Flora and Son is John Carney Movie Music Magic
John Carney appears to have a granular understanding of the transformative power of a music – that one seemingly universal language we share created from combinations of just twelve notes. Twelve note…
Nadine Whitney
Italian Crime Thriller Like Sheep Among Wolves Will Leave You Waiting to Exhale
Italian crime drama Like Sheep Among Wolves (Come pecore in mezzo ai lupi) directed by Lyda Patitucci is a sleek and sophisticated pressure-cooker thriller set in Rome. It focuses on twin protagonists…
Past Love Haunts the present in Olivier Peyon's Lie with Me
Director Olivier Peyon adapts author Philippe Besson’s 2017 “autofiction” ‘Arrête avec tes mensonges’ (translated as ‘Lie with Me’ in English by actor and writer Molly Ringwald). The film is about a m…
Cobweb (Geomijip) is a Brilliant Meta-Fiction About the Film Industry and a Marvellously Inventive Farce
“Isn’t this too overblown?” asks actress Madame Oh (Park Jeong-su) on the set of the film-within-a-film Cobweb. She’s asking about Director Kim’s (Song Kang-ho) gothic revenge cum thriller cum horror…
A Haunting in Venice Sees Kenneth Branagh Craft a Very Different Poirot Tale: A Supernatural Thriller
Director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green made a canny choice in deciding to adapt one of Agatha Christie’s lesser-known works for A Haunting in Venice. Although, to call it an adaptatio…
Blue Beetle Proves that Representation and Family Are the Real Heroes
Jaime Reyes’ character Blue Beetle will be familiar to comic book readers but not generally to a wider audience. A legacy character much like Ryan Choi who took over the mantle of The Atom from Ray Pa…
Mark Leonard Winter Opens Up About the Making and Meaning of The Rooster
Mark Leonard Winter is a somewhat ubiquitous Australian film and television presence. An excellent character actor who believes firmly in his craft. Taking on a new role as the writer and director of…
François Ozon's The Crime is Mine puts Women Front and Centre on the Stage
Genre defying French director François Ozon heads back into 8 Femmes territory for his witty and distinctly feminist adaptation of the 1934 play Mon crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil. The adapt…
Pan Nalin’s Last Film Show is a Splendid and Inspiring Ode to Cinema
There has recently been a slew of directors reminiscing on their experience with cinema and art how it shaped them. From Spielberg’s self-lacerating The Fabelmans, to James Gray’s ‘portrait of the art…
The Nun II Ignores Audience Prayers for an End to the Conjuring Franchise
Once upon a time James Wan decided to make a film about real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). In 2013 The Conjuring universe was born and has thu…
Hippo is a Welcome Addition to the Canon of Cinematic Transgression
Mark H. Rapaport’s debut feature Hippo knows it is profoundly wicked and distasteful. We often talk about films being like the love child of other films, but Hippo is distinctly a hate child. Yorgos L…
Biosphere Shows That This is How the World Ends, Not With a Bang but With Two Dudes Playing Mario Kart
It almost seems unfair to discuss Mel Eslyn’s brilliant Biopshere. Star and co-writer Mark Duplass has been urging people to go in completely blind to the film, and frankly this is the best way to exp…