Did we really need another one of these? The original Meet the Parents was strong stuff, basing its story in the realm of reality and then good-naturedly breezing through the jokes. Meet the Fockers was everything the first film wasn’t, labouring for laughs at every boob joke. In Meet the Parents Little Fockers, it’s less […]
If you watched Play Dirty even if you just noted the title and the fact that it’s a war picture you’d probably have a fairly good chance of pinpointing the year in which it was made. This is Vietnam-era filmmaking at its most ironically pointed. There are no heroes in Play Dirty. One character, Michael
Gellar plays the titular character, a young New York-based corporate jockey who, in the film’s opening scenes, decides to take her own life by overdosing on sleeping pills. Why she does this is never specifically explained, but screenwriters Roberta Hanley and Larry Gross provide a couple of hooks that enable us identify with Veronika’s need
Travel to the cinema recently? Then you’d be forgiven for thinking the projectionist had some sort of Natalie Portman fetish. If the American actress wasn’t in the film you paid to see, she would have at least been in 80 per cent of the coming attractions. In that sense, No Strings Attached performs an important
If Philip K. Dick were alive today he’d have to be pretty happy with the run of adaptations of his work. Sure, there was Next, but that Nic Cage shocker is more than offset by the individual brilliance of both Blade Runner and Total Recall, as well as a slew of generally well-regarded supporting acts,
It took Wolf Creek to revive the idea lost since the mid 80s of the locally made genre film. Since then there’s been something close to an onslaught. Rogue, Dying Breed, Prey, The Loved Ones, The Horseman, Beneath Hill 60, and Sanctum have all appeared in the last few years. Thankfully, the industry hasn’t gotten
Fred Schepisi is one of the more considered filmmakers to make it into Hollywood’s top echelons. The Australian made his name through thoughtful renderings of religion (he studied to be a priest himself in his teens) and race, and once in America he would lend a delicate depth to material as potentially farcical as Roxanne.
Certified Copy has garnered a lot of attention internationally since its introduction at Cannes back in May. It thus lands in Australia with plenty of critical baggage hanging from its rather slight frame, and the first thing to say is that the film perhaps suffers as a result of that hype. The truth is that
Another month and yet another comic book adaptation. At least that’s the way it probably feels to the casual cinemagoer when regarding Thor. But look a little closer at this film and there are a number of interesting details. Kenneth Branagh is the most important: it’s his first feature directorial role in four years, and
Neil Jordan’s second film, and first delving into horror terrain, was a curious collaboration with writer Angela Carter. Together they set about adapting various stories from the latter’s famous short story collection, ‘The Bloody Chamber’, a series of very adult reworkings of notorious fairy tales. Central to the film adaptation was the story The Company
