Category Archives: Movies 2023

I didn’t think much of this. Plenty of battlescenes, but it was a pretty thin exploration of Napoleon’s character. There must have been more to him than this rutting dog, trying to impregnate Josephine. There must have been something that inspired enough loyalty in his troops and among the population to accept his return for the hundred days. The whole thing felt thin. And it just seemed wrong having them speak English.

My score: 3/5 stars

This was such good fun. Visually it was stunning, with its plastic pinks and shiny surfaces, and I loved the way that Robbie and Gosling’s faces became more expressive as the film went on. You could take a 7 year old to see it, although much of the rather obvious commentary would go over their heads. I loved it.

My score: 4.5 stars

I seem to be attracted to films about the colonialism/religion nexus at the moment. Where The New Boy, was set in the baking Australian outback, with Godland we are taken to Iceland, where a young Danish priest Lucas is sent to the island of Iceland as part of the extension of Danish influence. He doesn’t speak the language, so he is allotted a translator, but when the translator dies he is left under the care of his Icelandic guide, Ragnar. He is a photographer, and he takes with him his cumbersome camera equipment, and the legs of the tripod appear like a form of spired cathedral on his back. They also cart with them a heavy wooden cross (just like in The New Boy) but the cross is lost. The Icelandic villagers are mainly hostile towards this Danish imposition, and Lucas despises the boorishness of the Icelanders. The film is shot in an aspect ratio that gives it the appearance of a square on the screen, and I was reminded of watching a slideshow (fitting, given Lucas’ interest in photography). It’s beautifully filmed, but oh so bleak and isolated, and the film itself is very slow. I don’t know whether it was the stark photography, or whether the airconditioning in the theatre was too high, but I came out chilled to the bone.

My rating: 3 stars.

At the end of watching this film, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about it. It seemed very ponderous, with imagery and metaphor laid on thick. But I’ve found myself thinking about it more than I thought I would afterwards.

Cate Blanchett plays a nun, Sister Eileen, in an outback (very outback) mission station during WW2, where she and two indigenous co-workers, another nun (played well by Deborah Mailman) and a brooding overseer/worker played by Wayne Blair, collude in covering up the death of the resident priest. We don’t learn how he died, only that Sister Eileen (who has her own demons with alcohol), is still talking to him, and that she doesn’t want another priest appointed in his stead. A ‘new boy’ is delivered by the police to the mission, who is completely tribal, does not speak English and knows nothing of western ways. He is also invested with a form of magic, and is particularly drawn to a large wooden crucifix that is erected in their small church in the middle of the desert. Sister Eileen comes to believe that the New Boy is sent by God, and baptizes him….and I think that you know the rest.

There are aspects of magic realism, alongside a commentary of colonialism and religion, and its incomprehension of the wealth of indigenous spirituality. A bit heavy-handed though.

My rating: 3.5 stars

This documentary goes right to my adolescence – watching Happening 70, reading Go-Set, screaming at the Masters Apprentices- so of course I was going to love it. It’s a pretty straight documentary, with talking heads and voice-overs, but it’s also the story of Australia’s pop music scene of the 1960s and 70s, fame and its loss and recovery, and loyalty. Its focus is John Farnham, but it is also a tribute to his manager, Glenn Wheatley (ex- Masters Apprentices) who died from complications of COVID just weeks before filming had finished – a timely reminder of those early months of the pandemic when no-one knew much about the virus except that it was completely new. As a result, Gaynor Wheatley receives more screen time than she would have otherwise, but that’s a strength because being narrated largely at third-hand gives the documentary a level of abstraction that lifts it above hagiography. John’s current health problems give it an added level of poignancy. I loved it.

Four and a half stars.

Apparently this film is a remake of the Japanese film Ikuru, which was itself inspired by Tolstoy’s novella ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’. That doesn’t surprise me because it had that well-structured short story feel about it. In fact it reminded me of the other film based on a short story that I saw recently ‘The Quiet Girl‘ (well, last year) that affected me so much with its close-up focus, beautiful cinematography and repressed emotional pain. I’m not surprised, either, that Kazuo Ishiguro was involved in the screenplay because it has the same nostalgia and repressed yearning of ‘The Remains of the Day’. Bill Nighy’s acting is just wonderful and the stultifying atmosphere of the office is so well captured that you can feel it deadening you.

My rating: 4.5 stars

At first, I didn’t think that I was going to like this Metropolitan Opera movie of ‘The Hours’, despite its stellar cast of Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O’Hara. I’ve read the book; I saw the Nicole Kidman film; and now the opera. With all three narrative lines running at once on the stage- something that isn’t possible with a book- at first it sounded very screechy with rather banal lines.

But by the end, the theatre was completely silent, with audience members holding their breath. It was very, very good.

And how did I even know who Joyce DiDonato even is? Through this video, that I discovered during lockdown. I’ve followed her ever since.