Our expert shares the five films from the Melbourne International Film Festival that have stuck with him.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Film review
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The plot is rudimentary, but the tone is totally compelling, the characters are likable, and the surf photography first rate.
Seven years in the making, this disturbing Australian film looks at the death of 100,000 citizens in during the second world war.
Now on Stan, the film comes in versions subtitled by Julia Davis, and Celia Pacquola with Ronny Chieng. The result is two very different types of humour.
Elvis is full of Luhrmann’s signature self-indulgence, inflated budget and artistic grandiosity – I loved it.
Our expert saw around 40 films at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, and presents their top picks.
Branagh’s adaptations are more concerned with Poirot himself than any of the suspects – the murder in this film only happens 70 minutes in.
Bollywood is demonstrating a renewed purpose of creating new national myths, such as 83’s retelling of India’s first win at the cricket world cup.
Far from the romance of 1981’s made-for-TV films, Spencer is trapped in a frozen Sandringham setting, gasping for air.
Woven throughout the backstories of these characters is the loss of loved ones, lack of resources and the desperation to get out of economic hardship.
An extraordinary technological feat, Get Back looks and sounds astonishingly good.
From Molly Reynolds and Shekhar Bassi, ShoPaapaa is a mundane and excruciating 95 minutes – but will become an enduring portrait of 2020.
A reworking of the 1892 Henry Lawson short story, this film is a subversive survival story.
The message of Eva Orner’s new documentary is spot on, the logic of its argument faultless. But it tells us things more than it makes us feel things, and this is seldom beneficial in the medium.
There are many nods to Mesopotamian myth in Marvel’s Eternals. The character of Gilgamesh is the first ancient Near Eastern hero with a leading role in a Marvel film.
The hero of The Green Knight, played brilliantly by Dev Patel, is flawed and less than honorable. The film is a deliberately unromantic exploration of the world of King Arthur and his court.
This gem of a documentary explores the life — and furniture — of a Melbourne icon.
Perth band The Triffids were indie pioneers, and their charismatic vocalist David McComb, who died at 36, wrote lyrics imbued with the Western Australian landscape. A new film charts his story.
The problem isn’t the film’s adherence to a tried and true formula, or its absolutely rudimentary narrative, but the flat and careless execution of it all.
From working on Jaws to putting herself in danger, Valerie Taylor vowed to change public attitudes to sharks. A new film dives deeply into her underwater life.
Top contributors
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Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Professor, Queensland University of Technology
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Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
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Research Fellow, Robotics & AI, Queensland University of Technology
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PhD Candidate and Sessional Tutor, Screen and Cultural Studies, The University of Melbourne
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Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University
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Associate Professor and Cinema and Screen Studies Discipline Leader, Swinburne University of Technology
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Lecturer in Media, University of Adelaide
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Professor, Indigenous Studies and Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures, Macquarie University
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Research Fellow, La Trobe University
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Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut
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Lecturer in Screen Media, University of the Sunshine Coast
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Adjunct associate, Flinders University
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Lecturer (casual) at Sydney College of the Arts; Adjunct Lecturer Auro University, University of Sydney
