Film and culture. Not content.
24 posts
Oscar nominee Judith Ehrlich's documentary, The Boys Who Said NO!, is a fascinating exploration of the protest movement that helped reinforce draft resistance during the Vietnam War era, allow…
Of all the directorial careers to emerge from the Australian film industry, Bruce Beresford’s pre-Hollywood run of films from 1972 to 1981 may be the most fascinating. Beresford’s first two films, The…
Two infantry soldiers, Lance Cpl. Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance Cpl. Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) are given the task of delivering an urgent message to a fellow British battalion to call off a p…
I finally managed to see 1917, in a double war film effort, that also encompassed the latest release of the two, Midway. I don’t really need to go into 1917, as it’s been the talk of the town for the…
The lengths taken by Nazi forces during World War II to forcibly enlist Austrian townspeople is depicted with heart-rending intensity in Terrence Malick’s latest historical drama, A Hidden Life. Base…
It is the First World War. The unnerving silence of a quaint French town - now occupied by German military forces - is interrupted by the sound of invading soldiers making howling commands. The fall…
Following on from dark urban fantasy The School, writer and director Storm Ashwood cants in a very different direction with Escape and Evasion, which sees Josh McConville (1%, The Merger) as Seth, a f…
It’s the laconic cynicism of Breaker Morant that always appealed to me. History and general consensus, both critical and popular, puts Peter Weir’s Gallipoli in pole position as Australia’s Greatest W…
Powered by JustWatch It’s been 40 years since Australian cinema explored the combat soldier’s experience of the Vietnam War. While David Caesar’s Dirty Deeds (2002) featured a brief early interl…
In 2004 Zack Snyder released his remake of Dawn of the Dead. It was a great film. One of the positives for me was that it was straight into it – not flinching for a moment after the first neck being t…
With the Christopher Nolan epic Dunkirk, and Gary Oldman’s capital A Acting in Darkest Hour, you’d be forgiven for having completely missed Lone Scherfig’s addition to the Battle of Dunkirk tales that…
If there’s a running theme through the films of directing duo Glenn Ficara and John Requa, it’s that of characters finding their place in the world. Whether it be Jim Carrey’s con-man Steven Russell i…