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Film Review: Ammonite
★★★☆☆ “Last year at this time we had snow, and now it’s nice.” An earth-shattering, potentially life-altering sea-change occurs behind closed doors for two women living under the constraints of Victorian conservatism in Francis Lee‘s Ammonite. Encompassing the cold, muted tone of the entire script – and indeed the era, this one line demonstrates, in…
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Film Review: The Legend of the Stardust Brothers
★★★★☆ Japanese director Tezuka Macoto’s cult 1985 musical is granted a delirious and welcome encore in this re-release. Losing none of its joie de vivre, humour, or heart, The Legend of the Stardust Brothers is a broad, bonkers, and irrepressible mock-biopic cast in equal parts from the moulds of A Hard Day’s Night, Obayashi Nobuhiko’s…
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SXSW 2021: Under the Volcano review
★★★★☆ Australian director Gracie Otto moves from theatre and film to the music industry for her latest project, again in the search for hidden treasure. With Under the Volcano she strikes gold once more.
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SXSW 2021: The Hunt for Planet B review
★★★★☆ Scheduled for launch at the end of October 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope will set the distant red star Trappist 1 – and its potentially habitable exoplanets – in its sights. Its objective? Peering into deepest space to answer one of mankind’s greatest unknowns.
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SXSW 2021: Bantú Mama review
★★★☆☆ Escaping Paris for a week’s rest and relaxation in the Dominican Republic, Emma (Clarisse Albrecht) says goodbye to pet parrot Coco in the opening moments of Bantú Mama.
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Film Review: Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
★★★☆☆ Shades of Hitchcock blend with paranoia, self-doubt and deception in Lili Horvát’s Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time. Returning home to Budapest after many years at the cutting edge of the neurological field in New Jersey, Márta (Natasa Stork) comes down through the clouds from blue sky to misty greys.…
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SXSW 2021: Our Father review
★★☆☆☆ In spite of two very game central performances by newcomers Baize Busan and Allison Torem, Bradley Grant Smith’s Our Father is the flattest of family drama-comedies.
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SXSW 2021: The Lost Sons review
★★☆☆☆ Though the twists and turns of an extraordinary story – a baby stolen at birth, mistaken identities, genealogical discoveries, a fifty-year quest for the truth – are compelling, Ursula Macfarlane’s The Lost Sons has the feel of a somewhat formulaic, made-for-TV documentary.
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How the US lottery system can benefit the film industry
Lotteries are commonplace across the US, with 45 states offering their own take on this traditional collective gambling scheme, generating tens of billions of dollars each year. While most players will simply think of the potential benefits that they will attain if they are lucky enough to win big, there are a lot of other…
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SXSW 2021: Ludi review
★★★☆☆ Bound by a self-imposed obligation to send money to family back home in Haiti, caregiver Ludi works all the hours God sends in Floridian filmmaker Edson Jean’s debut Ludi.
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