Daniel Ziv’s documentary feature Jalanan (Streetside), currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, is a film that seeks to move its audience. Documentaries sometimes invite viewers…
I met the Australian poet Christopher Barnett in Nantes in 2009. He strode the narrow streets in his long leather coat, occasionally crossing the road in front of cars, staring drivers down. When I asked…
The recent publication of a study measuring the quantity and quality of LGBT representation in mainstream Hollywood cinema has left the industry smarting. GLAAD’s research found that out of 102 major studio…
Rajesh Jala’s Children of the Pyre (2008) is one of seven documentary features in the India in Flux: Living Resistance strand at the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). The film is a finely…
Hollywood makes films that excite and exhilarate; films that make us laugh, cry, connect with humanity – and above all make box office bucks along the way. While most of us would happily say we were going…
The nine films that comprise the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Experimental Shorts program confront viewers with questions about image, form and genre. The Experimental Shorts program is an annual…
Mood Indigo has received a number of enthusiastic reviews. I’m not sure why. The film takes quirky to an all new extreme. And as the French literary and comic substance to it have been pretty much completely…
Audiences familiar with Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes won’t need any recommendation to see their latest film, Two Days, One Night, which is on the program of the Melbourne International…
For the most part we live in disenchanted times: everyday life and the political landscape seem increasingly dried of their magical possibilities. Instead they are filled with dross and drone, the relentless…
It’s Open Day season at universities across Australia. Prospective students are pondering whether it’s worth doing a degree or not – and in particular, whether it will increase their chances of gaining…
There was a brief flurry of panic as Ofqual, the UK government agency charged with looking after school qualifications, left both film studies and media studies out of the list of subjects students would…
It goes without saying these are difficult times for the country’s museums and archives. In recent months, the National Library, War Memorial, Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, and others, have all flagged…
Who wants to be Hercules? Judging by the huge amount of internet interest in the diet and fitness regime of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, former professional wrestler and star of the latest Hercules film…
Hercules is once again back on our screens. This latest version has Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson in the title role, alongside an international cast which includes a host of British stars. John Hurt is Cotys…
Walt Disney is, to many people, the most influential person who has been in film. And after all, he garnered the most accolades, receiving as many as 59 Oscar nominations. But there’s another film titan…
Consider the last three major films gracing our screens that explicitly deal with HIV/AIDS – the Academy Award-winning, highly acclaimed Dallas Buyers Club in 2013, followed by Ryan Murphy’s much-hyped…
As Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opens, it’s worth remembering that the racial conflicts and the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s underpin the original films. The traditional evolutionary hierarchy…
Rolf de Heer’s new film Charlie’s Country, which opened yesterday, examines the day-to-day experiences of an older man in Arnhem Land as he struggles for independence and respect in his home town. The…
The tan-tastic trailer for Ridley Scott’s new epic Exodus: Gods and Kings was recently released, to lukewarm response. What I find most striking about the trailer is not, as you might expect, Christian…
I’m trying to figure out why I’m so disheartened with the movies this summer. It’s true that the season began badly. Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a disappointment. The aerial sequences at the…