Film Shapes

Got along to an advance screening of  The Translators  at the Luna in Leederville a few nights ago. It's a mystery set in the world of literary publishing and the story takes a little getting the old bonce around. Broadly, a group of nine translators are seconded to a high security bunker to translate the third book in a massively popular series, Daedalus, written by the reclusive Oscar Brach (strangely subtitled as 'Bach'). Pretty soon, it's found that 10 pages have somehow been smuggled out to the Internet, setting off a series of events that land the publisher Eric Angstrom, among others, in shtuck.  Angstrom is played by the hawk-nosed yet serpentine, Lambert Wilson, who has a swathe of shite films to his credit ( Babylon A.D. , anyone?). This is the best film I've seen him in, but I'm certainly not a Wilson completist, so there must be other passable works. Some of the translators are reasonably well known, especially in their home 'markets'. Olga K...

After more than two years of postponed release dates, The New Mutants finally arrives in cinemas. Re-shoots, schedule clashes with other films, Disney's purchase of 20th Century Fox and covid-related cinema closures all contributed to the limbo the film found itself in. So was the wait worth it? I'd say sure. It's no world beater but it has a neatly contained story with some creepy elements (mainly down to the work of DOP, Peter Deming, whose first feature was Evil Dead 2 ) and nicely pitched performances. Let's have a roll call of these younglings, then. The first credit (though not the protagonist) is Maisie Williams as Rahne Sinclair [WOLFSBANE]. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Illyana Rasputin [MAGIK]. The real lead is Blu Hunt, who plays Danielle Moonstar [MIRAGE]. Charlie Heaton plays Sam Guthrie [CANNONBALL] and Henry Zaga plays Roberto da Costa [SUNSPOT]. And aside from Alice Braga as their doctor/monitor, that's about it for the cast. They all bounce off each oth...

With the release of Tenet, I thought I might rip off many film mags/websites and do a top ten of Nolan's films. For the sake of cleanliness, I've forgone his first feature,  Following  (assume it's 11th) and all his shorts. Let's go. 10.  Insomnia  (2002) This is a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film starring Stellan Skarsgard in the Pacino role. Williams and Pacino are great and this is a pretty good film, but I prefer the others. 9.  The Dark Knight   (2008) This might be an unpopular choice but, again, I actually liked this film, just not as much as the first or third in this Batman series. Ledger is spectacular and the set pieces are fantastic but it lost me with the Harvey Dent subplot and the ferry sequence was too portentous. 8.  The Prestige  (2006) Clever, well-paced thriller, stacked with big names putting in sterling performances. I'm actually going to watch it again soon to try and figure out why so many people ...