Ghost in the Shell – Review
Even ignoring the anime adaptation, Rupert Sanders’ take on Ghost in the Shell feels like well-trodden ground. Many (or all) of the film's stylistic cues feel borrowed, whether it’s the gratuitous...
Beauty and the Beast – Review
Love is blind. It’s a notion as old as time, a song as old as rhyme, and the beating heart at the centre of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale. Bill Condon’s adoration for Disney’s 1991 classic is as...
Sweet Dreams – Review
There's something so Italian about big, wholesome families with a lot of extra love to give. In Sweet Dreams, an Italian film from director Marco Bellocchio, we watch the life of a man struggling to cope with...
P.S. Jerusalem – Review
Danae Elon has a remarkably relatable habit of both admitting her own failings and failing to admit them. P.S. Jerusalem, narrated intermittently by its director-cinematographer, is a fascinating, frustrating...
The Founder – Review
The creation, and expansion, of McDonald’s in the 1950s is one of Western culture’s most important benchmarks. Its ramifications on the global economy have been staggering. The influence it continues to...
O.J.: Made in America – Review
Between black and white are over 500 shades of grey. This is the argument of Ezra Edelman’s exhaustive cinematic thesis on O.J. Simpson; a comprehensive documentary that shows that in order to understand...
Cameraperson – Review
It’s often said that the act of observing something affects the behaviour of the thing that’s being observed, but it’s equally true that it changes the person doing the observing. In Cameraperson,...
Denial – Review
Denial is bold in crafting a fictionalised Deborah Lipstadt who isn’t always easy to like; Weisz is fierce and prickly and at times almost unrecognisable. It’s a far cry from the tedious tear-jerking of...
The Bye Bye Man – Review
What is it with scary movies and Friday the 13th? Every year a glut of cheaply-made trash is dumped onto our screens in an attempt to cash in on the 'unluckiest day'. Take 2015's zombie flick Condemned....
Live By Night – Review
What makes a “bad film”? Does the whole shebang have to be rotten? Or is it just aspects - the director, the cast, the story, the idea? It might be these questions, and probably a few more, that will...
Top 20 Films of 2016: 6. The Neon Demon
“Beauty isn’t everything. It's the only thing.” 2016 has been the year of the troll. Since ORWAV's last Top Ten, Britain has wrenched herself out of the European Union, Donald Trump has gone from...
Richard Linklater: Dream is Destiny – Review
As you watch Linklater, moving around his beautiful land deep in his native Austin, Texas, you notice he ticks all the boxes. Relaxed, amiable, informed, and understated; that's Linklater all right. And to...
Don’t Blink – LFF 2016 Review
Robert Frank’s photographs of mid-century America were hated when he first presented them in book form. Candid, grainy, and refusing to shy away from social problems that people were facing, the general...
The Infiltrator – Review
Drug money and cartel blood get spilled, then cleaned up, in this tense true-to-life crime drama. Based on the autobiography of US Customs special agent Robert Mazur, we see Bryan Cranston go undercover to...
Hunt For The Wilderpeople – Review
When protagonist Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) points out "it's just like Lord of the Rings," as he and his grumpy "uncle" Hec (Sam Neill) hide from the disproportionate amount of armed troops hunting them,...