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Critic’s Voice

Film reviews written by our members.


Critic's Voice

Breath Review by Jane Freebury

Surfing makes for elegant and beautiful spectator sport, as those of us who stick to land know only too well.   Ever since I lived on the coast south of Sydney I have thought that surfing was out of this world but that it needed patient dedication and a kind of insanity to pursue. Day […]


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Critic's Voice

Loveless – A review by Mary Colbert

The film’s catalyst is the disappearance of a 12 year old boy, a disappearance unnoticed for two days by the boy’s toxically co-habiting, divorcing parents who, burdened by the presence of a child from their union, impatiently want to move in with their respective new lovers.


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Critic's Voice

Midnight Oil 1984 – a review by Peter Galvin

This, then, is the story of Ray Argall’s Midnight Oil 1984, a thoroughly compelling sort of backstage tour film cum/observational doco where social and political portraiture is of equal importance to capturing a rock show in full flight. Argall was on tour with the band in ’84 and shot 8400 metres of film on 16mm. It sat in a vault for thirty years.


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Critic's Voice

Gurrumul – a Review by Jane Freebury

A few days before Geoffrey GurrumulYunupingu passed away last year at the age of 46, he agreed to the release of this tribute to his life and work. It now arrives on screen just the way it was when last seen by the musician in July.


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Critic's Voice

Covering The 68th Berlin Film Festival (2018) – by Julian Wood

Film festivals really started as sort of trade fairs, and a lot of films are still bought and sold in the early market period of the Berlin Film Festival but it has now become a huge attraction for all those who write or broadcast about film. Journos of all descriptions certainly buzz around the Berlinale, […]


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Critic's Voice

Sweet Country – A Review by Jane Freebury

There’s a burning intensity to Sweet Country, a tale of revenge in the Australian outback where men turn against each other with guns and are violent with women and children. Although much of the violence is not shown in the frame, it is not this that gives the film its intensity as much as it is the passionate outrage that director Warwick Thornton brings to this work.


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