MOST MARVELLOUS MOVIES

 This 2003 film is one of my favourite 'feel good' movies, along with Across the Universe based on songs of The Beatles instead of dialogue. School of Rock is a tribute to Aussie band, ACDC, which featured a lead singer in a school boys uniform as is the case here.  more to come

 I meet Michael Fassbender again, this time as Viennese psychoanalyst and disciple of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung. Another standout role. I can see why he is such a renowned actor. As chance might have it, I know quite a lot about psychoanalysis and this treatment method's exponents, psychoanalysts, but did not know about this aspect of Jung's life. That he had a long love affair with a Russian Jewish woman who was originally his patient and then became his colleague. He used what he learned about her while under analysis to heighten both their sex lives.  Once again he is placed in a moral dilemma like he has been in other films I have seen him in. Fish Tank and The Light Between Two Oceans where he has to choose between right and wrong. In all instances he chooses wrong. He loses out in the end.  This film drags sometimes, and the segments with a almost cliched stern Freud can be a bit tedious. He is always puffing on a cigar which in the end ...

 Another outstanding film let down by its title. This is one of the best films I have ever seen. The story of a simply family set against the backdrop of the spectacular scenery of Provence in France, Out of all the movies I have reviewed so far, this one is the only one that had not the slightest hint of acting. The actors were all real people. This authenticity enabled them to express the most powerful feelings in the most simple fashion.  The well digger is French but his surname suggests he is of Italian stock. He has five daughters and is bringing them up alone after his wife has died. It is at the time of the start of WWI and steam locomotives carting those enlisting to the front.  I don't want to reveal the narrative here because I do not want to spoil the delight of watching the story unfold. The father is an outstanding character, and the real star of the film, rather than his eldest daughter around whom the plot revolves.  Her mother's favorite song was by ...

 I had never heard of this 1990 film. What was I doing in 1990? I went on a month long trip touring Western Australia with my parents. And turned 32 while on that with them. That is all I remember about that year. .  Well while my memory of the actual film is pretty dim, the film itself is replete with flashes of recognition. The opening scene is of Meryl Streep stepping out of a helicopter, a tourist on her way to an airport, seemingly somewhere in South America, when she is accosted by the local police and accused of having a sexual interlude with a public official. And being a whore. After being punched in the face, and blood oozing between her teeth, the lights go up, and it is a movie set. A scene that has just shot for a movie.  I am already in a turmoil. I do not like Meryl Streep and am tempted to change channels right away. But then I saw another familiar face, Gene Hackman, playing the film's director. Then the one with bedroom eyes and a cheek grin who has alwa...

 An attitude towards a particular actor or actress plays an important role in influencing the enjoyment of a movie or not. I am pleased to say that in my case this attitude can change. Unfortunately in the case of Nicole Kidman, it has gone from better to worse.  I liked her in The Stepford Wives but had to switch off not long after she appeared in this movie. Being a fellow Aussie is not enough. But then again she was born in Hawaii...

 Now with a title like this, it is going to be a film about Africa, isn't it? No it is about Canadian armed forces in Afghanistan engaging in a serious skirmish with the enemy in a rugged desert landscape that hardly seems worth arguing about with a fellow goat herd over a sparse blade of grass.  Even more astounding is how all the soldiers are wired for instant communication with their control centre back at base.   The communication is constant back and forth using a language consisting of numbers with the occasional word. Interspersed by a constant crackle of the radio. A battle takes place in a village of mud huts and the wall of the one they are sheltering in is blasted open by a bomb. One of them calls for help 'ASAP'. They have just determined that the road their back up tanks had been travelling along had been land mined. There were three suspicious looking black marks on the dirt road that had been shot at by one of the Canadian marksmen. One, two, nothing. ...

 I had never heard of this 2016 movie when I saw it by chance in early 2022. The first hint it may have an Australian connection was the appearance of one of the country's most iconic actors, Jack Thompson, followed shortly after by another, Bryan Brown. The star was the lead male actor, Michael Fassbender, who I am ashamed to say I had never heard of either until this week. What a standout actor he is, and he is at his best in this role as a lighthouse keeper who rescues a baby girl adrift with her dead father in a rowing boat and allows his wife to keep her, against his better judgement. Right from the start I was put off by the actress playing the lead female role of the wife of the lighthouse keeper. Together the couple just did not fit. She looked young enough to be his daughter from the start. And wore expensive-looking clothes not normally expected to belong to, or be worn by, a lowly lighthouse keeper's wife. That casting mismatch ruined the whole film for me.  Spectac...

A curious out of left field movie about a stay at home housewife brow beaten by her husband and two teenage sons whose only sense of achievement comes from completing jigsaw puzzles. It is a very traditional Catholic household. The husband is head of the family and captain of the ship and what he says goes. No one is allowed to join him in the decision making process, let alone question his decisions.  His wife thinks she is happy because that is the accepted way of life where they live.  One day this all changes when she ventures in the big city to visit a specialist puzzle store. She finds a sophisticated older man looking for a fellow 'puzzler' to partner him in national and international puzzle competitions. Well, you guessed it, a love affair develops and she is pitched into a moral dilemma she never could have imagined.  This film is a genuine curiosity for the average viewer, but would be of particular interest to anyone who seriously enjoys doing jig saw puzzles....

I found this old review from years ago when I was clearing out some old papers I have been carrying around with me for years. Once a film reviewer, always a film reviewer, I guess. The lead is a successful English-born writer of romance novels, played by the standout British actress, Maggie Smith. Though her success as an author, she has been able to buy a large house in Umbria, in the Italian countryside. But she has no family and feels acutely alone. But then she gets involved in a freak train accident that brings her into contact with three strangers who she invites recover with her at her home.  This is a writer's film. Not simply because the central character is a writer, but also because it attempts to portray the personal qualities of writers, what sets them apart from ordinary mortals. She is highly sensitive, both to other people's energetic presences, and to her surroundings. She can accurately guess people's star signs and she sees events being played out in her ...

Wow! Great cinematography of a gibber desert landscape, of different angles of rocks, and silhouettes of shadows. The story unfolds as unpredictably as the landscape. The relationship between the two men and why they are there and where they are going lies at the heart of it. They get involved in some action with a party of revolutionaries but most of the time it is just them. It is a testament to the skill of the film maker that this is enough to keep the viewer glued to the TV screen until the undramatic end. 

 On the face of it, not my kind of movie at all. The lead, a 15 year old girl called Mia living in a high rise council flat, No 75, with her mother and a younger kid sister called around the age of 10. She is smart and has potential but just can't get it right. Her skill is as a dancer, especially rap.  The problem is Mia cannot find anything or anyone stable to cling onto. Her mother is off her face on drugs most of the time, and badmouths her when she is not. Younger sister Tyler bad mouths her too, but lets her love shine through when she is not on the defensive. The other people she mixes with are rough neck foul mouthed neighbourhood girls her own age, some local teenage boys who own a horse, and her mother's new handsome boyfriend.  But she is strong, and manages on her own. She has her own set of values and stays on the side of good while surrounded by bad. What held my attention throughout this movie was I did not know what Mia in particular and the others in gene...

 Now this Japanese movie was awesome, in the sense of awe and more some. Two young men, who had once been friends, are standing on a train platform. One at the back sees the other at the front, but not vice versa. A drunk falls onto the track and the one at the front jumps down onto the track to rescue him. An express train is coming and his old mate runs to pull him back up, but gets pulled down onto the track too. The rest, as the old saying goes, is history. Or in this case, the future.  The pair find themselves in a bare room with about half a dozen other Japanese adults who have all died in similar circumstances. They are given equipment to return to the real world to participate in life or death battles with monsters. If they win they return to the room. If they lose they die. If they get a certain number of points, they can be released back into the real world, or resurrect someone who has died in a battle. It is their choice.  Of particular interest to me was the ...

 There are most marvellous movies from all around the world on Australian television station SBS. I am ideally placed to view them in that my television is at the end of my bed. Many a night I turn in expecting to go straight to sleep, but end up having a marvellous movie marathon into the wee hours of the morning.