Out to own today:
The Water Diviner
 | “I’ll find them, love. I’ll find them and I’ll bring them home to you,” Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) There is too little new being said about war in Russell Crowe’s directorial debut, which starts promisingly and then peters out. When a once A-list actor has been front and centre for a coterie of gifted filmmakers, intrigue is set high for what they might have gleaned. Crowe starred in Ridley Scott’s last great movie, GLADIATOR, was before Peter Weir on MASTER AND COMMANDER, comfortably holding his own against Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s THE INSIDER, and eviscerating the screen in Curtis Hanson’s L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. To compare is of course unfair, though unavoidable; especially as Weir tackled the First World War, from the Australian perspective, in GALLIPOLI. [To read more, click here.] |
She's Funny That way
 | "Even a muse needs a muse," Izzy (Imogen Poots) THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, launching Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd, is regarded as a classic of cinema. One of the vanguard of counter-culture. Director Peter Bogdanovich should thus not be written off, purely on the basis that if you can make a single notable work surely you have it in you to make another? Thirteen years have elapsed since the 75-year old's last cinematic fiction feature. Was it worth the wait? No. [To read more, click here.] |
A Second Chance
 | “We don’t have Alexander. Not any more,” Andreas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) Director Susanne Bier’s brand of heightened melodrama was getting tired. Trying to shake things up, LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED ended up being a tonally odd romantic-drama damp squib. Period Jennifer Lawrence-Bradley Cooper starrer SERENA was a non-starter. A SECOND CHANCE demands we swallow a plot point so far-fetched that only the classiness of proceedings and performance commitment allow a pass – not without an eye-roll though. [To read more, click here.] |
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