The Age (Australia)

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating Title/Year Author
3/5 The White Crow (2018) Jake Wilson The film gives the impression that much of Fiennes' attention went into working with Ivenko on shaping the details of this portrait -- and it is psychologically convincing, whether or not it has much to do with the real man. EDIT
Posted Jul 17, 2019
3/5 Booksmart (2019) Jake Wilson First, the good news: it's immediately clear that Wilde is a filmmaker by vocation... If anything, the film is polished to a fault: the marketing term "elevated genre," most frequently applied to horror, feels equally apt here. EDIT
Posted Jul 12, 2019
2.5/5 Crawl (2019) Jake Wilson Crawl is not a good movie in any sense of the term. But... it lives up to its schlock promise -- delivering jokey shocks with a degree of expertise while retaining enough seeming naivety to let viewers have fun mocking its shortcomings. EDIT
Posted Jul 11, 2019
() Age Staff A conscientious and, on the whole, a creditable, effort has been made to reproduce the tragedies as they occurred, and if there were any imperfections in detail probably few in the hall had memories long enough to detect them. EDIT
Posted Jul 8, 2019
3/5 The Third Wife (2018) Jake Wilson The Third Wife is more or less upfront about the element of sado-masochistic fantasy built into the scenario, oddly fused with the charm of a rural idyll. EDIT
Posted Jul 2, 2019
4/5 Parasite (2019) Jake Wilson The inspired Parasite can't precisely be labelled a comedy, a thriller, nor a socially conscious drama about the class divide in South Korea, although it contains elements of all three. EDIT
Posted Jun 26, 2019
2/5 Annabelle Comes Home (2019) Jake Wilson If the film falls flat as horror, it succeeds little better as a symbolic coming-of-age story: the lesson imparted is about the importance of playing it safe. EDIT
Posted Jun 26, 2019
I Am Mother (2019) Karl Quinn It's rich material, handled brilliantly by first-time feature director Grant Sputore, a West Australian, working from an intelligently wrought screenplay from American Michael Lloyd-Green. EDIT
Posted Jun 20, 2019
2.5/5 The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019) Jake Wilson The Secret Life of Pets 2 offers a pleasant, innocuous 90 minutes of entertainment for children and to adults who moderate their expectations. Was it worth Illumination spending $US80 million dollars on? Possibly not, but then it isn't your money or mine. EDIT
Posted Jun 19, 2019
2/5 Men in Black: International (2019) Jake Wilson The uninspired approach of director F Gary Gray does nothing to mask the staleness of the formula. EDIT
Posted Jun 14, 2019
2.5/5 Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) Jake Wilson On a technical level, all this effort pays off, but there's little sense of an emotional investment to match the financial one. EDIT
Posted May 29, 2019
2.5/5 Matrimonio italiano (2018) Jake Wilson This is a film that runs on miracles -- where all conflicts are eventually smoothed over and all difficulties dispelled as if by the wave of a magic wand. EDIT
Posted May 29, 2019
3.5/5 Brightburn (2019) Jake Wilson Brightburn is not a major film, but it's a genuinely provocative one, a hand grenade tossed out into the pop culture arena. EDIT
Posted May 23, 2019
3/5 The Reports on Sarah and Saleem (2018) Jake Wilson A film in which the personal and the political are intertwined, but in no straightforward way. EDIT
Posted May 22, 2019
4/5 Peterloo (2018) Jake Wilson Crucial to Leigh's very British notion of democracy is a commitment to showing people as they really are -- or as he sees them, in all their knobbly imperfections. Crucial, too, is the fact that even an epic like Peterloo remains a film without heroes. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
3.5/5 John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum (2019) Jake Wilson Is there is anything of substance to hang on to amid these endless reflections? What is undeniable, certainly, is Reeves' dedication to his role, which suggests the enthusiasm of a puppy wanting to please. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
2/5 Poms (2019) Jake Wilson The usual kind of feelgood pap about characters learning to appreciate each other despite their differences and making the most of life while they still have it. EDIT
Posted May 9, 2019
2.5/5 Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019) Jake Wilson It's yet another throwback, less to the 1990s heyday of Pokemon than to the 1980s heyday of Hollywood pop gimmickry. The main template appears to be Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, another zany mystery with a cast mingling humans and animated figures. EDIT
Posted May 8, 2019
3/5 Long Shot (2019) Jake Wilson If the film is a frankly unreal, wish-fulfilment fantasy, that very frankness gives it a certain edge. EDIT
Posted May 1, 2019
() Karl Quinn Lowenstein's film has been a slow-burning labour of love. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
3/5 Thunder Road (2018) Jake Wilson The film shares something of its hero's self-involvement. If you can accept that, however, Thunder Road is an impressive one-man-show. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2019
3.5/5 Avengers: Endgame (2019) Jake Wilson For young adults who have literally grown up with these movies, the experience may be emotionally overwhelming. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2019
Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (2019) Karl Quinn Call it contradictory or call it complexity, but it's all part of what makes Beyoncé so fascinating. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2019
4/5 Burning (2018) Jake Wilson This is the kind of film that all but demands a second viewing in order to appreciate the complex elegance of the design, assembled from details systematically calculated to lend themselves to more than one interpretation. EDIT
Posted Apr 19, 2019
2.5/5 The Curse of La Llorona (2019) Jake Wilson Creaking hinges, distant rattling, sudden flashes of light: these devices have been standard for many years, and they're unleashed once more in Michael Chaves' [The Curse of La Llorona], where they have their intended effect roughly half the time. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
2/5 Hellboy (2019) Jake Wilson A decade on, this largely routine reboot from British director Neil Marshall...is no compensation for whatever we missed out on back then. EDIT
Posted Apr 11, 2019
3.5/5 Little (2019) Jake Wilson For a bright and breezy commercial comedy, your present best bet is surely Little. EDIT
Posted Apr 10, 2019
1.5/5 Wonder Park (2019) Jake Wilson A few hectic chase scenes aside, children will likely find the film both boring and upsetting, a deadly combination. EDIT
Posted Apr 3, 2019
2.5/5 Pet Sematary (2019) Jake Wilson Routine in many respects, Pet Sematary is also a rarity -- a horror film which takes death seriously, as a natural phenomenon to be accepted and respected. EDIT
Posted Apr 2, 2019
3.5/5 Dumbo (2019) Jake Wilson The result is one of [Burton's] more personal recent films, with plenty of his characteristic touches and themes. EDIT
Posted Mar 27, 2019
3/5 Us (2019) Jake Wilson For all its unevenness and confusion, cannot be dismissed. Something genuinely urgent seems to be happening, especially in the performances by Nyong'o and, to a lesser extent, Moss. EDIT
Posted Mar 27, 2019
2.5/5 Fighting With My Family (2019) Jake Wilson It's a ramshackle movie at best, stuffed with cliches, cartoonish yet visually inert, a plea for non-conformity that never veers far from the commercial playbook. EDIT
Posted Mar 20, 2019
Java Head (1934) Age Staff So beautifully and sincerely played that it never for one jarring instant strays towards melodrama. EDIT
Posted Mar 12, 2019
2.5/5 Greta (2018) Jake Wilson [Huppert's] evident enjoyment of the part gives the film some redeeming entertainment value. But when you have a star who has played so many credible, everyday monsters, it seems a waste to turn her into a mere wicked witch. EDIT
Posted Feb 27, 2019
3.5/5 Vox Lux (2018) Jake Wilson But unlike many show-off stylists, [Corbet] rarely becomes monotonous, thanks to his dedication to catching the audience off-guard. EDIT
Posted Feb 20, 2019
2.5/5 Alita: Battle Angel (2019) Jake Wilson Despite her cartoonishly expressive features, Alita remains a construct rather than a believable person. Salazar's line readings are on the flat side, but it's hard to blame her considering what she had to work with. EDIT
Posted Feb 13, 2019
2.5/5 Escape Room (2019) Jake Wilson Escape Room is not anything to get terribly excited about. But where suspense is concerned, the premise works: even when the trajectory of the story is easy to predict, there's no knowing what may be hidden behind any specific locked door. EDIT
Posted Feb 6, 2019
4/5 Glass (2019) Jake Wilson [Glass] will be best appreciated by audiences who value playfulness and imagination over restrictive notions of logic, plausibility and good taste. EDIT
Posted Jan 16, 2019
3/5 Skate Kitchen (2018) Jake Wilson At best, though, Skate Kitchen is less about trying to get anywhere or make sense of anything than it is about the casual joy of being young, free and immersed in the moment. EDIT
Posted Jan 16, 2019
3/5 The Kid Who Would Be King (2019) Jake Wilson All the same, the film does bear a political subtext, if a slightly disconcerting one. The implication isn't that anyone can be a hero, but that some people are natural heroes while others are natural sidekicks. EDIT
Posted Jan 16, 2019
Pick of the Litter (2018) Jake Wilson Viewers of all ages with a fondness for puppies will find it hard to resist. EDIT
Posted Jan 11, 2019
Instant Family (2018) Jake Wilson Director Sean Anders...manages to maintain an upbeat tone without wholly glossing over some tricky, painful topics. EDIT
Posted Jan 11, 2019
The Funhouse (1981) Jake Wilson [Tobe Hooper] shows both his range and his thematic consistency in this luscious, morbid 1981 fairytale. EDIT
Posted Jan 11, 2019
Love in the Afternoon (1957) Jake Wilson A degree of sweetness and innocence is maintained despite some remarkably lewd jokes. EDIT
Posted Jan 11, 2019
Psycho (1960) Jake Wilson A brilliant technical exercise, an intimate character study, and the ultimate variant on the premise "boy meets girl." EDIT
Posted Jan 11, 2019
West of Sunshine (2017) Karl Quinn As epitaphs go, it's close to perfect. EDIT
Posted Jan 4, 2019
Jirga (2018) Karl Quinn The strain of making it sometimes shows, but [Jirga] is a quite remarkable piece of work all the same. EDIT
Posted Jan 4, 2019
Upgrade (2018) Karl Quinn It's funny, violent and full of ideas. EDIT
Posted Jan 4, 2019
Cargo (2018) Karl Quinn Susie Porter, Anthony Hayes and David Gulpilil are among the excellent supporting cast in an uncommonly thoughtful spin on the genre. EDIT
Posted Jan 4, 2019
Strange Colours (1970) Karl Quinn Watch [Strange Colours] in a double bill with Wake in Fright to see just how different the outback can seem - charmingly eccentric one day, utterly terrifying the next - just by tilting your head in a certain way. EDIT
Posted Jan 4, 2019