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Film

The first time that I really took notice of Orry-Kelly’s name was when I began researching the 1933 pre-code film Baby Face a number of years ago. I became obsessed with Barbara Stanwyck’s sharp Manhattan business attire, her intricate gloves, and the fur-draped costumes she later wore as a kept woman. That the costumes were, at heart, Australian m ...

Partisan

by
19 May 2015

Gregori stares at the camera, his eyes hard and sure as he watches five babies being wheeled through the corridors of a maternity ward, selects a mother with a split lip and no flowers, and charms her. When he strokes the face of her child, Alexander, his eyes are tender. The range between these expressions is the heart of Partisan.

Through an unmarke ...

In a hit-driven commercial climate, creating film franchises makes economic sense. Consumers who enjoyed the first The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel are likely to purchase a ticket to the sequel. Those who have committed more than eleven hours’ viewing to the first six films in The Fast and the Furious series will probab ...

The One I Love

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27 November 2014

From first-time director and screenwriter duo Charlie McDowell and Justin Lader, The One I Love is a film that confronts just how hard it can be to love someone. Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) and Ethan (Mark Duplass) are married and in counselling when their therapist (Ted Danson) suggests that they go on a weekend retreat together, just the two of them. He sends ...

Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–93), a screenwriter, producer, and director of films in Hollywood for over forty years, is the latest to receive repertory profile treatment at the 52nd New York Film Festival. Entire-career retrospectives are always interesting events; they are at once a celebration of auteuri ...

Gone Girl

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09 October 2014

In David Fincher’s slick adaptation of Gone Girl, an attractive white woman, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary and her husband, Nick (Ben Affleck), quickly becomes the prime suspect.

Left behind at their Missouri McMansion are signs of a violent struggle – glass coffee ...

U nder the Skin is adapted from Michael Faber’s eponymous speculative fiction novel (2000) in which an alien disguised as an attractive woman hunts hitchhikers in the Scottish highlands. Once she has determined that a man is appropriate prey, she drugs him and delivers him to a subterranean abattoir hidden beneath a farm where, in a disturbing allegorisatio ...

U nder the Skin is adapted from Michael Faber’s eponymous speculative fiction novel (2000) in which an alien disguised as an attractive woman hunts hitchhikers in the Scottish highlands. Once she has determined that a man is appropriate prey, she drugs him and delivers him to a subterranean abattoir hidden beneath a farm where, in a disturbing allegorisation of factory farming, he is castrated, fattened up like foie gras, and prepared for shipment back to the alien home planet where human flesh is an expensive delicacy. This adaptation of Faber’s novel is the long-anticipated third feature film from director Jonathan Glazer.

... (read more)

The Invisible Woman by Ralph Fiennes

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30 April 2014

Orson Welles once described himself as a ‘king’ actor. Ralph Fiennes seems born to play dukes: nearly all his screen characters, even the crooks and madmen, share an imperious quality that goes with a kind of stony reticence. It felt natural that he should make his film directorial début with an adaptation of Coriolanus (2011), one of Shakespeare’s most misan ...