Category Archive: Drama Film
Conclave
(Directed by Edward Berger, 2024) [Thanks to our Guest Reviewer, Dr. Jack White] Last night, I attended the final night of the Italian Film Festival in Adelaide that presented “Conclave” – a papal thriller based on Robert Harris’s novel. This is a film you must see, certain to take out many Academy Awards. Obviously, the setting is the Vatican. The Pope has died. The film explores the process by which Cardinals come together to vote for a new Pope. What is clear from the outset is that the cardinals are real people with real frailties who are driven by human…
Continue Reading →Barbarian (2022)
(Director – not to be mentioned. He is not to be encouraged.) [Zach Cregger directed, his first, possibly last, effort, although the film made good money apparently – Facts matter- ED.] “Barbarian” is not rateable on the “Babadook Scale“. It’s not that sort of horror movie. It’s the sort on which even fewer pesky script meetings are wasted. You can determine whether you have seen this film by casting yourself in the lead role and answering the following questions. You are a young woman who arrives in the rainy dead of night to find that your B & B is…
Continue Reading →All of Us Strangers (2024)
(Director Andrew Haigh) Adam (Bill Paxton look-alike Andrew Scott) is a desolate would-be writer, living alone. After a fire alarm in his London tower block he meets Harry (Paul Mescal) who is, strangely, the only other inhabitant of the building. Harry wants to party the night away, but Adam sends him home. Soon after this, for reasons which are not clear, Adam goes to a park near his childhood home (set in the house in which director Haigh was raised) and meets his father, apparently by chance. Adam starts to spend time with his parents whom he hasn’t seen since…
Continue Reading →The Zone of Interest
(Directed by Jonathan Glazer, based on the book by Martin Amis) (2023) Poland is one beautiful country; with a plethora of mountains, verdant meadows, sea-coast, and more lakes than most. Which explains why so many imperialists wanted their grubby hands on it. In 1939, for example, as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Poland was neatly sliced into two zones. One zone, the Russian one, executed an unknown number of Poles, sometimes with organisation, at other times in a haphazard panic. The German zone, where Poles (and others) were dealt with under typical Teutonic efficiency, is the ‘Zone of Interest’…
Continue Reading →Saltburn
"every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
(Directed by Emerald Fennell, 2023) Why would any middle or working class young person accept an invitation to their aristocratic University chum’s stately pile? Every movie-goer knows that the guest will have the wrong clothes, the butler will despise them, something bad will happen and lives will be Changed Forever. There is of course the very slight chance that the young person will end-up filthy rich as a result of their visit. Perhaps that’s why they keep turning-up on foot at the magnificent iron gates, having somehow missed the serf who was sent to the station to meet them. We’ve…
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