Thelma ★★★½ “DO YOU even know how to use a gun?” “How hard can it be? I see idiots using them all the time.” That’s just one of the many humorous exchanges in Josh Margolin’s deft comedy Thelma, the story of a 93-year-old grandmother who takes on phone scammers. The […]

Thelma takes on the scammers

Bad Boys: Ride or Die ★★★ LIKE most movie franchises, Bad Boys has become progressively weaker. Unlike most movie franchises, the fourth instalment is better than the third. Somewhat surprisingly, Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a significant improvement on 2020’s Bad Boys for Life which featured one of the […]

Bad Boys keep riding

Colours of Evil: Red ★★★ AS YOU can tell by the title, the studio behind Polish thriller Colours of Evil: Red is hoping for a franchise. And they’re off to a pretty good start with this twisting tale of a macabre murder with organised crime links. A young girl woman’s […]

More colours to this Evil

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