Starring: Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr Director: Joshua Logan Rated: G Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment With the winter solstice now behind us, the days are getting incrementally longer but it’ll be some time yet before they really start to heat up. So if you’re itching for a taste of the tropics, this …
Starring: Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Valerie Perrine Director: George Roy Hill Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment An ageing American named Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) is typing a letter to the editor of the Ilium Daily News explaining how he has become “unstuck in time”. He jumps back and forth from his memories as a prisoner …
Starring: Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland Director: Fred Schepsi Rated: M 15+ Distributor: MGM DVD When a film title cements itself in contemporary vernacular, it rises above the pack simply by virtue of being constantly articulated. Like Catch-22 before it, Six Degrees of Separation has earned that peculiar distinction. You often hear people talk …
Starring; Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, Kyle MacLachlan Director: Paul Verhoven Rated: R Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment Las Vegas has to rank as one of the most gaudy, vacuous, superficial places on Earth and any movie set there would amount to nothing if it didn’t at least attempt to capture this peculiar quality. Director Paul Verhoven’s Showgirls …
Stars: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Carrie Fisher Dir: Hal Ashby Rated: PG Distributor: Columbia Pictures Wearing cute little baby-doll frocks that barely cover her bum, Goldie Hawn flashes her knickers and bats her blue eyes all over the screen in the frothy 1975 flick Shampoo. Her character, Jill is …
Starring: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn Director: Gordon Parks Rated: MA Distributor: Warner Brothers “Who’s the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft.” The fabulous Oscar winning theme song by Isaac Hayes is perfectly in synch with Urs Furrer’s camera as it zooms in from a rooftop on 42nd Street …
Stars: Toshiro Mifune, Takeshi Shimura Dir: Akira Kurosawa Rated: PG Distributor: Eastern Eye Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is an action packed epic spooling in at three hours and twenty-seven minutes and remarkably every black and white scene has something to keep the viewer hooked, be it the intense, often noble acting, the fabulous costumes or …
Starring: Shafiq Syed, Hansa Vithal, Aneeta Kanwar Director: Mira Nair Rated: M Distributor: Hopscotch Beneath the glitter and gloss of Bollywood, there’s a very different reality being played out on the streets of India’s movie making capital. Director Mira Nair was one of the first to expose this harsh and often cruel world in her …
Starring: Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliot Director: Peter Bogdanovich Rated: M 15+ Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment In the dying days of the Vietnam War, Singapore was a city in change. There were still traces of British colonialism – you could pretend you were Sommerset Maugham and get a Singapore Sling in the Palm Court of the Raffles …
Starring: Julianne Moore Director: Todd Haynes Rated: M (15+) Distributor: Madman Cinema A couple of months after first watching Safe and images keep resurfacing in my mind; Julianne Moore as the hypersensitive home-maker Carol White admiring her newly permed hair when suddenly her nose starts to bleed; then later, hyperventilating at a cloying baby shower …
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden Director: Billy Wilder Rated: PG Distributor: Paramount Golden Classics It’s a scientific fact that Audrey Hepburn graced every film that she was in with a unique angelic quality. Well… maybe it hasn’t been proven in a laboratory but her natural enthusiasm and unbridled inner glow seems to add …
Starring: Sergei Dreiden Director: Alexander Sokurov Rated: M Distributor: If there were such a thing as Film Police you would be arrested for watching Russian Ark on DVD. This lavish, landmark, one-take wonder should really be seen on the big screen in order to soak up its incredible scope but now that it is available …
Starring: Russell Crowe, Daniel Pollack, Jacqueline McKenzie Director: Geoffrey Wright Rated: MA Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment Margaret gave it five stars. David refused to give it any. In fact, The Movie Show’s co- host even suggested that the negative of Romper Stomper be burned, according to the cosy commentary on the DVD of this decidedly uncomfortable …
Starring the voices of: Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop Director: Clive Smith Rated: PG Distributor: Siren Entertainment Adult animation is pretty much mainstream fare these days with studios like Disney in the States and Ghibli in Japan turning out block-busters hand over fist. But back in the early ’80s it was quite a novel …
Starring: Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, Annie Giradot Director: Luchino Visconti Rated: M 15+ Distributor: Umbrella World Cinema DVD According to their mother, the five Parondi brothers are like the fingers on her very hand-only when they are together are they truly powerful. But Vincenzo, the eldest has moved to Milan and is about to shack …
Starring: Gregory Harrison, Arkie Whiteley, Bill Kerr, Judy Morris Director: Russell Mulcahy Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella (aussie DVD) They called it ‘Jaws on trotters’, and even that was stretching the friendship. Producer Hal McElroy says he was flattered that his film was even mentioned in the same sentence as Spielberg’s palpitation-inducing blood bath because, if …
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, David Gulpilil, Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan Director: Philip Noyce Rated: PG Distributor: Becker Entertainment What makes a fourteen year old girl walk over 1500 miles across the desert with her 10 year old cousin and eight year old sister in tow? Is it an unfathomable love for the mother she …
Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis Director: Quentin Tarantino Rated: R 18+ Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment Quentin Tarantino is an Elvis man, no doubt about it. Just like the leading man in his smash hit Pulp Fiction. On the new 10th Anniversary 2-Disc Collector’s Edition he introduces some deleted scenes including one …
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) Starring: Hugo Weaving, Terence Stamp, Guy Pearce, Julia Cortez Director: Stephan Elliott Rated: M Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment It was the post Mardi Gras sight of a head-piece tumbling off a drag queen and rolling down the empty street like tumbleweed in a Sergio Leone movie that …
Starring: Helen Morse, Anne Lambert, Rachel Roberts, Margaret Nelson Director: Peter Weir Cinematographer: Russell Boyd Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment The first words we hear in Picnic at Hanging Rock are from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe; What we see and what we seem Are but a dream A dream within a dream They …
Starring: Tom Burlinson, Martin Vaughn, Ron Leibman Director: Simon Wincer Extras: ‘The Mighty Conqueror’ (1931); ‘Agua Caliente: Phar Lap’s Last Race’ (1932) Rated: PG Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment Since Makyve Diva’s historic third Melbourne Cup win last Tuesday, comparisons have been made between the mare and that other horse racing legend Phar Lap, whose story was …
Starring: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Alice Roberts Director: Georg Willhelm Pabst Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella World Cinema DVD A silent film can speak a thousand words simply with looks, gestures and appropriate musical accompaniment. In German director Georg Willhelm Pabst’s 1929 black and white masterpiece based on Frank Wedekind’s stage play, not a …
Starring: Joy Dunstan, Bruce Spence, Gary Waddell, Michael Carman Director: Chris Lofven Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment Reworking an all-time classic musical into a contemporary rock ‘n roll road movie could be viewed as a brave venture or downright lunacy, especially if that classic happens to be The Wizard of Oz. But this was the …
Starring: Jean Marais, Maria Casares, Marie Dea Director: Jean Cocteau Rated: PG Distributor: Madman director’s Suite The Surrealist French director Jean Cocteau once said that “film is a petrified fountain of thought”. Judging by his cinematic interpretation of the classical Greek myth ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’, his thoughts at the time were pouring over the meaning …
Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero, Harry Feist Director: Roberto Rossellini Rated: M 15+ Distributor: Umbrella World Cinema DVD It was Martin Scorsese who alerted me to Roberto Rossellini’s classic Open City featuring prominently, as it does, in his brilliant Italian movie master class My Voyage to Italy. In it, he remembers how, as …