DVD: Bridge on the river Kwai

The epic adventure and anti-war film, The Bridge on the River Kwai, was both popularly and critically acclaimed when released in 1957, being the highest-grossing film of the year, and also scooping seven Academy Awards. The tale, based very loosely on a true World War II story, follows the fate of a group of British…

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DVD: Gandhi

The winner of nine Academy Awards in 1982, Richard Attenborough’s epic Gandhi has endured as a compelling and powerful testament to one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic, awe-inspiring and influential people. Gandhi’s approach to life and politics were hardly conventional – it’s not everyday that one man says he won’t eat and a nation…

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Faithful and creative

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone fans are desperate to know: “Is the film true to the book?” Well, that depends. As the Sorting Hat says while reading Harry’s mind, “It’s all here, in your head.” The world that millions of passionate fans have conjured in their own imaginations…

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Sugary sweet, but palatable

The Princess Diaries There are few G-rated films that adults can happily stay awake throughout without the help of coffee and maybe a crying baby (Meet the Parents, for instance). The trailer for The Princess Diaries suggests that it would be a most unlikely film to scrape into that elite group, so to see the…

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Singing for their souls

Duets The world of karaoke must be filled with quirky, offbeat characters. It must be riddled with people who truly live to don sequins and suede and stride up on stage to belt out tunes for fun and prize money. Duets promises to capture these very people in that very world, to show their hearts…

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Finally, it finished

Final Fantasy Some films are enjoyably bad. You can rip into them with your friends afterwards, laugh at how there was that big hole in the plot towards the end, and whine about their obvious flaws and fatal errors. But Final Fantasy, the latest cinematic hi-tech sci-fi video-game tie-in, is so bereft of any heart…

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Backwards and brilliant

Memento Remember the twists in both The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense? How you had to cast your mind back to rewrite the narrative you had thought was true, armed with your new piece of information? Multiply that twist by a few dozen times, and you begin to approach the heart of the fantastic,…

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A good Australian film

The Sum of Us "Russell Crowe and John Polson kiss. I don’t know about you, but that certainly flicks my switches," said my Australian friend, who has seen the 1995 Australian release The Sum of Us numerous times. And this is why I was surprised it was chosen to open the one-off Australian Film Festival…

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Meaningful and understated, but entertaining

Mifune’s Last Song The opportunity to make a new beginning in life can be alluring. Mifune’s Last Song is about making new starts; but it’s also about keeping secrets and having them eventually catch up with you. The film gently chastises its characters’ occasionally distasteful moral choices – that is, to lie – while also…

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The wedding yawner

The Wedding Planner A friend of mine once accidentally took her conservative and frail grandmother to see Pulp Fiction; she was so psychologically scarred by the experience that she still always rates movies based on the "grandma-watchability" factor. The Wedding Planner, a highly-formulaic, painfully predictable and clean romantic comedy, pulls in very big on the…

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