Matthew Anderson
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Film Review: Loving
★★★☆☆ The understatement of Jeff Nichols’ Loving is conversely both its strongest asset and weakest link. Continuing an eclectic genre-hopping tour in the early stages of what will undoubtedly be a tremendous career in filmmaking, the writer-director moves away from the visually inventive psychological drama of Take Shelter, the gritty, poetic realism of Mud and…
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Film Review: The White King
★★☆☆☆ A highly contrived script, weak performances across the board and aimless direction make The White King a remarkably dull, at times laughable Orwellian tale. Set in a dystopian nation very originally named The Homeland, located somewhere in the past, present or future, the lack of clarity regarding where and when it occurs by no…
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Film Review: Sing
★★★☆☆ Have you ever wanted to see an elephant overcome stage fright and belt out Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing by Stevie Wonder to adoring fans? Or hear a gorilla tinkle the ivories to Elton John’s I’m Still Standing? Perhaps a mouse in a fedora and purple suit crooning to a little bit of…
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Film Review: Cameraperson
★★★★★ “She sees everything but is totally blind,” says Jacques Derrida crossing a New York City street as Kirsten Johnson tracks him with her camera walking backwards, half stumbling in the process. The French philosopher thinks himself frightfully clever with this witticism at the Big Apple-based filmmaker’s expense but a viewer of her latest work,…
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Film Review: Lion
★★★☆☆ Lion, the debut feature from Australian director Garth Davis, is the tale of a tiny needle in a very large haystack and perseverance against all odds. By turns tragic, deeply moving and heartfelt, it tells the remarkable true story of a young Indian boy, played in his childhood by Sunny Pawar and later in…
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Film Review: Jackie
★★★★★ Does a picture really paint a thousand words? When something is written down, does that make it true? With an increasingly spellbinding command of cinema’s visual language and capability, placing him firmly in the rarefied air of the most gifted filmmakers of our time, Chilean director Pablo Larraín muses upon these ideas in new…
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Film Review: The Promise
★★★☆☆ Spanning thirty years, three continents and a myriad of lies and mistruths, the facts of the case in Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter’s absorbing true crime documentary The Promise are anything but clear. Speaking in its latter stages from a common room at the Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia, Jens Söring – the film’s…
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Film Review: Zero Days
★★★☆☆ As the ripples of Russian governmental intervention in the US elections crashed across the airwaves last week, chipping away at a stony-faced Putin and turning The Donald’s putrid mien a more embarrassed shade of orange, the faint sound of Alex Gibney’s hands wringing with polemical glee could be heard from the famed documentarian’s home.…
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Film Review: A Monster Calls
★★★★☆ Speaking the truth no matter how difficult, rather than simply telling a loved one what they want to hear, is one of numerous life lessons at the very heart of A Monster Calls, an utterly heart-breaking return from J. A. Bayona, director of The Orphanage and The Impossible. Foremost in its intentions, perhaps, is…
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Film Review: The Eagle Huntress
★★★★☆ Through a symbiosis of sound, image and storytelling, a film’s ability to transport a viewer to a time and place far removed from the comfort of a darkened theatre in just a matter of seconds is where the real magic of cinema lies. From it’s very opening frames, and the crash of a giant…