Leave The World Behind (2023)

A family's vacation is interrupted when the man who owns their holiday rental shows up with his daughter in the middle of the night and asks to stay, the set-up of this very M. Night Shyamalan-style slow-burn thriller in which characters are cut-off from the world and from information and left with only their imaginations to grapple with a seemingly absurd new reality, and it is just a shame the solid and intriguing drama concludes with a distinctly American notion that zoning-out in front of the telly beats wrestling critically with world news.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Truth (La Vérité) (2019)

Individual moments are joys in themselves - Catherine Deneuve in a leopard-skin print and Audrey Hepburn sunglasses walking her dog down a tree-lined Paris street - but add the rustle of leaves in the trees, a dance of notes on a piccolo or a tinkle of piano keys and you'll feel like you are watching a Japanese anime of impossibly beautiful, painstakingly constructed handpainted images, and like the great animated dramas of Japan - the AMSR-inducing The Wind Rises, Grave of the Fireflies, and many, any others - this latest film from Kore-eda Hirokazu skips so lightly, so gracefully though its family drama, you can thoroughly enjoy it purely on a surface-level of image and sound without stopping to think about its deeply moving themes of truth, lies, story-telling, memory, childhood, motherhood, blame and forgiveness - the truth of this multi-layered delightful dance is that you can decide what you want to hear and enjoy!

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Taking Lives (2004)

Featuring Angelina Jolie as pillow-lipped FBI profiler Illeana Lara Croft Clarice Starling Scott, Taking Lives is such a formulaic serial killer thriller a more fitting title would have been Checking Boxes, because it feels like every item on a serial killer thriller checklist has been thrown in: a Tom Ripley chameleon killer, an unnecessary Dead Ringers twins backstory, male cops antagonised by a female agency interloper with unusual methods, a motorway chase, jump scares as bodies spring out of dark recesses, a cool killer who suddenly cracks and goes goo-goo-ga-ga to reveal just how deeply-rooted his mother complex is, bad police work of the enter-the-dark-room-alone variety (and the leave-the-protected-witness-alone-for-a-quick-mo-to-go-have-a-ciggy-by-the-cop-car variety), blurred professional boundaries as Illeana beds (no, desks) a person of interest in the case, and a protracted denouement where the killer's m.o. - painstakingly compiled by the acutely perceptive profiler - is abandoned for an out-of-character stand-off between cop and culprit in which the identity thief and killer of only male victims for over twenty years suddenly becomes an obsessive stalker, domestic abuser and holder-on of Life's details.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

"Staged" is one word that springs to mind watching this update of the updates of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, with sets and props so pristine and removed from the action that they look like cartoons and with costumes that look like dress-ups, close-ups of sweaty brows that look like Sergio Leone playacting, and scenes of men entering buildings via saloon doors and exiting seconds later via windows looking like comedic sore thumbs...and other words that spring to mind are "dreadfully boring", "horribly unengaging", "by the numbers" and "far from magnificent".

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Predestination (2014)

This sci-fi is built tightly around one unusual concept and although the final reveal is quite obvious from an early stage, the film maintains viewer interest with a time travel puzzle filled with likeable characters and for me, recognisable Melbourne locations.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL : ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS