Transfusion (2023) - Movie Review

With how many films I get through every year, marketing material and trailers in particular don’t really have an effect on me nowadays. Most of the time, trailers just serve as snapshots for stuff I know I’ll be looking at at some point anyway, so they don’t serve the same interest for me that they would most general audiences. But then there are situations like the marketing around this film, and the subsequent response that the film proper has gotten, and I feel the need to address the discrepancy.

See, the trailer for this film presents it as some kind of crime thriller with shootouts, the kind of thing you’d expect Neeson to have helmed a few years back. But instead, the actual film is more of a slow-burn drama about family, masculinity, and how far men will go to preserve one or the other.

Poker Face (2022) - Movie Review

I picked this film purely for nostalgic reasons, and I don’t mean that in a fond way. Russell Crowe’s directorial debut, The Water Diviner, was one of the first movies I ever reviewed on here way back in December of 2014. That was back when I was still heavily in the phase of obsessing over people who talked about movies, as opposed to obsessing over the movies themselves, and I still had a lot of growing up to do as a writer and just as a person in general. Chances are there are quite a few films from back then that I’d likely have a different take on if I were to write about them today (hell, that has definitely been the case for a few of them, like The Babadook), but Crowe’s first attempt as a director has never struck me as one of those potential examples. So, let’s see how he goes at his second attempt in the chair, and him now writing the script as well.

Gold (2022) - Movie Review

Considering the summer heat is officially kicking in down here in Australia, I’m probably in the most ideal state of mind to engage with a film about a guy trying to survive in the desert. And considering this first came out near the end of January of this year (deep in the middle of the last summer), I’m willing to bet that that timing isn’t a coincidence. Trust me to be both timely and late to the party at the same time.

True History Of The Kelly Gang (2019) - Movie Review

After bringing Shakespeare to the big screen with Macbeth, and delivering a much-maligned but still admirable attempt at video game adaptation with Assassin’s Creed, director Justin Kurzel has reunited with screenwriter Shaun Grant to once again step into Australia’s dark history to bring us a film about the quintessential Aussie legend: The outlaw Ned Kelly. The two have already proven their salt as a team with Snowtown, and Shaun Grant’s writing did a great service to the cultural hiding featured in Jasper Jones, and true to form, their efforts here make for a powerful piece of cinema.