Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Bram Stoker's Dracula 1992

  ★★★★ Rewatched 16 Nov 2020 10

  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,…

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  Stranded 2015

  ★★★★★ Watched 01 Apr 2020 16

  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…

Recent reviews

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  To Sleep So as to Dream 1986

  ★★★★½ Watched 30 Jan 2025 2

  This film from director Kaizō Hayashi has earned its place towards the top of my list of great first films.  It is a big call, and it reminded me of Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour (2024), which topped my best film list last year, both for its love of early silent cinema and the sense of fun and excitement that comes from having no idea where the film is taking you.  The film is all the more amazing because Hayashi came out of…

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  The Colours 1976

  ★★★★ Watched 29 Jan 2025

  Although this short film (16 minutes) is one for Abbas Kiarostami completists, its combination of bright colours, rapid edits, and precise framing is something Kiarostami would carry over into his later features.  After graduating from the University of Tehran School of Fine Arts, Kiarostami joined the filmmaking department of Kanoon (The Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults) in 1969 and over the next two decades while he worked there, he made a number of short films for…

Popular reviews

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  It Must Be Heaven 2019

  ★★★★½ Watched 11 Aug 2019 4

  There was a point about a third of the way through writer/director Elia Suleiman's absurdist comedy that 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.…

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  The Trouble with Being Born 2020

  ★★★★ Watched 03 Dec 2020 7

  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 contacted 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…