Far From Men (Loin des Hommes) (2014)

So that he can be tried in a French court, Daru, a schoolteacher, reluctantly transports Mohamed, a confessed murderer, across Algeria's Atlas mountains and along the way the two men become embroiled in the beginnings of Algeria's War of Independence, in this visually arresting, philosophically interesting, and broadly politically relevant neo-Western drama based on a 1957 Albert Camus short story, The Guest.

★★★★☆

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Green Book (2018)

The movie opens in a Chicago club, the Copa, in 1962 with a big band number playing that will have you tapping your foot and wishing you were there in your tuxedo with a cocktail in your hand and despite the depressing ever-present racism of the era and suggestions the movie presents a far from factual account of the duo's time together, that energy continues throughout the upbeat, incredibly feel-good story of real-life concert pianist Dr Shirley and his driver, real-life Tony Lip and their cross-country concert tour through America's Deep South, destination: lifelong friendship.

★★★★★

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A Dangerous Method (2011)

This drama depicts the professional relationship of Jung and Freud in the early 1900s, raises fascinating ideas regarding their psychoanalytical methods, and features a terrific performance from Keira Knightley as real life patient and mistress of Jung, Sabina Spielrien, but the movie remains as clinical, as austere and removed as the psychoanalysts themselves.

★★★☆☆

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Captain Fantastic (2016)

A man and his too-many-to-get-to-know children whose super intellects have developed unhindered by rotisserie chickens and X-box, emerge from their lives off-the-grid to attend their mother's funeral, but their encounters with fat and poorly educated people raise questions about the father's unorthodox child-rearing techniques, in this feel-good movie so desperate to sing that in the end the kids actually do.

★★★☆☆

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A Perfect Murder (1998)

A husband's plot to murder his wife by hiring his wife's lover as a hitman comes unstuck in a number of heavily signposted ways and from there this suspense thriller low on suspense and thrills, apparently inspired by Dial M For Murder but really only similar in two ways (Gwyneth Paltrow and Grace Kelly's blonde hair and a logic problem involving apartment door keys) goes on in rudderless, convoluted ways, desperately trying to find a way to wrap up the leaden acting and plodding events.

★★☆☆☆

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Psycho (1998)

This is a 1998 remake of Hitchcock's 1960 thriller about a woman who goes missing after visiting a roadside motel, with so much identical to the original that it begs the question why it needed to be remade at all, particularly given everything about it is so constrained by what has come before that even the A-list stars seem like thinly disguised, taxidermied versions of their past counterparts, conspicuous in a hand-me-down wardrobe of fedoras, black skivvies, flared pant legs, and delivering lines too readily like actors going through the motions of an over-rehearsed play.

★★☆☆☆

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The Two Faces of January (2014)

This hugely enjoyable, old school suspense drama about a tour guide in Greece who becomes embroiled in the lives of an American couple, is based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith and as is her wont, centres on the power struggle and criminality of the two men as the trio traverse beautiful Greek and Turkish locations.

★★★★☆

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