Elle Fanning

Interview: Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro on respecting the history of their real-life counterparts in Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown

In the early 1960s, 19-year-old Bob Dylan arrives in New York with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. Forming his most intimate relationships during his rise to fame, he grows restless with the folk movement, making a controversial choice that reverberates worldwide. Bringing Dylan’s specific story to the…

Read more

Film Review: A Complete Unknown; Bob Dylan biopic deliberately keeps its enigmatic subject at a distance from its audience

A more evasive mentality is adhered to in A Complete Unknown and its subject, musician Bob Dylan, than what director James Mangold afforded Johnny Cash in Walk The Line (2005), here, a deliberately distant biopic that dares to keep Dylan as the enigmatic character he is, rather than create anything false and flashy for the…

Read more

Film Review: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a messy darker watch that fails to live up to its potential

Back in 2014 Disney decided to release a movie about one of their most iconic villains. Maleficent, the evil fairy and protector of the Moors was a rather ambiguous character in the film adaptation. Toeing the line of an antihero, as she fought to protect her realm against the twisted King Stefan whilst also befriending…

Read more

Sydney Film Festival Review: The Beguiled (USA, 2017) is a worthy remake with an excellent cast and crew

Apart from Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, I haven’t seen much of director Sofia Coppola‘s work. Known for her filmmaking approach to humanize her subjects with unorthodox methods like gentle pathos, looking through different character points-of-views outside the norm and the use of anachronisms, Coppola has achieved a reputation of being a director that is…

Read more

Film Review: 20th Century Women (USA, 2016) is an exploratory tale of finding one’s own happiness

After detailing his own father’s coming out at the age of 75 in the Oscar-winning 2010 outing Beginners, writer/director Mike Mills tackles the stories of his mother and sister in 20th Century Women, an exploratory tale of finding one’s own happiness. As Mills opts to create an individual snapshot for each of his female role…

Read more

Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning star in 20th Century Women; first trailer released

The first trailer for 20th Century Women,  a film about life and love set in Santa Barbara at the end of the 70’s, has been officially released. The film is about a single mother named Dorthea (played by Annette Bening), who is struggling to raise her teenage son, Jamie. She enlists the help of two…

Read more

Ben Affleck and Dennis Lehane to pair again for Live By Night

The Boston boys are at it again as Ben Affleck gears up for his second collaboration with the author of Gone Baby Gone, Dennis Lehane, on a film that looks a little bit beer baron meets Mystic River. Oscar winner Ben Affleck has written the screenplay and will star in the crime thriller based on…

Read more

Sofia Coppola set to write and direct a remaking of Clint Eastwood’s Beguiled

After stepping down from Universal’s live-action retelling of The Little Mermaid, Sofia Copolla will instead write and direct a remake of Clint Eastwood‘s 1970’s period drama The Beguiled. Originally starring Eastwood, directed by Don Siegel, and adapted from Thomas P. Cullinan‘s novel by the same name, The Beguiled follows a wounded American soldier rescued and nursed back to…

Read more

Film Review: Trumbo (USA, 2015)

Dalton Trumbo was a political activist, a writer, a family man, and a man of principle. In Trumbo, a new film starring Bryan Cranston in the leading role, we’re taken back to a time when going against the grain was grounds for treason and imprisonment.  It’s one of the most intriguing – and ghastly –…

Read more