Category Archives: Movies 2020

Yes! A movie! The first since March 2020!

Actually, the movie theatres have been open for a couple of weeks, but I felt apprehensive about sitting in a theatre in the dark with other people who were all BREATHING. I made up my mind on Saturday that I would go to see this on Monday, only to learn on Sunday that it was no longer compulsory to wear a mask in a theatre. What to do?

Well, I went to Palace Westgarth and I was one of about ten people in a theatre that would probably seat 100. Certainly a movie like Brazen Hussies, about the Australian women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s, attracts an audience of 60+ year old women and so there we all were, without being told to do so, sitting there with our masks on. I obviously wasn’t the only one who thought “too soon” when the order to wear a mask inside was lifted.

Having just read Michelle Arrow’s The Seventies, this felt like the documentary version of her book. It covers very much the same territory, making the same arguments. It was rather bracing seeing fresh faced, earnest young women in the 1960s being interviewed as craggier, wiser, – and let’s face it – old women in this recently filmed documentary. I have not previously thought of Marcia Langdon as “mellowed” but she was certainly a firebrand in the 1960s. Elizabeth Reid was measured and graceful both then and now. Many of the names and even the faces were familiar to me from their later lives (Sara Dowse, Biff Ward, Pat O’Shane, Eva Cox) but I didn’t have a mental ‘face’ to place on their names back in the 1960s. And..oh…the patronizing, arrogant smugness of young men interviewed at the time, and the the media commentary. It was reassuring to see footage of a recent protest and to realize that, in spite of the ever-present threat of roll-backs, the fight still continues.

Another pre-coronavirus movie. Sigh. Why did I ever take sitting in a movie theatre for granted?

This was really scary!  A spooky story interwoven with domestic violence and surveillance.  Although I must say that I would really like to see a film where Elizabeth Moss isn’t the victim: where she’s the baddie instead.

4.5 out of 5.

From the good old pre-Coronavirus days.

An Austrian farmer, living high in the mountains, knows that he cannot pledge allegiance to Hitler. He can do his compulsory military training, he can work as an ambulance driver – but both of these options require an oath of loyalty to Hitler, and that he cannot do. And so his family is ostracized, he is imprisoned…and I think you know how this is going to end.

This is a beautifully shot film- think of the opening scenes of Sound of Music, and it captures well the isolated, slow pace of life in a small and very primitive village. But ye gods- it is a LONG movie (nearly 3 hours). I hoped to come out feeling inspired, but I just came out thinking “what a bloody waste of a life by a good man”.

My rating 4/5

Ah- the good old pre-coronavirus days, when you could sit in a movie theatre with other people.

I suspect that this is a film of Little Women for viewers who have never read Little Women. It’s boisterous and far more feminist than the book or other film versions, and it breaks the mould by mixing in aspects of Louisa May Alcott’s own story as a writer, as well as using flashbacks and disrupting the narrative flow.

I enjoyed the film, but I bristled at some of the casting. At first I thought that Saoirse Ronan was all wrong as Jo, but by the end of the film she had made the role her own.  Meg was as wishy-washy as she seems in the book. Director Greta Gerwig emphasizes the emotional connection between Jo and Amy, who are seen more as soulmates and very similar to each other than I found in the book . Amy didn’t seem right to me either, too rounded and not self-centred enough. The Amy in my head is haughty and thin. Beth didn’t look sick enough.  And Laurie was just WET.  Professor Bauer was too good-looking, and Laurie’s grandfather wasn’t gruff enough.

However, after all these grizzles, I did enjoy the film, which I think will carve out its own place amongst the many versions of Little Women. How many Little Womens are enough, I wonder?

My rating: 4 out of 5

Viewed at: Palace Westgarth with about 10 other people in the theatre with me. So I would have been safe after all.

This won so many Academy Awards that we had to go to see it. I can certainly see that the film would be a film-afficionado’s delight, with beautifully composed shots and lots of visual imagery.  I’ve only just realized that it was directed by Bong Joon Ho, who directed Snowpiercer (which I saw, but omitted to comment on here in this blog, it seems.) It has similar themes about class and subversion.  While watching it, you are very much aware of its careful staging and lighting.

I’m pleased that a film other than one made in America or Britain was so well-received, and it probably reflects my Eurocentrism that I couldn’t tell you the name of any of the characters in the film other than ‘the poor family’ or ‘the rich husband’. And what an unlovely group of people they were, as a poor family ingratiates and plots its way into a rich family’s house. In the midst of architectural beauty and grinding poverty, everyone is either scrabbling to get ahead, or else completely oblivious to their privilege.

There is heaps of stuff on the internet explaining the story, or explaining why it is so important . I wonder if that says something about the film for a Western, non-cinemaphile audience?

My rating: 3.5 out of 5 (which probably shows that I am no film critic)

Viewed at: Cinema Nova, Cinema 3 (one of the big ones)

I don’t think that Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood ever showed on Australian television. It started in 1968, the same time as Sesame Street, which did make it onto Australian screens. I think that perhaps, even then, Mister Rogers would be a little bit too saccharine and preachy for Australian audiences. Where Sesame Street went for cognitive development, Mister Rogers went for emotional and -dare I say it- spiritual development. I don’t know, even now, if I feel particularly comfortable amongst such goodness.

Tom Hanks is absolutely brilliant in this film. Stay for the end and keep watching the credits to see a clip of the real Mister Rogers. And the real life Esquire magazine article mentioned in the film is here – Can You Say …Hero?  It’s a beautiful piece of writing. And the real life author Tom Junod wrote another article recently about him in the Atlantic Magazine, after the film had been made, and it’s almost just as beautiful as the original.

My rating:  4.5 stars