A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Pedro Almodóvar, “The Skin I Live In / La Piel Que Habito” (2011) Georges Franju’s sci-fi horror classic “Eyes without a Face” was overdue for a remake…
Lars von Trier, “Melancholia” (2011) Fed up with the deadbeat rate of intellectual and cultural evolution that the human species was demonstrating on planet Earth, the…
Paul Verhoeven, “Starship Troopers” (1997) Loosely adapted from the Robert Heinlein novel of the same name, this film can be read as a caricature on several…
David Blair, “Finding the Telepathic Cinema of Manchuria” (2010) After finishing “WAX or the Discovery of Television among the Bees”, director David Blair set about picking…
Charlie Deaux, “Zoetrope” (1999) Based on my favourite Franz Kafka short story “In the Penal Colony”, this is a stunning-looking short piece about a man’s last…
Australian and New Zealand Films
Anthony Lucas, “The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello” (2004) A nominee for a Best Animated Short Film Oscar in 2006, this is a visually beautiful…
Andrei Shushkov, “Invention of Love” (2010) Came across this elegant and melancholy film short by chance while hunting out another film short on Youtube.com and decided…
Sally Cruikshank, “Quasi at the Quackadero” (1975) Here’s a great little cartoon about a mismatched couple, Anita and Quasi, living in a science fantasy future and…
Larry and Andy Wachowski, “The Matrix” (1999) Strip “The Matrix” of its sci-fi trimmings, its computer FX and choreographed martial arts and gunfight scenes and what…
Shinya Tsukamoto, “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” (1989) Once again Tsukamoto has remade “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” in the form of “Tetsuo: Bullet Man”, the previous remake having been…