REVIEW: The Killing of Two Lovers

The Killing of Two Lovers is a family melodrama shot as horror that feels like much like the work of David Lowery.

It was, in fact, written and directed by Robert Machoian, but many of the same elements.

Set in the rural midwest, the film follows David (Clayne Crawford), struggling to hold it together due to the breakdown of his marriage.…

REVIEW: The Father

The Father is an immaculate depiction of a man’s descent into dementia that is all the more harrowing for its formality.

Eighty-year-old Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) owns a stately flat in Maida Vale where has lived for many years. He’s charming but irascible, increasingly prone to outbursts of vitriol; like the one that has driven his latest carer to quit.…

PODCAST: Greenland & News of the World [Movie RobCast]

It’s been a minute since our last episode so #110 is a bumper wrap-up of what the Robs have been watching.

First, the shocking revelation that Gerard Butler has made a good movie with end-of-days disaster movie Greenland, currently available on Amazon Prime.…

REVIEW: Rams

Based on Grímur Hákonarson’s Hrutar, Rams transplants that film’s woolly, fraternal premise from the rugged slopes of Iceland to Australia.

Bucolic, taciturn Colin (Sam Neill) approaches farming with wistful humour and affection. His brother Les (Michael Caton) is an ornery, cantankerous drunk who makes a habit of passing out in fields.…

REVIEW: Ammonite [LFF 2020]

Francis Lee’s Ammonite plays like a gender-swapped God’s Own Country cast back in time to the mid-19th Century.

Instead of the rolling hills of Yorkshire, the film gives us the raging sea around Lyme Regis. And rather than a nervy fictional farmworker, we have real-life palaeontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet).…

REVIEW: Nomadland [LFF 2020]

In a year that for most people has been largely defined by not leaving the house, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland is a paean to wide, open spaces.

Based on Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction novel, we follow Fern (Frances McDormand). Uprooted by the 2008 recession – the film opens in 2011 – and by the death of her husband, Fern has hit the road in her camper van; seeking out seasonal employment along along the West Coast.…

REVIEW: After Love [LFF 2020]

What do you do when the person you love isn’t whom you thought?

Mary Hussain (Joanna Scanlan) is a devoted wife and practising Muslim. She and Ahmed (Nasser Memarzia) have been together since their teens. They live in Dover, where Ahmed works as a ferry captain.…

REVIEW: Another Round (Druk) [LFF 2020]

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Writer-director Thomas Vinterberg reteams with The Hunt star Mads Mikkelsen for Another Round, a boozy reflection on middle-aged boredom and ennui.

Martin (Mikkelsen) is not a fulfilled man.

History teacher at an elite high-school, he is perhaps best described, in the cautious words of one student, as “diffident”.…

REVIEW: Wildfire [LFF 2020]

Wildfire is a film that warns about the impact of unresolved violence.

After years of living hand-to-mouth, under-the-radar, Kelly (the late Nika McGuigan) is going home. Home for Kelly means a small town on the Irish border. The Troubles may have ended, but the wounds have never fully healed – at all, it seems, for Kelly.…