Festival Review: 600 Miles / 600 Millas (2015)
★★★☆☆
A tense tale of Mexican machismo as a young gun-runner hooks up with a US cop, Gabriel Ripstein’s 600 Miles shows the gangster genre from its sensitive side.
★★★
Festival Review: Blue Blood / Sangue Azul (2015)
★★★☆☆
A mesmerising portrait of the loneliness of the beautiful, Lírio Ferreira’s Blue Blood is an enigmatic blend of circus, ballet and cinema.
Selma (2014)
★★★☆☆
A powerful dramatisation of Martin Luther King’s final battle, Ava DuVernay’s Selma is a moving account of the march on racism and the man behind the movement.
The Turning (2013)
★★★☆☆
A collection of short films marking the turning points in interconnected lives, The Turning is a dark celebration of Australia and its frustrated people.
Festival Review: Nobody Wants The Night / Nadie Quiere La Noche Aie (2015)
★★★☆☆
Shifting the story from polar explorer Peary to his wife, Isabel Coixet’sNobody Wants The Night offers a distinctly female slant on colonisation.
Son Of A Gun (2014)
★★★☆☆
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.
Erebus: Into The Unknown (2014)
★★★☆☆
A dramatic reconstruction of New Zealand’s worst air disaster, Charlotte Purdy’s Erebus: Into The Unknown loses itself in the snows of Antarctica.
The Woman in Black: The Angel of Death (2015)
★★★☆☆
Horror story which begins as schoolchildren and their teachers are evacuated from London to a deserted house in the remote countryside in World War II.
Unbroken (2014)
★★★☆☆
A well-deserved and accomplished tribute to a survivor’s trials of war, Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken is nevertheless a shallow experience of suffering.
Kon-Tiki (2012)
★★★☆☆
Friends since childhood, Kon-Tiki directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg sail through their Norse saga of adventure, friendship and trust with a handsome parable on film-making.
Electricity (2014)
★★★☆☆
Occasionally hampered by one-dimensional characters, Agyness Deyn is the scintillating spark of a film that convincingly encapsulates the defiance of life with epilepsy.
The Green Prince (2014)
★★★☆☆
A fascinating tale of friendship and betrayal, Nadav Schulman’s documentary The Green Prince reminds us of the importance of placing ethics over politics.
Black Sea (2014)
★★★☆☆
In Kevin Macdonald’s Black Sea, a motley crew of British and Russian submariners try to recover a fortune in gold from a sunk World War II German submarine.
Hello Carter (2013)
★★★☆☆
Down-on-his-luck Carter has recently become homeless, single and unemployed. Desperate to win back his ex-girlfriend, he goes off on an adventure throughout London to find her, picking up some odd helpers along the way.