I was not all that impressed when this film was first released in Australia as it seemed out of whack with Francis Ford Coppola’s earlier filmography.  My film journal notes recorded that the characters seemed to sink under the weight of the storytelling and that Coppola’s decision to separate himself from earlier film versions left him stranded in a weird no man’s land - neither literary adaptation nor horror movie (not even psychological horror).

Rewatching it all these years later,…

I need to declare up front that I find it impossible to maintain any kind of critical distance from this documentary, directed by Serge Ou (with a segment director credit for Andy Neil) for Wildbear Entertainment, the ABC and Film Queensland.  This is the footage and the soundtrack of my 20s and it was a joy to spend a little over an hour seeing dozens of people I knew well 40  to 50 years ago, bands that were part of…

When I saw this film, written and directed by Michael Haneke, at MIFF2012, I was working as the Projects Manager at Palliative Care Victoria where one of my projects was developing an awareness campaign to promote discussions about Advance Directives and substitute decision-making.  Part of that campaign had a focus on the importance with Alzheimers of planning ahead so that your wishes could be set out clearly for when you were no longer able to make your own decisions.

Haneke…

I would not ordinarily log television series, but this one is listed on Letterboxd and is made up of three feature length documentaries directed by Roel Reiné.  In Australia, it screened on SBS television over three consecutive Sunday nights.

What I really liked about the series, which focuses on Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Cleopatra, was the breadth of experts that Reiné drew on to tell his stories - not just ancient historians, but sociologists, archaeologists, architects, and retired…

There was a point about a third of the way through writer/director Elia Suleiman's absurdist comedy where I realised that hidden just under the surface of the very funny screenplay was a diamond-hard political edge.

Suleiman, playing himself, opens his film in Palestine then travels to Paris and New York trying to get producers to put up the money for his latest film. He runs into Western stereotypes of what a Palestinian is and what a Palestinian film must be.…

Thanks to a sensible approach by Australia’s Classification Board which rated the film R18+ (restricted to 18 and over), we are now able to see Sandra Wollner’s film which was pulled from the Melbourne International Film Festival virtual program after two forensic psychologists ed by Karl Quinn, the film critic at The Age, condemned the film as “a source of arousal for men interested in child abuse material” in one case and constituting “child abuse material” in the other.  The…