Round About Midnight (1999)

Hiroyuki Sanada is a recognisable Japanese actor from Hollywood productions like The Last Samurai and John Wick 4, always giving a sense of dignity and substance to even mainstream action cinema clearly beneath his talents (Bullet Train, Mortal Kombat remake). In previous decades, there were leading roles in Japanese cinemas throughout the 1980s onwards. Round […]

Carts Of Darkness (2008)

I had never heard of the documentary Carts Of Darkness (2008) until Chris Cobilis wrote about it for a past issue of the VHS Tracking zine; recently, another friend, Coel, also recommended it. The film itself is only an hour long, and is available to stream for free on YouTube (and is also on Tubi). […]

Petrol (2023)

Petrol (2023) is a new Australian film from director Alena Lodkina. I had only caught up recently with her first, Strange Colours, which screened at Revelation Film Festival and is a father-daughter drama set in the Lightning Ridge opal mining bushlands of New South Wales, which I found to be authentic and artful, patiently compelling. […]

Strange Colours (2017)

I watched director Alena Lodkina’s Strange Colours (2017) on SBS On Demand, a few days after I saw Ivan Sen’s Limbo in cinemas. While Limbo works in another recurring genre in Australian film – the crime genre – and there are clear differences in where they are shot, what they are looking at, particularly indigenous […]

Rats In The Ranks (1996)

“You know what politics is? It’s not if you’re a bum, but if you’re a smaller bum than someone else.” I remember seeing Rats In The Ranks (1996) reviewed glowingly by Margaret and David on The Movie Show when it was on SBS, and then eventually this Australian documentary was screened on ABC. Revisiting it through a YouTube upload (it’s […]