Retro Movie Review – Mr. Pip
The film based on a novel by Lloyd Jones is set in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea during the civil war there during the early nineties. The story revolves around Matilda (Xzannjah Matsi) and the relationship she has with her mother Dolores (Xzannjah’s real life mother Healsville Joel), Mr. Watts (Hugh Laurie) the only white man in their small village and the novel Great Expectation by Charles Dickens.
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Matilda’s somewhat idyllic life is brought to a crashing ...
Penguin Bloom Movie Review
Things couldn’t be more perfect, until an accident while on vacation in Thailand leaves Sam paralysed from the waist down. She is miserable with her new situation and becomes increasingly detached from her loving family, especially her oldest son Noah (Griffin Murray-Johnston).
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When Noah brings an injured magpie home to help it heal, it starts a chain of events that transforms Sam and leads to her both dealing with her condition and realising her love for her ...
Promising Young Woman Movie Review
Carey Mulligan is amazing as Cassandra, a young woman who has yet to recover from a devastating tragedy, an event that has altered the direction of her life forever. The mastery of understated nuance and comic timing is impeccable. You feel for her and mid-film when you experience the easing of her darkness, you rejoice.
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This only adds to your horror are the vehicle of her release proves to be complicit in the event that set the misery into motion. It is a truly ...
Retro Movie Review – Moneyball
Lewis’ book follows the reinvention of baseball by using computer and statistical analysis to achieve the desired individual results and bypasses the traditional way that teams scouted players and as a topic of a ‘sports movie’ presented quite the challenge. It’s to the filmmaker's credit that a subject that could have resulted in a very dry cinema experience has been turned into such a warm human examination.
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The acting is excellent throughout and Brad ...
Retro Movie Review – Looper
Looper dives into this environment with a very slick look and some very well known actors (one slightly altered by prostheses). It skirts the line between science fiction and thriller status with a quiet confidence and draws you into more of an examination of the characters lives than a study of the raw science. It has to be said that the technology behind the time travel is hardly mentioned.
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It also comments on the emptiness that the day’s technology has ...
Retro Movie Review – It Might Get Loud
For died in the wool fans there are still enough on-screen disclosure to get you through, including a rare visit to Page’s guitar dungeon (with its impressive number of vintage instruments), White’s country estate and cool car and The Edge’s guitar lair, which is the audio equivalent of Frankenstein’s laboratory.
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They are set pieces, some of which are quite silly (like the one when the present age White meets himself as a youth for a lesion on guitar ...
Retro Movie Review – Marley
His rise from being a poor and struggling musician to becoming one of the world’s great healers makes for a riveting story. Macdonald uses live performance clips, interviews with Bob, his family and close friends as well as stock footage to set the time and place in a masterful way.
Both Marley and reggae came of age in a most tumultuous time and one has to have first hand experience of how difficult life can be in those poor and improvised countries to know how exceptional his level ...
Retro Movie Review – Gasland
The process under scrutiny is called hydraulic fracturing and it involves pumping a concoction of highly carcinogenic chemicals into the ground in a process that helps free the natural gas. Almost all of the poor people that live around these sites are experiencing the horrors that go along with exposure to toxic wastes. This point is brought home most vividly by a number of homeowners who after years of fine well-sourced drinking water can now (post drilling) actually light their tap water ...
Nomadland Movie Review
Overwhelmingly sad but life reaffirming at the same time, the film presents yet another example of a role that only Frances McDormand could bring to full fruition. She plays Fern, a woman who many will see as having lost everything. Gone are, her job, her husband, her home, even her town has been reduced to empty domiciles and a nonexistent postcode.
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These circumstances have not destroyed her. She has dealt with all the loss by hitting the road and living the life ...
The Croods: A New Age Movie Review
The production looks amazing as the colour palette almost sears the eyes. It’s filled with such oversaturated hues, you almost need sunglasses. The story at its most basic level is about outsiders fitting in but this uncomplicated idea is infused with so many elements and gags, visual and otherwise that it’s far from simplistic. If anything it might throw a few too many ideas in the mix.
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Recasting the modern family dynamic into caveman times gives the actor a ...
