|
3/5
|
78%
|
Santa's Apprentice (L'apprenti Pere Noel) () |
"
Bright, amiable traditional animation with an old-school flavour and solid storytelling. "
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Nov 10, 2011
|
|
2/5
|
17%
|
I Don't Know How She Does It (2011) |
"
There's nothing particular strong or telling about its comedy."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Nov 3, 2011
|
|
2/5
|
17%
|
Priest (2011) |
"
Its visual style veers between bleached desert tones and slimy undercover dankness, but the 3D version is undistinguished."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 25, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
27%
|
Green Lantern (2011) |
"
The green aesthetic misfires: the whole film looks as if it's been inspired by a particular shade of washing-up liquid, or the glowing screens of ancient computers."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 11, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
67%
|
Love Crime (2011) |
"
Rather than contemplating the tension of performance, we are resigned to watching the elements of the story click mechanically and rather drearily into place."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 3, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
83%
|
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) |
"
Its human characters are ciphers, even if the actors include Franco, Lithgow, Brian Cox and Freida Pinto, but its animal rebels are utterly convincing."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 3, 2011
|
|
3.5/5
|
63%
|
Here I Am () |
"
Quietly, and with an unobtrusive grace, Here I Am explores harsh truths, everyday realities and intimations of change."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jun 2, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
94%
|
Los ojos de Julia (Julia's Eyes) (2011) |
"
Julia's Eyes becomes a little incoherent as it plunges towards resolution, but it's unerringly stylish and whole-heartedly suspenseful along the way."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jun 2, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
35%
|
The Hangover Part II (2011) |
"
The premise and the execution are numbingly familiar, and what was funny and unexpected about a guys-bonding-under-pressure movie the first time around becomes: ''Are they kidding? Again?'' "
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted May 26, 2011
|
|
3.5/5
|
84%
|
My Afternoons with Marguerite (2011) |
"
A disarming film with a pair of deftly judged performances at its centre, Jean Becker's My Afternoons With Margueritte risks sentimentality, but maintains a sense of lightness that is its saving grace. "
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Apr 8, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
26%
|
Hop (2011) |
"
For the most part it tries too hard, lurching from one plot contrivance to another and never giving any of its cast (apart from the heroically hard-working Marsden) much to do."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Apr 6, 2011
|
|
3.5/5
|
61%
|
Griff the Invisible (2011) |
"
There is something consistent, likeable and heartfelt at its centre, and Kwanten and Dermody are ideally cast. They bring a mixture of robustness and restraint to this gentle account of solitude, fragility and the possibilities of complicity."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Mar 23, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
80%
|
Barney's Version (2011) |
"
If Giamatti's performance is rigorously unsentimental, director Richard Lewis and writer Michael Konyves (adapting Morechai Richler's novel) succumb, a little too often, to slow-moving warmth and wryness."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Mar 23, 2011
|
|
2/5
|
11%
|
Red Riding Hood (2011) |
"
The explanation takes away a good deal of the mystery and menace, not to mention the comic energy, of the original story and the many versions it has inspired."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Mar 23, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
51%
|
The Next Three Days (2010) |
"
It's an all-consuming task, and Crowe makes this obsessiveness plausible."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Feb 2, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
65%
|
Tamara Drewe (2010) |
"
There's something about the desperation of Jody that gives the film its most uncomfortable and surprising moments. Otherwise, it's a bit of a stroll down familiar paths."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Feb 2, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
73%
|
Shaolin (2011) |
"
An expansive, energetic, big-budget martial arts action film that encompasses combat, explosions and moments of introspection."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jan 27, 2011
|
|
2/5
|
20%
|
The Tourist (2010) |
"
This should be a potent combination, but it turns out to be a fizzer."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
|
|
49%
|
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) |
"
While Dawn Treader is competent enough, with good special effects, it never rises to great heights. There's something a little stolid and bland about it, even when the fantasy elements are at the fore."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Dec 1, 2010
|
|
3.5/5
|
79%
|
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (2010) |
"
Yates has developed a distinctive visual style and there are some striking locations in this film, landscapes that have an almost dreamlike power. And the action has an abrupt kinetic impact."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Nov 15, 2010
|
|
|
87%
|
La Danse -- Le Ballet de l'Opera de Paris (2009) |
"
Long, graceful, quietly exhilarating."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Oct 20, 2010
|
|
|
57%
|
Summer Coda () |
"
Summer Coda, handsomely shot by Greg de Marigny, is a mixture of emotional understatement and pastoral lushness: it looks handsome, but its pace drifts at times. "
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Oct 20, 2010
|
|
|
75%
|
The Housemaid (2011) |
"
Its humour is twisted and biting, its aura sleek and erotically charged and full of menace, its images impeccably composed."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Oct 20, 2010
|
|
|
51%
|
Chloe (2010) |
"
As the film's tone moves from psychological drama to erotic arthouse thriller, slickness and absurdity overpower the playful, treacherous ambiguities it has established."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Oct 13, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
54%
|
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) |
"
It gleams and glistens but it has no substance. It is, in the end, a missed opportunity."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
27%
|
Charlie St. Cloud (2010) |
"
Has its poignant moments but does not trust them, and does not explore its darker potential. It lays on the sentiment too thickly and underlines the uncanny with a heavy-handed touch."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
53%
|
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) |
"
Conveys, in a good-humoured, sharply observed way, the small, painful cruelties and unpredictable rules of early adolescence, and it celebrates awkwardness without feeling the need to convert it into cheap triumph."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
69%
|
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) (2010) |
"
Director Daniel Alfredson taking over from Niels Arden Oplev, maintains the sometimes disconcerting mixture of violence and righteous investigation that characterise the series."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
85%
|
Easy A (2010) |
"
It has at least one thing going for it: an excellent performance from Emma Stone (Superbad) as the statuesque, sardonic Olive, a conscientious high-school senior who is, she assures us, an anonymous figure among her classmates."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 16, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
81%
|
The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2010) |
"
The neatness of the movie, however, hems it in. It is plotted almost to a fault."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
|
3.5/5
|
78%
|
The Other Guys (2010) |
"
It works best when it is freewheeling and absurd, and based on the relationship between the character and loses ground when the filmmakers worry too much about plot."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
|
3.5/5
|
81%
|
Despicable Me (2010) |
"
It's an engaging movie that feels to be aiming for -- and happily gestures towards -- the bright inventiveness of the Pixar studios."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
|
|
64%
|
Tomorrow, When the War Began (2012) |
"
It's a briskly related adventure, with a good-looking young cast, and Ellie is a forceful heroine who swiftly makes the transition from thinking about the holidays to blowing up bridges, but can still worry about the meaning of a kiss."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
82%
|
Cairo Time (2010) |
"
Nadda has managed to create space for two performances that feel wistful, serious and self-aware."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 19, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
62%
|
Salt (2010) |
"
There's still a lot to enjoy in Jolie's performance, and in the undercurrents of ambiguity in Salt, the questions of identity that repeatedly surface in the film."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 19, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
91%
|
Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick (Everlasting Moments) (Maria Larsson's Everlasting Moment) (2009) |
"
Feels a little repetitive and predictable in its depiction of the ordinary and the domestic. But there's something stubborn and gritty about Heiskanen's performance."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 11, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
86%
|
The Special Relationship (2010) |
"
The relationship between Blair and Clinton never seems capable, dramatically speaking, of bearing the weight the film assigns to it."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Aug 6, 2010
|
|
|
71%
|
South Solitary () |
"
The film's restraint and its embrace of uncomfortable, spiky characters are deceptive elements; there is a quiet audacity about South Solitary that's an unexpected pleasure."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jul 29, 2010
|
|
3.5/5
|
73%
|
The Waiting City (2011) |
"
The Waiting City is an immersive film, but also a contemplative one."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
88%
|
The Hedgehog (2011) |
"
There is a fairytale quality to the story that Achache brings out: it is as if the apartment block, whose spaces and elements are vividly depicted, becomes some kind of enchanted tower, within which transformation is possible."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
61%
|
The Horseman (2008) |
"
Marshall's performance, as the desperate, driven father, is striking; it gives the film an emotional centre without ever diminishing the horror of his character's actions."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jul 7, 2010
|
|
1/5
|
15%
|
Sex and the City 2 (2010) |
"
Sex and the City has turned into a bloated juggernaut of pointlessness. Its female characters are now beyond unbearable, none more so than Carrie."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
97%
|
Animal Kingdom (2010) |
"
Michod gives us a conclusion that is simultaneously shocking, decisive and ambiguous; one that exemplifies the unsettling richness of the film."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
|
2.5/5
|
30%
|
The Kings of Mykonos () |
"
In this latest extension of the Wog Boy franchise, 10 years after the first film, the scenery is inviting and Alex Dimitriades makes an excellent villain, but the comedy, though amiable, often falls flat."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted May 21, 2010
|
|
2.5/5
|
64%
|
Harry Brown (2010) |
"
Stylishly filmed in a grimy palette of putrescent green and muddy brown, the movie seems at times almost to revel in the nastiness it depicts."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted May 21, 2010
|
|
2/5
|
24%
|
Little Ashes (2009) |
"
The drawcard of Robert ''Twilight'' Pattinson as Dali is a mixed blessing for the filmmakers, given how ill-at-ease he is in the role. Javier Beltran, as Garcia Lorca, cast as the heroic centre of the film, cuts a more confident figure."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Mar 25, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
51%
|
Alice in Wonderland (2010) |
"
Amid the visual pleasures, the plot additions feel limiting."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Mar 3, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
70%
|
Religulous (2008) |
"
Rather disconcertingly, the film builds towards a vision of the apocalypse, the destructive fate that religious conflicts have in store for us -- a version of the future any hellfire preacher would be proud of."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Dec 9, 2009
|
|
4/5
|
73%
|
Where the Wild Things Are (2009) |
"
Young actor Max Records gives a terrific performance that captures both the uncertainty and the rampaging energy of his character."
—
The Age (Australia)
Posted Dec 2, 2009
|
