Festival Review: Victoria (2015)
★★★★☆
Dancing, walking, laughing and shooting their way down the boulevard of broken dreams, Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria is a lyrical one-take wonder.
★★★★☆
Dancing, walking, laughing and shooting their way down the boulevard of broken dreams, Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria is a lyrical one-take wonder.
★★★★☆
A beautifully lensed portrait of Mayan life under the Pacaya volcano, Jayro Bustamante’s Ixcanul exposes the terrifying vulnerability of indigenous peoples.
★★★★☆
Turning the camera upon himself for the third time, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is a moving portrait of the politics of filming and the filming of politics.
★★★☆☆
A collection of short films marking the turning points in interconnected lives, The Turning is a dark celebration of Australia and its frustrated people.
★★★☆☆
Action-packed with prison getaways, bullion heists and criminal double-crossing, Son Of A Gun delivers a high-octane thriller. Just cut the monkey business.
★★★★☆
Did video kill the radio? Nicolas Philibert uncovers the mystery of the medium in his warmly human documentary La Maison de la Radio.
★★★★☆
A beautiful adaptation of Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir, James Kent’s Testament Of Youth is a bitter tale of love in wartime for the 21st century.
★★★★☆
With a brilliant one-hander from Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed trekking the PCT, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild makes for rehydrated but beautiful soul food.
★★★★★
Ferocious, electric and unrelenting, Simmons and Teller never miss a beat in Damien Chazelle’s phenomenal second feature Whiplash.
★★★★★
Carell, Ruffalo and Tatum are a stellar triumvirate in this unsettling and bone-chillingly creepy true story.
★★★★☆
If this is a man. Claude Lanzmann’s The Last Of The Unjust recuts unused Shoah interviews to reveal the controversial figure of Benjamin Murmelstein – Europe’s last Jewish Elder.
★★★☆☆
Occasionally hampered by one-dimensional characters, Agyness Deyn is the scintillating spark of a film that convincingly encapsulates the defiance of life with epilepsy.
★★★★☆
A fascinating glimpse of the goings-on at one of the grandes dames of Europe’s museum scene, The Great Museum offers a compelling portrait of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.
★★★★☆
Jason Reitman’s incisive slice of modern suburbia is a sad, humorous and painfully relevant snapshot of our subservience to social media.