by © Jane Freebury It’s fine to belt out a song in the shower when you can’t hold a tune, the acoustics are good and no one is listening. But who among us wants to inflict this private pleasure on the rest of the world? The extraordinary career of Florence Foster Jenkins during the 1930s-1940s… Continue reading Florence Foster Jenkins
Category: Film Reviews
A Month of Sundays
Review by © Jane Freebury The hint of self-deprecating humour in the title of writer-director Matthew Saville’s new film doesn’t cost him a thing. The expression may not be familiar to everyone, but you still get the general idea that it’s no action-adventure. A movie about a man in mid-life conflicted about the… Continue reading A Month of Sundays
Pawno
© Jane Freebury It’s good to know that a hide like a rhinoceros isn’t a prerequisite for working in a cash converter business in multicultural Footscray. A thicker than usual epidermis helps ensure better than breakeven results, but the experience need not shrivel a bloke’s empathy or drain him of human kindness. It seems… Continue reading Pawno
A Bigger Splash
© Jane Freebury Sipping daiquiris, feasting on seafood, skinny dipping in the pool, away from it all on a remote Sicilian island. Just perfetto. Director Luca Guadagnino has exchanged the chill of wealthy establishment Milan in I Am Love, for a spell in Italy’s south with an odd assortment of foreigners vacationing in the… Continue reading A Bigger Splash
The Daughter
Review by © Jane Freebury A forest of tall timbers. Valleys strewn with mist. How readily a Henrik Ibsen classic has been transposed to the wilds of Tasmania, to lend it a Nordic gloom. Inspired by Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, and from local theatre director, actor, writer and now very talented new recruit to the… Continue reading The Daughter
Hail, Caesar!
Review © by Jane Freebury A cast bristling with terrific actors has to be any director’s dream. By all reports, the talent in Hail, Caesar! were simply happy to work with the Coen brothers, whatever they were asked to do. So we have cameos to savour like Tilda Swinton’s nervy twin sister journalists… Continue reading Hail, Caesar!
Trumbo
Review by © Jane Freebury Only in Hollywood where life is performance art could a flamboyant screenwriter tell a government official to sod off in such style. Could it be only in America, the country of monumental contradictions, that a thinking man working in Tinsel Town, owner of a fine home with… Continue reading Trumbo
45 Years
Review © Jane Freebury It was good to hear that the talented, youngish director Andrew Haigh had launched into new territory. He achieved exceptional naturalism in Weekend, about two young men who meet at a club on a one night stand, and he might offer fresh insights into the world of the long-term… Continue reading 45 Years
Looking for Grace
Review by © Jane Freebury In the three feature films that Sue Brooks has made so far, we have driven into the wide, open spaces of the inland to look at what makes us tick. It’s a canny strategy, this journey into the red heart, and the two first films that Brooks has to… Continue reading Looking for Grace
Film Critics Circle of Australia annual awards for 2015
The FCCA, the national professional body of film reviewers, critics and writers is pleased to announce the nominations for the Australian film of 2015. The Annual Awards will be held on Tuesday 23 February from 6pm sharp at the Paddington Woollahra RSL, Oxford Street Paddington. The Awards event will lead off with a special attraction,… Continue reading Film Critics Circle of Australia annual awards for 2015
Spotlight
Review © Jane Freebury Just before 9/11, the Boston Globe was about to publish revelations of long-term and systematic child sexual abuse by rogue priests in the Catholic Church. The story was eventually published in 2002 and the newspaper’s investigative work honoured with a Pulitzer Prize. The impact of the revelations still continues… Continue reading Spotlight
Carol
Review © by Jane Freebury It’s good to be reminded of why we said goodbye to all that in the 1950s. When advertising had women appear in high heels and tailored dresses to sell washing machines and vacuum cleaners, and the term gender equality scarcely existed. Although the decade is a byword for repression… Continue reading Carol
The Revenant
Review by Jane Freebury An epic about survival against all odds is timeless and borderless. How fascinating that both The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road, each nominated for numerous awards at this year’s Oscars, make wide appeal in their different ways to similar primal instincts. In 1823 American frontiersman Hugh Glass was left… Continue reading The Revenant
Youth
Review by © Jane Freebury Either you have it or you don’t. And is there nothing in between? Poised at the age of 45, the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino may well be asking himself this question in his new film, a lushly orchestrated sojourn in a retreat in the Swiss Alps that only the… Continue reading Youth
Suffragette
Review by Jane Freebury As arguments for human rights go, this is in its quiet way a powerful one. All the more for the way it draws us into the life of a laundress (Carey Mulligan) with lots to lose when she joins the activists in London demanding suffrage for women in 1912. Hard to… Continue reading Suffragette
Truth
Review @ Jane Freebury Movies featuring journalists have a way of looking at the best or the worst of the profession with little shading in between. It makes for some memorable characters. If you saw Jake Gyllenhaal as the gutter rat in Nightcrawler or can remember Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now you get my meaning.… Continue reading Truth
The Dressmaker
Review © by Jane Freebury Once upon a time in the Wimmera, a stranger comes to town. The twang of guitar and low-angle framing suggest that this someone means business. The main street is empty, more a case of it being the dead of night than townsfolk getting out of harm’s way. It’s welcome… Continue reading The Dressmaker
The Martian
Review by Jane Freebury A mission on Mars is aborted during a wild storm. One crew member is left behind, presumed killed by flying debris, but the rest of the crew escape and begin their long journey home. At NASA they notice that equipment at the abandoned habitat is being moved around. It can mean… Continue reading The Martian
Macbeth
Review by © Jane Freebury The last time I saw Macbeth on screen it was set in the ganglands of Melbourne. Geoffrey Wright’s film was not the first to opt for a mobster interpretation either, but I think it misses the point that you don’t have to be a gangster to behave like one. The… Continue reading Macbeth
The Gift
Review © Jane Freebury Gifts are not always welcome, nor freely given. The well known subtext to giving and receiving gets a thoroughly sinister workout in this accomplished first feature from Joel Edgerton, one of the many fine Australian actors on screen. There are interesting dimensions to Edgerton’s creativity. He has writing credits for local… Continue reading The Gift