Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross’ In Bloom is a tender film about two teenage girls trying to maintain their integrity while negotiating the complex moral universe generated when their country is afflicted by civil war.
Belle
Amma Asanta’s BELLE is a small yet satisfying film with a lot to say, and a surprisingly subversive way to say it.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
The second instalment in the SIN CITY series is a limp noir homage lacking any narrative complexity, filled with tedious dialogue and a massive misunderstanding with regards to its usage of violence and sex onscreen.
The Grandmaster
With The Grandmaster, Kar-wai has asserted that he has no intentions of entering cinematic senility, whilst simultaneously refusing to continue doing the path of a style that defined his output for over a decade.
Magic in the Moonlight
MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT finds Woody Allen in familiar territory, and to great effect, with terrific performances by Colin Firth and Emma Stone.
Lucy
Not a perfect movie, at times rushed and underdeveloped, but LUCY has enough visual imagination and fun to make it a really worthwhile blockbuster.
Felony
Despite some flawed characterisation and less than interesting subplots, FELONY – a co-production from the exciting Aussie film collective Blue Tongue Films – successfully channels homegrown urban disillusionment into a narrative which deals with abiding film tropes in a fresh and genuine way.
What We Do In The Shadows
Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows is a crowd-pleaser of a film, a mockumentary that toys with vampires as much as it does popular culture.
The Infinite Man
Bafflingly a ‘festival favourite’, Hugh Sullivan’s faux-clever THE INFINITE MAN is a dull journey through love and regret, or perhaps a regrettable journey through love and dull characterisation.
Predestination
Cult Aussie directors the Spierig Brothers latest feature, while better than most other Australian genre flicks and with very real potential to do quite well on the international market, fails to hit the mark – unfortunately too predictable and exposition heavy to compete with the cream of the time-travel crop.