The Good Nurse (2022) - Movie Review

While it may as well be the national genre of choice for storytelling here in Australia, and I grew up with my mother being especially interested in it, true crime doesn’t hold any inherent interest for me personally. I tend to avoid documentaries on the subject, since I don’t particularly like the idea of choosing to occupy my free time with the stories of people who actually got hurt or killed; this is part of the reason why I cling so tightly onto the more speculative genres like sci-fi and horror, where any injuries are pure fiction. But even with that in mind, I went into this hoping for some good just out of the casting, between Eddie Redmayne seriously impressing with his last film The Trial Of The Chicago 7, and Jessica Chastain’s recent career highlight in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye. And yeah, there’s good to it, but I unfortunately struggled to maintain interest in the whole package.

Brain On Fire (2018) - Movie Review

When making films based on real events, one-in-a-million stories are a safe go-to. And considering a certain level of medical curiosity prevails in the film industry (this is why mental conditions are easy Oscar hopefuls), putting the two together can mean shedding cinematic light on disorders and diseases that the layman hasn’t heard of before. From early-onset Alzheimer’s to anaesthetic awareness to, as this particular film focuses on, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, these types of medical conditions can serve as an empathic gateway, giving audiences a look at the perspective of someone going through something that few others have.

90 Minutes In Heaven (2016) - Movie Review

It’s religious cinema time again! I want to point out that I am not doing this because such films are generally easy targets; sitting through God’s Not Dead 2 was anything but easy. No, I maintain that I want to see really good religious cinema come to theatres around here. One of my favourite films is Kevin Smith’s Dogma, something that affected me so deeply as to completely shape my views on theology to what they are today, and I’d give anything for someone else to be similarly affected by a recent release. The problem is, between the preachiness, toxicity and just plain banality that fills an awful lot of these kinds of releases, it doesn’t look hopeful. Not that I can guess who will be influenced by what; I’m just saying that, if there are people who sees something positive and enlightening in something like War Room, I’ll be happy for them from a very, very safe distance. So, on my quest to find a Christian film that doesn’t suck on toast, I came across this fairly recent release featuring Hayden Christensen. Well, that optimism was nice while it lasted.

Concussion (2016) - Movie Review

This film is about American football or, as we in Australia call it, 'Baby’s First Ball Sport'. All that padding, the overblown halftime shows, the terminology that makes calculus look straight forward by comparison; I don’t ‘get’ the point of most sports to begin with, but this especially. Or, at the very least, its sheer enormity in terms of deemed importance. Then again, that’s probably a side effect of growing up where the national sport (excluding cricket and outrunning the cassowary) is essentially the same thing only we don’t think little things like protective gear are necessary. Save for cups because, when given the option to protect only one head, only one in a million would choose a helmet. Anyway, long story short, this is going to be another one of those situations where I am going to be a bit more perplexed than the general populace about the importance of the film’s subject matter. Well, as far as the reason why the people involved are getting permanently injured, at least.

Last Cab To Darwin (2015) - Movie Review