabrice Du Welz’s sixth film Inexorable continues to explore his fascination with troubled souls. Here, it’s a young woman on a mission to destroy an author and his upper-class wife, for reasons which are kept tantalisingly opaque.
★★★★☆ From celebrated South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-Jin, The Medium is an occult shocker set in an isolated village in northern Thailand. A tropical (and therefore suitably febrile) take on the demonic possession and found-footage sub-genres, its creepy theatrics build to a freaky climax.
