Boom! (1968)

“What’s human or inhuman is not for human decision!” I love Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and have always been curious about the other movies they made together, particularly when their tabloid exploits as a movie star couple overshadowed them. Most of them I’ve heard are not so hot […]

Vanya On 42nd Street (1994)

My main knowledge of the Anton Chekov play Uncle Vanya is through its rehearsal and performance in the Japanese film, Drive My Car, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. I have always been aware of Vanya On 42nd Street (1994), a film adaptation of Vanya that reunited actors and playwrights Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, with the […]

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). […]

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 […]