Adelaide Film Festival Review: Emilia Pérez
“If you listen. You accept.” Jacques Audiard’s genre mixing musical rises from the streets of Mexico with a blistering rage. Sinners, saints, and martyrs merge in a struggle for salvation – a moment…
Reviews
1266 posts
Black Box Diaries: Shiori Itō’s Unyielding Fight for Justice, Empowering Survivors, and Exposing the Failures of the Japanese Legal System
Black Box Diaries screens at the Adelaide Film Festival on 26 & 30 October Shiori Itō’s story is not just one of resilience; it’s an unflinching act of courage that left me shaken, inspired, and…
Adelaide Film Festival: A New Kind of Wilderness is Suffused with Magic, Tragedy, and Gaining Wisdom
A New Kind of Wilderness screens at the Adelaide Film Festival on 26 & 29 October 2024. “This place has everything” – Falk “Except pet whales.” – Ulv Maria Vatne wrote on her blog WILD + FREE “……
Adelaide Film Festival Review: The Wolves Always Come at Night
Documentarian Gabrielle Brady immerses herself in the act of collaborative storytelling, working alongside her subjects to bring their truth to life in an act of radical hybrid filmmaking. In her late…
Adelaide Film Festival Review: Anora
Ani (Mikey Madison) works at The Headquarters in Manhattan, a large adult club with exotic dancers, private rooms, and huge bar tabs. Sean Baker follows Ani around what appears to be an average night…
Saturday Night is Poignant Pandemonium and an Exhilarating Jump Back in Time
“What kind of show is it?” Copper Hoffman’s NBC weekend producer asks Gabriel LaBelle’s Lorne Michaels of the television show that’s supposed to go live at 11.30pm on Saturday night, Oct 11, 1975. Lor…
Conclave Showcases Ralph Fiennes’ Decades Long Mastery of His Craft
Edward Berger’s adaptation of Robert Harris’ Holy See mystery/thriller Conclave is a mature film functioning as a character study of its accidental investigator and the character of the contemporary C…
London Film Festival Review: Anora is Another Triumph for Sean Baker and a Moment of Arrival for Mikey Madison
Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winning Anora is a crowd-pleasing triumph which continues his impassioned exploration of people living on the margins of American society, drawn from elements of classic cinema…
London Film Festival Review: Chain Reactions
A camera flashes to illuminate a skull dripping with putrid flesh. A young woman walks tentatively toward an unassuming but strangely malevolent house beneath a bright blue sky. A red wall adorned in…
NYFF Review: Blitz Marks Rare Misstep for Steve McQueen
Until now, Steve McQueen has never taken his audience for granted. With Blitz, however, he’s done just that, presuming the story of a mother and son searching for each other amidst the chaos of WWII t…
A Different Man is an Absurdist Masterpiece
Aaron Schimberg’s debut feature Chained for Life is a film about a questionable ‘European Auteur’ making what is clearly a low budget exploitation movie flirting with ideas of eugenics, monstrosity, a…
The Bikeriders: Americana Through the Eyes of Anthropological Director Jeff Nichols
‘What are you rebelling against?’ ‘Whaddya got?’ The Wild One With The Bikeriders, anthropological director Jeff Nichols makes his welcome return to feature filmmaking after years of languishing in…