Justin Kurzel
Nitram is a potboiling study of human fragility that doesn’t heal our scars so much as it asks us to accept that they are here to stay.
Alex Lines is here with his report from this year’s CinefestOz Film Festival.
True History of the Kelly Gang wants us to sympathize with a murderer who suffered great trauma from birth to death. It’s unfortunate that the film’s most critical moments fall flat.
We spoke with True History of the Kelly Gang director Justin Kurzel about Ned Kelly’s significance to Australian culture and how his adaptation of the story is unique from those that have come before.
The True History of the Kelly Gang is often punishing and resistant to facile translation, but there’s no denying the merciless power that Justin Kurzel brings.
Assassin’s Creed may be the best video game adaptation, with some dynamic action, but it still has a run of seething and frustrating flaws
Those who argue that there’s never been a good movie based on a video game may have to change their tune come December, because that’s when the much talked about Assassin’s Creed finally hits theaters. Sure, there’s some optimism about this summer’s Warcraft with Duncan Jones at the helm, but that project pales in comparison to the deep pedigree behind Assassin’s Creed. Producer and star Michael Fassbender (who does so many movies that I’m skeptical he actually sleeps) has been attached to the project since 2012.
Most of us are familiar with the story of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a story so prevalent that people will not utter the name of ‘the Scottish play’ whilst in the theatre, as by ancient tradition it is said to be cursed. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it is a tale of one man’s hunger for power in a tyrannical society, and how he is pushed further and further down a descending path of hopelessness and insanity by his wife, a group of witches, and his own consciousness. There have been many recreations of the play on stage and on screen, and this 2015 cinematic depiction of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, directed by Justin Kurzel and starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Contillard, is on a platform so high that the other depictions are unable to reach it.
If you don’t know who William Shakespeare is, we have failed you as a society. Hollywood has decided to make up for that shortcoming with the story of Macbeth. This interpretation comes as a war drama that has way more colors and wide shots than my middle school English class informed me about.
