Welcome to the latest reviews, interviews, and articles submitted by AFCA members for the week ending 17 July 2024.
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
Nadine Whitney – In Their Own League – Review: Fly Me to the Moon Review
Excerpt: The movie doesn’t quite reach mission failure but it doesn’t go anywhere near being out of this world.
Jonathan Spiroff – The Mono Report – Review: Fly Me to the Moon Review – Moonstruck
Excerpt: FLY ME TO THE MOON is a flawed but fun romantic comedy concerned with being entertaining rather than historically accurate. This is purely for audiences in search of a light-hearted diversion and not much else.
Rating: 6/10
Kinds of Kindness (2024)
Andrew Fraser – Rough Cut – Review: Actors’ Playground: ‘Kinds of Kindness’ and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Punishing Freedoms
- Excerpt: The director, with the assistance of longtime writing partner Efthimis Filippou, triples down on his pet themes of domination, alienation, and humiliation. Lanthimos is famous for placing his characters in situations where the absurdity of human behaviour is turned up to eleven. In Kinds of Kindness, new relationships begin with self-inflicted injury, a body part is offered as proof of companionship, and a character’s worthiness is assessed based on the purity of their sweat. The most mundane of actions are rendered as excruciating or life-threatening tasks, the body is always in a state of duress, and his performer’s stylised affectations amplify the ludicrous ways people sabotage even the most vital of human needs: connection.
- Film Festival: Sydney Film Festival
Kahn Duncan – Novastream – Review: Kinds of Kindness Review – Anything but Kind
- Excerpt: Kinds of Kindness is an intelligent, mean, disturbed, and crazed endeavour that will alienate as much as it will enthral. With an excellent ensemble cast, arresting cinematography, darkly comical humour, and a provocative outlook on existence – it may be nasty, but it is daring filmmaking, nonetheless.
- Rating: 4/5
Kyle McGrath – Lilithia Reviews – Review: Kinds of Kindness – Film Review
- Excerpt: It’s not exactly an easy film to unpack and you’ll be left scratching your head wondering what it all means (if anything).
- Rating: 3/5
Nadine Whitney – The Curb – Review: Kinds of Kindness: Yorgos Lanthimos is Cruel to be Kind
Excerpt: Kinds of Kindness feeds into the human malaise; the need to be loved and to belong. There is no mistaking that the film views the base need to be connected as an act of self-degradation.
Twisters (2024)
Daniel Lammin – SWITCH – Review: Twisters: Strap in for a worthy sequel to the beloved 90’s blockbuster
Rating: 4
Excerpt: On the one hand, it approaches these very real kinds of natural disasters with a sense of moral responsibility, understanding that what could be blockbuster spectacle in the 90s now needs more nuance. On the other though, it doesn’t forget what we love about ‘Twister’ in the first place, that it’s a piece of balls-to-the-wall entertainment, with beautiful-looking and talented actors facing off nature’s most mysterious and unstoppable meteorological foot soldiers.
Andrew F Peirce – The Curb – Review: “Marge, the Nineties Are Here!” Twisters is a Spiritless Spectacle that Dazzles with Digital Destruction
Excerpt: Ultimately, even though Twisters is a filmic oddity – a decades late sequel that precious few asked for – and is saddled with all of its nineties-era artefacts and script-level character issues, Twisters is the exact kind of film that demands a cinematic viewing.
Jonathan Spiroff – The Mono Report – Review: Twisters Review – Twist Again
Excerpt: TWISTERS is one of the few Hollywood sequels to surpass the original. A classic blockbuster held up by the charm of Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos. If TWISTER was the prototype, this is the final product.
Rating: 8/10
My Little Loves (Mes petites amoureuses) (1974)
David Heslin – Senses of Cinema – Essay: Boys Don’t Cry: Mes petites amoureuses
Film Festival: Melbourne Cinematheque
Excerpt: We see in Loeb’s eyes a boy who craves love and affection but isn’t getting any, and who will displace that absence into the socially expected goal of getting laid. His plight is treated with a curious sense of detachment, however; the suffering is there, but dulled, lingering under the surface, far away from any possible catharsis.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
Grant Watson – FictionMachine – Review: REVIEW: Beverly Hill Cop: Axel F (2024)
Excerpt: If viewers enjoyed the original film there is a chance they will find appeal in the new one. If viewers expect something particularly original or groundbreaking, it is really a question for them as to why they went looking for it in Beverly Hills Cop sequel.
MaXXXine (2024)
Kyle McGrath – Lilithia Reviews – Review: Maxxxine – Film Review
Rating: 3/5
Excerpt: Perhaps Maxxxine is too successful in being an homage to the giallo sub-genre for its own good.
KILL (2023)
Terry Frost – youtube.com/@terrytalksmovies – Video Review: KILL Is The Indian Action Film That John Wick Fans Will Love.
Excerpt: Video Review
Mars Express (2023)
Terry Frost – youtube.com/@terrytalksmovies – Video Review: Two Mars Movies: One Sucked, One Delivered The Goods
Excerpt: I watched two Mars movies this week. One was… not as good as it should’ve been. The other was extraordinarily good. Good science fiction is about worldbuilding, plot and character, not incel Martians going to strip clubs.
In the Room Where He Waits (2024)
Daniel Lammin – SWITCH – Review: In The Room Where He Waits: A benign horror transformed into an inventive psychological nightmare
Rating: 3.5
Excerpt: There’s such a great sense of craft with ‘In The Room Where He Waits’, a terrific demonstration of emerging talents flexing their muscles. Even with the faults in the writing, the direction from Timothy Despina Marshall is assured, confident and specific without ever being didactic or showy. His choices are always what he feels is necessary for the film to work, and for the most part, he hits the mark keenly.
Longlegs (2024)
Grant Watson – FictionMachine – Review: REVIEW: Longlegs (2024)
Excerpt: Stylish direction and clever ideas go a long way to making a great thriller but storytelling weaknesses and an over-hyped central performance ensure that Longlegs remains a flawed film.
Nadine Whitney – The Curb – Review: Oz Perkins Longlegs is a Perpetual Nightmare Machine
Excerpt: Longlegs fascinates as much as it repels the audience is reeled in to the depths. Like Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 Cure, Johnathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs or Se7en by David Fincher the hunter vs. prey dynamic is upended. Longlegs is queasy, terrifying, and inexorable. A perpetual nightmare machine.
Sweet Dreams (2023)
Nadine Whitney – The Curb – Review: Ena Sendijarevic’s Sweet Dreams is a carnivalesque piece of that spares no one
Film Festival: Melbourne International Film Festival
Excerpt: Sweet Dreams takes the idea that “sugar, spice, and everything nice,” is just a recipe for decay. Ena Sendijarevic’s satire is efficient, cruel, and unbearably true.
Rating: A