Despite his great CV, Armando Iannucci鈥檚 The Death of Stalin doesn鈥檛 quite reach its satirical pretensions.
Films and reviews
麻豆传媒 Weekly hosted a screening in Perth of the film Kurdistan: Women at War on March 9 to celebrate International Women鈥檚 Day. The film, directed by Mylene Sauloy, follows the historical development of the Women鈥檚 Protection Units (YPJ) and other similar groups defending and transforming their communities across Northern Syria.
This year is the 50th anniversary of 1968, the year when revolutionary upsurges occurred all across the globe.
Before touching down聽on the planet of Canto Bight, Rose looks down forebodingly to tell us that it鈥檚 full of the 鈥渨orst people in the galaxy鈥. Cut to champagne glasses clinking and a casino full of galactic 1-percenters.
鈥淥nly one business in the galaxy can get you this rich,鈥 Rose聽鈥 a new character in Star Wars:聽The Last Jedi, a mechanic on the Rebel flagship 鈥斅爀xplains to returning hero Finn as they look around the beachfront resort planet, 鈥渟elling weapons to the First Order.鈥 She goes on to tell her family鈥檚 history: forced to work on a First Order mining colony before it was bled out and blitzed for weapons testing.
The latest film about former British PM Winston Churchill,聽Darkest Hour, is already being tipped for the Oscars, with Gary Oldman鈥檚 portrayal of Churchill at the helm of speculation.
Oldman鈥檚 performance is indeed brilliant, but let us be clear. While it is a great piece of cinema that, artistically speaking, deserves many awards, it is also a film that glorifies a certifiably vile man.
Margaret Atwood is blessed and/or cursed with the credit for this year鈥檚 go-to feminist analogy. Any time an old white man makes it clear that women are best kept silent and pregnant, someone says that it鈥檚 鈥渏ust like聽The Handmaid鈥檚 Tale鈥.
Cyril Lionel Robert James, best known as CLR James, was a Trinidadian-born, Black socialist whose work spanned many of the great struggles of the 20th century and across many continents.
The Sydney Latin American Film Festival (SLAFF) is on again for the 12th year running. Featuring a specially curated program of captivating contemporary Latin American cinema, the festival has several films that progressive filmgoers won鈥檛 want to miss.
An important feature of this year鈥檚 program is that 50% of the films feature female directors, festival programmer Lidia Luna said.
While Adriana鈥檚 Pact director Lissette Orozco reflects on the role her aunt, Adriana Rivas, played during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, Roberto Calzadilla's El Amparo focuses on one of a number of state-sponsored massacres of civilians that occurred during the 1980s in Venezuela as a prelude to the bloodbath that would occur in the February 1989 Caracazo uprising.
In June 1940, Winston Churchill described the German rout of the French, Belgian and British armies and the seaborne evacuation of 338,000 troops from Dunkirk in northern France as a 鈥渃olossal military disaster鈥.
For a nation whose national identity is intimately bound up with victory and conquest, it is paradoxical that the retreat from Dunkirk has become such an important part of British mythology.
The 2017 Sydney Film Festival, which ran from June 7-18, featured a range of progressive-themed films. Below is a look at five by 麻豆传媒 Weekly鈥檚 Zebedee Parkes.
***
Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves
By &
This is a genuinely interesting dramatic film, with an epic narrative and visual style.
Get Out
Written & directed by Jordan Peele
Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams & Lil Rel Howery
In cinemas now
Why don鈥檛 more horror movies deal with racism?
Race, of course, always lurks underneath the surface, especially from a white protagonist鈥檚 perspective. In many horror films, the monster is some unconscious manifestation of racial anxiety or white guilt, like the prosperous, Reagan-voting family in 1982鈥檚聽Poltergeist, haunted by the vengeful spirits of Native victims of genocide.
- Previous page
- Page 6
- Next page