|
|
Everybody Loves Jeanne
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Jeanne has to learn she is not the starry genius admired by everyone, but a major flop.
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
Past Lives
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
Past Lives is notable for what it leaves out. It is a drama of accommodation, a minimalist romance in which the spectre of a grand passion is held tantalisingly at bay.
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
When six out of ten tracks were banned by the Broadcasting authority because of sex and drug references, Gudinski knew this was brilliant publicity. It meant fans simply had to buy the record.
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
BlackBerry
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
After the product romance comes the product tragedy. While Barbie is boosting Mattel’s sales figures, and Air made everybody feel warm and fuzzy about Nike’s best-selling sports shoe, for the BlackBerry it’s all too late
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
The underlying message is the improbable suggestion that a video game can lead to a glamorous, exciting, well-paid profession.
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
Asteroid City
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
I know people who are bored and maddened by Anderson’s films, and I’m increasingly sympathetic to those views. Nevertheless, his methods are so idiosyncratic it would be glib to ever write him off.
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
Chevalier
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Although there is currently a huge effort underway to unearth, perform and record Bologne’s music, it would take all the forces of militant wokeness to put him on the same plane as Gluck.
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
Oppenheimer
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
Oppenheimer is a flawed genius who can grapple with the intricacies of quantum mechanics but can’t resolve the moral dilemmas that plague his public and private lives.
Posted Sep 17, 2023
|
|
|
Barbie
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
Depending on your perspective, Barbie is either anathema to the feminist movement, or a great asset. Somehow, Gerwig and Baumbach have managed to incorporate both views into this film.
Posted Jul 26, 2023
|
|
|
Dalíland
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Dalí’s voyeurism reached such extremes it would have made the Marquis de Sade gasp.
Posted Jul 26, 2023
|
|
|
Driving Madeleine
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
It’s not the most ambitious or complex of features, but it has an old-fashioned affection for storytelling and characterisation that often get lost when directors set out to be more ingenious than they need to be.
Posted Jul 26, 2023
|
|
|
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
There’s little point in poring over the Indiana Jones stories as if they were manuscripts in need of decoding. The pleasure of these movies is the non-stop action.
Posted Jul 26, 2023
|
|
|
Red, White and Brass
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
Most of the actors are non-professionals who make no attempt to deliver the lines in a convincing manner, but this only adds to the charm.
Posted Jul 26, 2023
|
|
|
Reality
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
It’s a painful invasion of privacy, a slow-motion assault.
Posted Jul 26, 2023
|
|
|
The New Boy
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
As the story progresses it grows steadily more confused, brimming with Catholic symbolism that becomes tiresome and pretentious.
Posted Jun 20, 2023
|
|
|
One Fine Morning
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Hansen-Løve seems to delight in the ordinariness of the story. It’s almost as if she expects us to be reassured that Parisian philosophy professors, interpreters and scientists go through the same tawdry ordeals as the rest of us.
Posted Jun 20, 2023
|
|
|
Saint Omer
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
There is a dramatic reason for these wooden performances, but it still feels as if we are being kept at arm’s length.
Posted Jun 20, 2023
|
|
|
Renfield
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
The most memorable part of a story that is consisently silly but never wildly funny, is Cage’s portrayal of Dracula.
Posted Jun 20, 2023
|
|
|
Limbo
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
If you’re thinking Limbo sounds like a film in which very little happens, you’d be right, but that little is almost hypnotic.
Posted May 26, 2023
|
|
|
Quant
(2021)
|
John McDonald
|
In an era of change, when Women’s Liberation was finding its feet, and gender roles in the workpace were being challenged, Quant’s fashion tapped into a social revolution.
Posted May 26, 2023
|
|
|
Cairo Conspiracy
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Saleh’s innovation has been to set the story within the highest echelons of Islamic learning, an inconceivable feat for directors based in most middle eastern countries.
Posted May 26, 2023
|
|
|
The Survival of Kindness
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
It’s hard to love such a beautiful-ugly film but it’s equally hard to write it off.
Posted May 26, 2023
|
|
|
Polite Society
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
This slice of suburban family comedy is also a martial arts extravaganza, a bizarre coming-of-age story, and a black horror fantasy with a wedding theme.
Posted Apr 30, 2023
|
|
|
Beau Is Afraid
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
It might have been made to be screened at a psychoanalytical conference, with participants invited to submit papers.
Posted Apr 21, 2023
|
|
|
The Innocent
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Apart from Abel, no-one seems to take crime very seriously.
Posted Apr 21, 2023
|
|
|
Air
(2023)
|
John McDonald
|
Air is truly a film for our times. Essentially a two-hour advertisement for Nike, it is being acclaimed as stunning entertainment, and a potential “movie of the year”...
Posted Apr 07, 2023
|
|
|
Of an Age
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
By now, even the straightest of movie-goers should be accustomed to the idea that a love story need not be strictly boy meets girl.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
|
|
|
EO
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Skolimowski implies it’s the fate of animals to be misunderstood, to be brutalised by some and patronised by others.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
|
|
|
Living
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Often proclaimed as Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ikiru is a certified classic. But having watched it again recently, I was struck by the degree to which the remake improves on the original.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
|
|
|
All Quiet on the Western Front
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Lewis Milestone did a better job of capturing this psychological dimension than Edward Berger, even though all his actors were speaking English with American accents.
Posted Feb 25, 2023
|
|
|
Everything Everywhere All at Once
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Some seem to believe this movie is a philosophical masterpiece because characters reach conclusions such as: “nothing matters”.
Posted Feb 25, 2023
|
|
|
Women Talking
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
The women talk their way through their own private apocalypse and arrive at a solution.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
Corsage
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
While there is much that is true in this unreliable bio pic, the truth has a habit of sliding seamlessly into fantasy.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
The Whale
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
He doesn’t have issues with his body image – he has given up on his body altogether. He’s not unhappy because he’s fat, but fat because he’s unhappy.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
Tár
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Blanchett’s Lydia Tár doesn’t exactly sell her soul to the devil, but she shows us that talent is one thing, morality another.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
Babylon
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Surely there came a point in this extravaganza when the director, the producers, the actors, and the people who did the catering, began to feel it had all gone wrong.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
Emily
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
O’Connor has given us an imaginative reconstruction of Emily’s life that fills in the blanks in a way some viewers will find highly presumptuous.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
The Fabelmans
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
The Fabelmans is not simply Spielberg’s autobiography, it’s a manifesto on behalf of popular film – a passionate affirmation that movie making is an art, not a hobby (as his father believed), or a product.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
White Noise
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
DeLillo’s story may be almost 40 years old, but in the wake of the pandemic it has taken on a new resonance.
Posted Feb 18, 2023
|
|
|
A Man Called Otto
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
A Man Called Otto is the kind of film that asks us to switch off the critical reflex, ease ourselves gently into a pool of sentimentality, and think better of the world.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
The Banshees of Inisherin
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
What begins as a story of provincial buffoonery gradually reveals itself as an allegory of Irish history and character. I don’t know why allegories are all the rage in movies nowadays, but this one is especially poignant.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
The Lost King
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Philippa is a real person, but a stock character: the ordinary woman who confounds the experts through sheer determination.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
Triangle of Sadness
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
The crude nature of the director’s anti-materialist message – not far removed from a piece of unregenerate Marxism – is redeemed by his craftsmanship and black sense of humour.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
I suspect Cameron suffers from Bono Syndrome: namely, an unshakable belief in one’s own messianic genius, combined with a compulsive need to save the planet, or rather be seen to be saving the planet.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
Stars at Noon
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
One needs to become completely immersed in this feverish, grimy, tropical love story, or else Denis’s style will be a recipe for frustration.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
She Said
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
The discussions between the journos and their editors are like therapy sessions rather than the kind of spiky, difficult confrontations that might be expected.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
The Menu
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
It’s here we begin to see The Menu as a story about class and inequality, which swiftly translates into a reign of terror inflicted by the serfs on their social superiors.
Posted Dec 31, 2022
|
|
|
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Nobody expects Shakespearean dialogue in these films, but the script and the plot should not be this crummy.
Posted Nov 19, 2022
|
|
|
The Wonder
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
It’s a horror movie without the horror.
Posted Nov 19, 2022
|
|
|
Armageddon Time
(2022)
|
John McDonald
|
Almost imperceptibly the film paints a picture of an anxious society divided over issues of race and class.
Posted Nov 19, 2022
|
>