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Keywords: Film Reviews

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mr Darcy's suicide notes

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 18 February 2010
    2 Comments

    That scene in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice where Mr Darcy emerges from a cathartic swim in his pond still makes many women swoon. Colin Firth's enduring sex appeal is channeled into his latest character, a gay university professor who has decided to commit suicide.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sympathy for an immoral Arab prophet

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 11 February 2010

    From the moment of Malik's imprisonment he finds that if he is to survive, he needs to choose between conflicting evils. His Muslim roots appear from time to time, but while these moments lend transcendence to the film, they give no moral credence to Malik's actions.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fatherhood after the apocalypse

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 04 February 2010
    5 Comments

    The blurring of right and wrong in a world where civil structures have disintegrated, is seen in the Man's escalating wildness; his desperation to preserve the life of his son, and his conviction that the end of survival justifies a growing list of dubious means. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Selling short Nelson Mandela and rugby

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 28 January 2010

    Are we to accept that the inspiration of sporting victory is alone sufficient to solve conflict and soothe the way to redemption and rebirth for a divided nation? If so, it must be said that Eastwood's film is history rendered as a fairytale.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Celebrating Aboriginality on the road from Freo to Broome

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 January 2010
    6 Comments

    From a patronising priest to a pair of impressionable hippies, the white characters are all doofuses. Bran Nue Dae provides a means for introducing young people to the ongoing impacts of white settlement upon Indigenous Australians.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2009: Michael Jackson's tragic gift

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 January 2010
    1 Comment

    When celebrities die, public grief is disproportionate, because death reasserts the humanity of one who has seemed beyond it. Jackson had become so far removed from his humanity that the shock of his mortality is even more profound. June 2009

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2009: When Leonard Cohen prays

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 07 January 2010
    1 Comment

    The world of pop music is dominated by prettiness and skin-deep perfection. In that context, Cohen's greatness is not instantly discernable. Lately a Buddhist, he has spent his latter years in study of religion — 'But cheerfulness keeps breaking through.' February 2009

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Samson and Delilah and other great Australian stories

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 17 December 2009
    1 Comment

    Back in March, I strolled the streets of Fitzroy in Melbourne's inner north with Warwick Thornton, trying to find a quiet spot for an interview. Two months prior to the release of his feature debut, Samson and Delilah, Thornton was quietly hopeful his film would be positively received.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Children and other wild things

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 10 December 2009
    4 Comments

    Max has an erratic imagination, and is prone to extremes of emotion. There are hints of mental illness, but, really, he is simply Every Child. Following a ferocious fight with his mother, he flees into fantasy and becomes king to a group of melancholic monsters.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An almost true story about corporate crime

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 03 December 2009

    In the early 1990s Mark Whitacre, an executive at American agricultural powerhouse Archer Daniels Midland, became an informant for an FBI investigation into price-fixing. But Whitacre is not the 'white hat' he claims to be.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gay yodellers' compassionate politics

    • Anthony Morris
    • 26 November 2009

    As gay yodelling country-and-western singers and political advocates, you'd think the Topp Twins might have struggled to achieve mainstream success. The Twins have mastered the art of being very funny without excluding anyone from the joke.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    No easy answers to stressed Jewishness

    • Anthony Morris
    • 19 November 2009

    For once in the Coens’ recent comedies not everyone here is an idiot. But not being an idiot doesn’t help serious man Gopnik much, as his world continues to spiral out of control.

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