The First Omen ★★½ THE prequel to The Omen suffers by comparison with another film released around the same time. Immaculate also arrived in 2024 shortly before The First Omen and is the superior film. It’s a shame because the original 1976 The Omen is an iconic horror entry that, […]

The First Omen may be the last

Behind The Mountains (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★ THE Atlas Mountains of Tunisia in northern Africa are the setting for the engaging and touching drama Behind the Mountains. Tunisian writer/director Mohamed Ben Attia weaves a supernatural element into his story of a man struggling to deal with the modern world and […]

Touching Tunisian drama has supernatural tinge

The Girl with the Needle (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★½ A DANISH film made in black and white in a German Expressionist style, set in the 1920s about a baby killer. Sounds like a hoot, right? Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle may not entice a general audience, but […]

Danish drama a true horror story

Black Box Diaries (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★★ ONE of many powerful scenes in the documentary Black Box Diaries comes near the end. At this point, young female journalist Shiori Ito has been trying for years to bring her rapist to justice. Because we are in Japan with its […]

Journalist covers her own compelling story

Malu (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★½ THE slums of Rio De Janiero are the setting for Malu, Brazilian director Pedro Freire’s feature film debut. It depicts the passionate and volatile relationship between three generations of women from the same family. The main character, around whom all events revolve is 50-year-old actress Malu […]

Performances are key to Malu

The Damned (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★ ROBERTO Minervini’s revisionist western The Damned is well made and intentioned but too static in its end result. The Italian director sets his story in the winter of 1862 in the frontier lands of America. We follow a company of soldiers tasked with patrolling […]

Western not revisionist enough

Runt (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★½ THERE’S a concept in film reviewing known as the ‘Festival bump’. It means you are influenced to rate a film a little higher than you may have normally due to the special nature of watching at a festival. I don’t think that’s the case with […]

Aussie Runt is a winner

Cuckoo (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival)  ★★½ CUCKOO is right. German/US horror film Cuckoo is tense, quirky and interesting for its first half. Then it starts trying to explain the plot and you realise it’s going to fall very short of a satisfying story. Hunter Schafer, best known for the television series […]

Cuckoo by name and nature

Babes (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★½ AMERICAN comedian Pamela Adlon’s debut feature is a gem. Babes is written by Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, part of the team behind television’s Broad City, and stars Glazer and Michelle Buteau. That’s a lot of talent at work and it shows in the final […]

Babes delivers plenty of laughs and heart

Brief History of a Family (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★½ THERE are essentially two types of filmgoers – those who prefer that conventions are adhered to and those who don’t. The Chinese psychological drama Brief History of a Family requires the latter. In his feature directorial debut Lin Jianjie, who also […]

Chinese puzzle requires connection of dots

Inside (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival) ★★★½ FILMS set in prisons have come in many different forms. They can vary as widely as The Shawshank Redemption and Scum, but rarely are they boring. Australia’s best entry to the sub-genre is probably John Hillcoat’s Ghosts of the Civil Dead, released in […]

Prison-set drama offers strong debuts

Message from the King ★★★ ACTION thriller Message from the King is another reminder of the talent that was Chadwick Bozeman. The charismatic American actor died a few years ago and is best remembered for his role in Marvel’s Black Panther. In 2016’s Message from the King, Bozeman plays Jacob King who […]

Bozeman charisma lifts actioner