The Furnace (2020) - Movie Review

Shitty things about a nation’s history are like ants on the sidewalk: You rarely find just one of them when you start looking, and before long, you find another, and another, and then holy shit, it’s crawling with the fuckers. And over the last few years’ worth of Australian films, we’ve certainly been making a point of unearthing our own past to basically throw a spear right through the collective nostalgia. Sweet Country, The Nightingale, and True History Of The Kelly Gang looked at the colonial side of things, Ride Like A Girl wound up unintentionally exposing its own duplicity within our horse-racing industry, even Below from earlier this year took a speculative look at our recent activity with off-shore detention centres. Today’s film follows in that tradition, managing to find a whole new avenue to convey how much the British put the ‘colon’ in ‘colonialism’, with a look at Afghan cameleers.

Cuties (Mignonnes) (2020) - Movie Review

I find it immensely aggravating that I can be in a position where the decision to review this (meaning that I actually sat down and watched it for myself, like literally every review on here) means that I could be facing harassment in the near-future, regardless of what I actually say about it. This might be the first time that the outrage surrounding a film is the main reason that I finally decided to review it, as the whole controversy surrounding this film kind of pisses me off.

Victoria & Abdul (2017) - Movie Review

With how much time I spend at the cinemas as opposed to doing pretty much anything else, I end up relying a fair bit on my film intake when it comes to learning certain things. Things like foreign cultures and the history behind them. Because of this, especially when discussing historical films from other countries, I’ve wound up learning more about that history from films than anywhere else. For instance, through watching Bollywood films, I’ve gained a certain level of understanding concerning the cultural strain between the U.K. and India, like the line separating India and Pakistan from Begum Jaan. Of course, there’s also the element of bias to keep in consideration; no matter what is being depicted on-screen, there is always some level of creator bias involved, even with films based on historical details. So, basically, whatever I’ve picked up from films in regards to history is always packaged with an understanding that the real-world events may or may not have actually occurred as shown; it’s a weird tightrope to walk. It’s because of this I tend to be lenient with most biopics, at least in terms of accuracy to the real events, since films that are 100% true to the story are exceptionally rare.

 

tl;dr As we get into today’s film concerning a historical British monarch, I’m not going to focus too highly on historical accuracy; I’ll just stick with efficacy at storytelling as always.