I don’t often present my thoughts in the first person when writing a review, but there is one moment in Justin Kurzel’s Nitram that affected me so deeply on a personal level that it completely overpowered my experience of the film up to that point, so I decided that keeping any pretence at critical distance was futile. Nitram systematically depicts the life of mass murderer Martin Bryant in the months before he massacred 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania in…
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CODA 2021
CODA is coming-of-age story that plays a familiar tune in a fresh and interesting way. Second-time filmmaker Siân Heder (Tallulah) has adapted a French drama into a simple but hugely affecting story about a girl from a deaf family torn between her commitments at home, and following her dreams. Teasing superb performances from her cast, Heder overcomes the more generic, and stereotypically ‘Sundance’ elements of the tale to swing for the emotional fences with an earnest and authentic depiction of disability that makes up for some storytelling shortcuts
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Amélie 2001
Okay, okay, so it takes place in a kaleidiscopic, pastel-coloured carnival of whimsy and overwhelmingly-white Montmartre that does not exist, and never did; even in its arty Chat Noir, Can-Canning heydey. It's been rightly criticised for not reflecting the multi-cultural nature of modern Paris, and the plot is admittedly slight.....
But it's also the most joyous, idiosyncratic and downright fun movie I think I have ever seen. Most of my other favourite films tend towards the bleak, but the first…
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Calvary 2014
"I was seven years old when I first tasted semen."
This is the startling first line of the nameless man who sits down in the confession box to be heard by Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson). The man goes on to tell of systematic abuse by a now-dead priest. He then tells Fr. James that he will kill him a week on Sunday as he is a good man. Killing a bad priest would be nothing. Killing a good one?…
