Arriving on our cinema screens a mere 36 years after the original film, Top Gun: Maverick is part action movie, part military propaganda and part romance but more than anything it’s a wilful exercise in Gen X nostalgia mining. With flashbacks to the original film, scenes almost reproduced from that film, a soundtrack with some of the same songs and
Read moreSam Mendes’ intense, gruelling World War One drama 1917 is, despite a few contrived moments, one of the most impressively confronting movies of the year. The film draws on classic war dramas such as Saving Private Ryan and Gallipoli as well as the ancient Greek legend of Pheidippides who ran from the town of Marathon to Athens during Greece’s war
Read moreFor the first 15 minutes, Kriv Stenders’ Vietnam war drama Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan seems like a clunky attempt at an Aussie Platoon. We’re introduced to some painfully familiar characters: the intense, bullying veteran soldier, the wide-eyed innocent young grunts, the cocky guys playing cards and guzzling whisky and the pompous, uncaring commanding officer. Quickly, though, this
Read moreWith the Russians apparently the designated bad guys once again, Hollywood producers can dust off the Cold War action movie ideas and deliver the sort of films US Republicans probably spoiled their trousers over in the 90s. One such flag-waver is the preposterous, occasionally exciting and very unsubtly-named sub-marine drama Hunter Killer which stars Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman. Butler
Read moreAustralian cinema audiences embrace films that explore the Australian identity. This is evident in the success of films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock which examined Australian culture as the 20th century dawned and the nation began to define itself from mother England, The Castle, which affectionately satirised the Australian suburban identity and Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, which both celebrated and
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