Category Archives: Movies 2018

There’s not a lot of dialogue in this film, or at least, not much dialogue that you and I will understand. An Australian ex-soldier, Mike, returns to Afghanistan where he served in the army some years earlier. He had been involved on a raid on a village, and he wants to make amends. He doesn’t speak Pashtun, and to put us as viewers in Mike’s place, nothing is translated.  The landscape is stark- no wonder armies founder there.

It’s an excellent meditation on repentance and forgiveness.

My rating: 4 stars.

And here’s an interesting video about the making of Jirga

This is showing at the moment in Melbourne as part of the Italian Film Festival. It is a documentary about the Elena Ferrante phenomenon, exploring the universal popularity of her books and contextualizing the Neapolitan novels amongst Ferrante’s other works. It doesn’t necessarily dwell on who the author is, but instead considers the effect of having an invisible and unknown author, both on readers and the book marketing industry.  The documentary features several well-known talking heads, most particularly Elizabeth Strout and Jonathan Franzen for Western readers and translator Ann Goldstein, intercut with animations and small film clips. It has subtitles.

I also saw Nonnas on the Run, one of two ‘Nonna’ films being shown as part of the Italian Film Festival. It’s a bit of a romp with two ladies-of-a-certain-age breaking out of their aged-care hostel. It teeters on the edge of laughter and a stab of sorrow, which is a good thing.

With the State Judiciary Committee hearing into Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, it seemed  particularly apposite to go to see RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsberg) in its last days.  An intelligent lawyer (and strikingly beautiful as a young woman) she worked quietly in the courts, steadily building up cases that showed that everyone loses by discrimination – women in particular.  Nothing came easily to her: the quotas of female students at university (5 male students to every female student), her difficulty in getting a job even though she was an outstanding student because she was a woman – there’s no entitlement here. The documentary does touch on her inappropriate comments about Trump’s nomination, and the question of whether she should have resigned while Obama was still in power. Who knows? Look at the Republican stonewalling over Merrick Garland. But with the prospect of two men on the Supreme Court with sexual assault or harassment allegations, to say nothing of the President, I’m glad she’s there.

I suspect that this is a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it movie, and I’m afraid that I lean more towards the latter.   Two best friends work together to organize an ‘out’ for people who want to break up a relationship, by deception, confrontation or other devious means. It was too loud and in your face for my liking. It’s a New Zealand film, with layers of Maori-Pakeha relations, and an exploration of female friendship. I did laugh in places, but it didn’t have the quirkiness of ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’.

My rating: 2.5

A few weeks back, this doco was everywhere, but it’s disappearing fast. It’s fantastic. You don’t need to be a Cold Chisel fan (although it helps) because you’ll see his present-day renditions of songs, backed and accompanied by his brilliant daughter Mahalia, in a whole new light. Born in Glasgow into a poor, violent home, he emigrated with his family to Australia, to live in the working class, industrial suburb of Elizabeth in South Australia.  There he embarked upon -and survived- a rough rock-and-roll life that we know replicated the alcoholism and dysfunction of his childhood. He came to be the lead singer of one of the best-known bands in Australia. It’s a mixture of film footage, archival footage about Glasgow and Elizabeth, talking head interviews, a who-do-you-think-you-are-like return to significant places, extracts from his stage show based on the book, and studio recordings.  There were only about five of us in the cinema when I saw it, applauding away vigorously in the dark. Go see it before it disappears.

My rating: 5