Shayda, which was the opening night feature at this year’s MIFF, is a semi-autobiographical film based on the childhood experiences of its writer/ director Noora Niasari. Set in 1995 in the Dandenong area, the film depicts an Iranian-Australian woman, Shayda’s (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) escape from abuse at the hands of her husband, Hossein (Osamah Sami). Having taken her daughter Mona
Read moreRetribution is another entry in that paranoid action movie sub-genre, the Liam Neeson film. As many will now be familiar, the formula for these films involves Liam as a seemingly ordinary guy suddenly being thrust into a deadly situation where he’s trapped in some form of transport with a mysterious fiend sending him cryptic messages and threatening to kill people
Read moreLow-budget British drama, Scrapper takes a slender plot and infuses it with pathos and slightly erratic humour for one of the year’s more engaging cinematic oddities. Following her mother’s death, 12-year-old Georgie (Lola Campbell) is living by herself on an English council estate. Dodging school, making money selling stolen bikes with her friend Ali (Alin Uzun) and duping social services
Read moreThe glacially paced but grimly compelling existential Danish drama Godland echoes films like The Mission, Martin Scorsese’s Silence and the works of Ingmar Bergman as it explores themes of faith, identity, culture clash and human frailty in the face of a brutal universe. On-screen text at the beginning of the film suggests a kind of Blair Witch scenario as it
Read moreThe restrained and low-key romantic drama, Past Lives will feel to some like it’s saying little and doing so at a glacial pace while many will find it a subtly seductive film with a powerful emotional undercurrent. Past Lives tracks the 36-year relationship of South Korean woman Na Young (Greta Lee) and male friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). They spend
Read moreFollowing Murder on The Orient Express and Death On The Nile, A Haunting In Venice is the third entry in Kenneth Branagh’s vivid, energetic but at times erratic and overcooked Agatha Christie adaptations. Like the two previous films, this one benefits from a few standout performances and its probing of detective Hercule Poirot’s formidable intellect and complex psyche. More than
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