Category Archive: Drama Film
Spencer (dir. Pablo Larrain 2021)
Pablo Larrain’s fiction about an imagined few days in the life of Diana, Princes of Wales at Sandringham Castle, Christmas 1991 will make you feel really sorry for that woman. Not Diana. Heavens no! But Kristen Stewart. The poor thing does very well in portraying Diana despite a poor Sloane Ranger accent and a script as leaden as the lining of a butler’s sink. Stewart gives Spencer’s Diana just as much weight as she merits – none. Spencer’s Diana is a whiney, entitled, disrespectful, self-centred fool. She’s world-weary and heartily sick and tired of the demands that those nasty Windsors…
Continue Reading →Quo Vadis, Aida?
(Directed by Jasmila Zbanic) (2020) If you were told that a mortal enemy was approaching your town, in force, what would you do? Would you up stakes (family, dog, cat, photos, bread and water)? Or would you wait and hope for relief from a UN Peace Keeping brigade, lacking both air support and Sun Tzu’s well-known power to keep peace (i.e. by preparedness for war)? After Tito, who had ruled Yugoslavia for some 34 years under Soviet patronage (although he was not exactly a puppet) died in 1980, it was inevitable that the country would list, containing as it did…
Continue Reading →The House of Gucci (dir. Ridley Scott)
Gucci 2022. (Image courtesy of www.gucci.com)
(2021) Poor Ridley doesn’t know what kind of director he is – sci-fi (Alien, Blade Runner), historicist (Gladiator, Robin Hood) or God-Love-America (Thelma and Louise, Black Hawk Down)? He’s as confused as we are by his house-of-fashion-meets-financial-shenanigans offering, The House of Gucci. Gold-digger Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) at a Milan party. She wants him, at least the Gucci part. He’s not interested, indeed he doesn’t seem to be interested in anything at all throughout the two and a half hour story, but Patrizia won’t leave him alone. She throws all of Gaga’s famous 5 foot…
Continue Reading →The Power of the Dog
Chaps and More Chaps, and a Little Anthrax on the Side How Jane Campion’s Dude Ranch Film Slides Away into the Montana Night By Janelle McCulloch “The Power of the Dog” directed by Jane Campion (2021) What can be said about The Power of the Dog? It’s a strange way to begin a film review of this Western drama, but I am well and truly mute. And much of this now-widely-talked-about film is, too. It’s a beautifully shot piece, low on dialogue but big on wide Montana skies (which are actually wide New Zealand skies), and there are some very…
Continue Reading →Never Let Me Go
Book written by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) Film directed by Mark Romanek (2010) Ishiguro, Romanek, please let us go, you heartless bastards. Not since Chris Lilley killed Pat Mullins (We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year of the Year, ABC TV, 2005) have we at TVC been rendered sleepless by an afflicted fictional character. And we could laugh at Pat. Laugh at any of the characters in Ishiguro’s book or Romanek’s film of the book and you will go straight to hell. It is best perhaps to watch Romanek’s realisation before reading Ishiguro’s pitiless novel. The film transforms…
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