ScreenWize

Review of “Dear John”

Simon — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:33:14 +0000

I have long been an admirer of director Lasse Hallstrom, a composed and confident filmmaker who, despite making the ABBA music videos back in the 1970s, has never been seduced by the quick cut or the gritty handheld look. His feature films – from My Life As A Dog and Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape to An Unfinished Life and Chocolat - are classically constructed and infused with a warmth that comes both from Hallstrom’s characters and his approach to cinematography. Most distinctive with Hallstrom’s work is his confidence to pace a story with enough time to let us savour the emotions in play. If you want a nice story beautifully told, Lasse’s your man. (more…)

Review of “A Single Man”

Simon — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:51:43 +0000

As elegant and stylish as a 1960’s advertisement for exclusive menswear, A Single Man is more of a showpiece for style than an emotional journey, with fashion-designer turned film director Tom Ford overwhelming Colin Firth’s performance of a bereft man with scene after scene of impeccably beautiful but detached imagery. (more…)

Review of “Crazy Heart”

Simon — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:59:38 +0000

What a treat to see and feel an independent American movie that sifts gently across the Western landscape with a heartfelt touch – albeit dusted over with a hazy drift of nostalgia. Based on the novel by Thomas Cobb, actor-turned director Scott Cooper shows a deft hand at focusing on the intimate nature of alcoholic country singer Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges). Eeking out a living on the road between tiny towns, and throwing up between playing the songs of his much-loved old repertoire to small and ageing groups of fans, Bad is a grimy washed up drunk who has left several marriages and most of his talent well and truly behind him. Ahead is only another town and another bottle or whisky, until he meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) a single mum with a young son. (more…)

Quick Review of “The Hurt Locker”

Simon — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:30:20 +0000

A visceral, gripping and totally absorbing film that follows one man’s life on the front line of bomb disposal, The Hurt Locker will surely take out an Academy Award nomination for Best Director next February. Director Kathryn Bigalow puts you right in the adrenaline rush zone along with the remarkable Jeremy Ranner playing the man who cant seem to get enough. (more…)

Review of “Shutter Island”

Simon — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:51:18 +0000

You can almost feel Martin Scorsese straining to create some magic in his latest feature Shutter Island, with its pounding music, ominous cinematography, jaw-clenching close-up performances and overblown gothic flashbacks. Sadly the screenplay – a tale of a man losing (or finding?) his mind in a mental asylum - is fatally flawed and the film ends up, after some uncharacteristically unsubtle directing, an operatic curiosity. (more…)

Review of “The Wolfman”

Simon — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:15:54 +0000

Despite the hairy production process, Universal Pictures has managed to rescue a half decent chiller in this remake of the 1941 classic B-grade Wolfman that starred Lon Chaney as the man turned beast. With a delayed release caused by producer-director battles over budgets, a sacked director (Mark Romanek), weeks of re-shoots and re-editing, there was always a risk that this would emerge a beast of a film – half director’s vision, half producers demand, and wholly a film made by committee. Yet the story hangs together surprisingly well, even if the lead, Benicio Del Toro, looks utterly bored and wooden throughout. (more…)

Review of “Up In The Air”

Simon — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:55:04 +0000

Jason Reitman, the young director who previously brought us the caustic Thank you for smoking and the critical and commercial darling Juno, proves himself again adept at intelligent comedy with Up in the Air. In it, George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who has perfected the art of distance. A seasoned corporate traveller, he is farmed out by his company to do the hatchet work for bosses who don’t have the stomach to fire their own employees, and is home a mere 43 days a year. Ryan has perfected his air travel routine so it has minimum impact on his schedule and allows him minimal contact with other people, excepting the occasional one night stand. Ryan even lectures to other travelling business folk on his philosophy of travel. (more…)

Interview with Mia Wasikowska

Simon — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:50:25 +0000

There have been more than twenty film versions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, but none starring a local Canberra girl in the title role. In 1903 May Clark played the first screen Alice, the longest film ever made in Britain at the time. At a whopping 12 minutes, it was considered far too long by most distributors, and was cut up and screened in episodes. Hard-pressed for actors, director Cecil Hepworth cast his wife as the White Rabbit and the Queen, and dragged the 15-year-old May Clark away from her duties as a runner and studio secretary to be Alice. (more…)

Review of “Precious”

Simon — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:55:35 +0000

The producers and distributors of Precious faced an Everest-sized obstacle in making such miserable subject matter palatable. The story of an obese, illiterate and unloved girl growing up in conditions of horrible abuse in Harlem, Precious is a hard sell for audiences. The character of Precious, pregnant at 16 with the second child to her father, living a virtual servant under the bitterly resentful eye of her mother, is that of a damaged psyche, a girl with no self esteem. She speaks, in the film, in monosyllable monotone, and escapes the wretched misery of her life into a serious of daydreams of a feted and glamorous life. (more…)

Review of “A Prophet”

Simon — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:57:16 +0000

Unquestionably the best film I saw at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury (better known as coming second), A Prophet is an extraordinary prison-based crime drama that is destined to be one of the finest works of the decade. In a year with little top-class French cinema to be found, this is exhilarating, intelligent, gritty and ruthlessly surprising - managing to capture the harrowing and detailed complexities of a young man’s life behind bars, and his rise through the criminal hierarchy. (more…)