|
4/5
|
90%
|
The Immortal Story (1968) |
"
The Immortal Story is, in part, concerned with the very nature of storytelling, something that Welles was fascinated with his whole life."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Mar 11, 2013
|
|
4/5
|
71%
|
Hail () |
"
It's stark, unpleasant and beautiful at once. I don't think I've seen anything quite like Hail."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Oct 25, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
96%
|
13 Assassins (2011) |
"
The sense of loss, of waste, for a society, a culture, is just heartbreaking. That feeling is something special in a 21st century action picture."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Sep 8, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
88%
|
Blue Valentine (2010) |
"
There's a certain kind of cinema that produces an effect in the viewer that's close to embarrassment. Not because its shoddy, boring or stupid but because it seems so true to our waking existence."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
89%
|
A Serious Man (2009) |
"
The Coens' visual style is as precise, confident and eloquent as ever. There's no excess. The hard, 'real' surface of modern art combined with the slightly twisted truth of a dream."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Nov 19, 2009
|
|
|
61%
|
The Reader (2008) |
"
The Reader is all about secrets and lies and the possibility that monstrous actions are not a function of something called Evil, but something messier, stranger and more common to all."
—
FILMINK (Australia)
Posted Feb 20, 2009
|
|
|
68%
|
Revolutionary Road (2008) |
"
A gripping and harrowing dissection of two deluded souls."
—
FILMINK (Australia)
Posted Jan 22, 2009
|
|
|
78%
|
Burn After Reading (2008) |
"
Burn After Reading isn't 'cold' or distant -- it's a game, and a good one at that."
—
FILMINK (Australia)
Posted Oct 17, 2008
|
|
|
94%
|
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008) |
"
The best thing about Hartley's film is that he has found the perfect form to investigate this past and pay a sweet homage to his cast of ratbag filmmakers, who deliberately tested the boundaries of good taste and political correctness."
—
FILMINK (Australia)
Posted Aug 28, 2008
|
|
3.5/5
|
77%
|
Killer Joe (2012) |
"
Aside from Letts scathing one-liners the best reason to see the film is McConaughey. His Killer Joe is a quite brilliant variation on cool villainy. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Sep 6, 2012
|
|
3.5/5
|
67%
|
Trishna (2012) |
"
Watching it unwind is one of Trishna's great pleasures. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted May 10, 2012
|
|
3.5/5
|
82%
|
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) |
"
This is paced like a drama, not a popcorn movie; it's full of quiet moments of reflection and it takes its time in laying some very clever subplots that pay off brilliantly."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Aug 4, 2011
|
|
3.5/5
|
81%
|
Broken Embraces (2009) |
"
Cruz is creased and bent by the pressures the movie's hectic plot pounds her with. She is never less than 'perfect', but she also deeply human and no longer impossible... and that's movie magic."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Dec 17, 2009
|
|
2.5/4
|
52%
|
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2010) |
"
As the basis for a movie, it makes for a moving love story; but it doesn't really make much sense of two messy, complicated true lives."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Apr 15, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
——
|
Mt. Zion () |
"
Mt. Zion, a likeable drama from writer director Tearepa Kahi, cleaves closely to this ancient coming-of-age parable about how the quest for showbiz success can corrupt the innocent. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Mar 14, 2013
|
|
3/5
|
89%
|
Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir () |
"
What rises to the surface and sparkles are Polanski's gifts as a raconteur, his fierce intelligence and his guile. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Feb 22, 2013
|
|
3/5
|
67%
|
Dead Europe () |
"
Dark, and emotionally claustrophobic, Dead Europe is tough to sit through. Talky and severe, it is a puzzle film, a movie where one is asked to work hard at deciphering its strangeness."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Nov 15, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
56%
|
The Bourne Legacy (2012) |
"
The action - foot chases, gun battles, and one lengthy episode on motorbikes in the choked streets of Manila - is really, really good."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Aug 16, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
86%
|
Careless Love () |
"
A small film made on a low budget in a style reminiscent of similarly scaled Euro and American pictures, Duigan shoots the action straightforwardly; there's nothing fancy here"
—
sbs.com.au
Posted May 17, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
81%
|
Higher Ground (2011) |
"
Farmiga has etched something deeply personal and idiosyncratic here: a movie about a character who is simply trying to understand herself and her world -- and that opens up a lot of angst and conflict. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Oct 5, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
82%
|
Super 8 (2011) |
"
The performances are all fine, the scares are good, and it looks and sounds like a cross between E.T. and Lost. Still, what's best about it is the way it taps the power of movies and stories. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Jun 9, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
66%
|
Insidious (2011) |
"
Insidious is very much a 21st century modern horror movie, which is to say it's more interested in tricks and scares than 'horror'."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted May 12, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
57%
|
The Lost Bladesman (Guan yun chang) () |
"
The Lost Bladesman starts off big and rather cool and ends up an intimate epic hot and heavy with spent passions and an aura of sadness that's unexpectedly moving."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Apr 28, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
77%
|
Thor (2011) |
"
It seems grandiose to talk of emotional authenticity in the case of a movie like Thor but the actors actually seem involved in the characters and the story. You don't feel like they're laughing on the inside. It's involving and that's always fun."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Apr 21, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
89%
|
Scheherazade Tell Me a Story (2011) |
"
Read in terms of a pure melodrama the movie is wrenching."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Apr 13, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
84%
|
My Afternoons with Margueritte (2011) |
"
It's got a fable-like, fairytale ambience that's just this side of corny, but that kind of hope is very seductive."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Apr 8, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
47%
|
Hereafter (2010) |
"
Hereafter is worth taking seriously because, finally, it's about taking care to live decently -- not piously, or proudly, but honestly, in the here and now."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Feb 10, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
73%
|
Megamind (2010) |
"
The movie around Ferrell's performance isn't nearly as good as he is."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Dec 8, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
82%
|
Copacabana (2010) |
"
Shot in grim, flat tones that's more in keeping with the style of the so-called 'mumble-core' indie genre, Copacabana is actually very smart and very funny in a brittle kind of way. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Nov 26, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
66%
|
The American (2010) |
"
The American is a character study, and an old fashioned one - it is committed to a kind of existential exploration that seems decidedly out of whack in a digital age that suggests we can be who ever we want to be and damn the consequences."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Nov 10, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
55%
|
The Killer Inside Me (2010) |
"
Winterbottom's film is really rather down beat and hard to take. Perhaps that's only just so. Lou's heart of darkness takes us to a dead end. It's the kind of violent movie where you just want all the bloody mayhem to stop."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Aug 26, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
69%
|
Matching Jack () |
"
Matching Jack has a squirmy kind of emotional truth to it. It's funny, but it's not a comedy. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Aug 19, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
86%
|
The Special Relationship (2010) |
"
Still, for all its flaws there's a compelling energy in The Special Relationship."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Aug 5, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
85%
|
Farewell (L'affaire Farewell) (2010) |
"
Farewell's twisted and violent shifts in tone is perhaps a nod to the way espionage bends and distorts the perception of its perpetrator's while leaving its victims confused and betrayed. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Jul 3, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
48%
|
The Book of Eli (2010) |
"
Gary Whitta's script seems set out to mimic the contours of a religious parable. It has simplicity, sweep, incredible last minute plot twists, mystical happenings and a fundamental belief in Faith."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Apr 15, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
90%
|
Zombieland (2009) |
"
Over-laid with a strain of ironic humour that's deliciously ridiculous."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Dec 2, 2009
|
|
2.5/5
|
65%
|
2 Days in New York (2012) |
"
Episodic and sluggishly paced, 2 Days in New York has no drive and no story tension and for some that won't matter since the film's manic energy seems to derive from the fact that everyone here talks fast and loud and often..."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Nov 22, 2012
|
|
2.5/5
|
61%
|
Tai Chi Zero (2012) |
"
It feels less like a film and more like a teaser with an abundance of incidental pleasures."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Sep 27, 2012
|
|
2.5/5
|
26%
|
Kath & Kimderella () |
"
It feels slow, slack and aimless and it seems to last forever. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Sep 6, 2012
|
|
2.5/5
|
58%
|
The Dictator (2012) |
"
The Dictator is very funny. But with Baron Cohen and his work, the laughs were part of a bigger project. Now it seems to be the only point. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted May 17, 2012
|
|
2.5/5
|
59%
|
Any Questions for Ben? () |
"
It's full of the kind of fake insights and sanctimonious crap to be found in magazine self-help columns. Pity, because that's a real fun killer."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Feb 10, 2012
|
|
2.5/5
|
50%
|
Fighting Fear () |
"
The film has no real intimacy -- which makes us all outsiders -- and no apparent goal beyond cheering these guys on."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Nov 10, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
68%
|
Our Idiot Brother (2011) |
"
Lugubrious, bumbling and sit-com predictable, Our Idiot Brother has a couple of good ideas, no style, an episodic structure and some charming incidental pleasures, not the least of which are the performances, which are good."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Nov 3, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
83%
|
Caught Inside (2012) |
"
On one level, it's pure visceral filmmaker, a necessary bloodletting, and yet, it feels a little phoney and not quite right. By movie's end, the characters no longer feel real -- they're just figures, playing a movie game."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Oct 6, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
80%
|
God Bless Ozzy Osbourne (2011) |
"
Produced by Jack, Ozzy's son, the project has a poignancy that it doesn't have as a movie experience."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Sep 15, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
88%
|
Cane Toads: The Conquest (2012) |
"
Conquest doesn't feel like it's nearly as much fun as its predecessor."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Jun 2, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
56%
|
Gnomeo and Juliet (2011) |
"
Rest assured the ending here is very 21st century: cheap, predictable, and witless. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Feb 18, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
81%
|
Catfish (2010) |
"
The trouble is the filmmakers seem to be stylists and opportunists; Catfish has the slick gloss of hipster media magazine journalism. Its deeper questions are never probed."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Jan 20, 2011
|
|
2.5/5
|
43%
|
Dinner for Schmucks (2010) |
"
Whenever Clement is on screen with Carell and Rudd Schmucks is rude and funny. The trouble is, the rest of the movie should be like that too. "
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
|
2.5/5
|
52%
|
Going the Distance (2010) |
"
Going the Distance, a new romantic comedy from doco director Nannette Burstein, is pretty much wall to wall with dirty talk, but it doesn't seem to have a political or social point to make; which makes it feel a little empty."
—
sbs.com.au
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
73%
21%
63%
85%
46%
40%
