Pasha's Film Reviews Etc.

9/10 Frank (Bryan Brown) is having a big birthday party so he invites his best friends Leo (Sam Neill) and Billy (Richard E Grant) with their spouses and families to his house in PALM BEACH. It doesn’t take long for the grudges, old and new, to emerge and the old secrets refuse to be buried. The commotion that rocks the three families threatens to ruin the holiday. What will it take to get things back on track?  Exploring the nature of a true family, that goes far beyond blood relations, PALM BEACH is a colourful portrait of a lifelong friendship with all its outcomes, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. While the dining table drama-comedy has become its own sub genre in France (Little White Lies, Namesake) and Italy (PERFECT STRANGERS) middle class families rarely take centre stage in Australian film.  PALM BEACH takes a very Australian approach, avoiding high concept drama, it is breezy summer fun that focuses on the characters’ onscreen chemistry. Sam Ne...

7/10 Department Q is a series of mystery novels by Dutch author Jussi Adler-Olsen about a group of detectives who investigate cold cases. In modern Copenhagen a sealed room is discovered in an old apartment building with four dead bodies positioned at the table. The murder had occurred so many years ago the bodies are mummified. There’s one empty place left at the table. Your enjoyment of the film is highly dependent on your love for the main characters. This is story number 4 and for those of us who have been on this journey for some years our detectives - sombre Carl and charismatic Assad have become our old friends. The narrative as usual switches between the past and the present. The flashbacks in Department Q films can be a bit boring and confusing, but not this time around. The story gallops forward at a high pace introducing many elements, some require serious suspension of disbelief, but the core message about women’s suppression of the past and the present is l...

7/10 Ingumundur lives alone on a desolate farm. He is trying to rebuild his house and is looking after his granddaughter from time to time. He is quiet on the surface, but underneath he is grieving for his recently deceased wife. When a disturbing detail about his wife’s past suddenly comes to the surface it threatens to destroy the fragile peace he has created, and affects everyone he loves. When the movie starts with good few minutes of a car driving down a misty road you know you are in for a long ride. The harsh landscape of the setting is almost a character in the film. It gives the movie almost a magnetic quality. But there’s a sense of imminent tragedy lurking underneath it all.  A WHITE WHITE DAY tells a seemingly simple story, but is secretive at times, letting the viewers decide for themselves what motivates the characters. And it is often what happens off screen  that has the real impact. The cinematography however goes a bit overboard...

6/10 Everybody knows the story. A single mom gives her son a present that didn’t turn out to be exactly what it seemed. His name is Chucky and he is your friend to the end. Only in this version the boy doesn’t want the doll, he wants his mom and the mom only gives it to her son to compensate for something else. Here comes a remake of a horror classic that takes a definite new turn. Preceded by a cheeky social media campaign the film looked a wicked new version of everyone’s favorite murderous doll. I promised myself to keep my expectations in check but I didn’t. All I wanted form CHILD’s PLAY remake to be something that will take my mind off the original and let me enjoy it on its own merit. I did manage to switch off… at least for a while. One thing you have to give to the new version – it is quite a different take on the story we know. Sacrificing the woodoo angle, this Chucky is AI gone rogue. With its limits to harm humans hacked and removed he is still a creatur...

7/10 When Annie’s mother passes away Annie is stricken with surprising grief. She always had a love-hate relationship with her mother, but now a strange sense of guilt is descending on her. This is just the beginning of a chain of tragic events that seems to follow her family through generations... HEREDITARY was hailed by critics as the best horror movie of this decade. But does it deliver on the expectations?  There’s a lot to be grateful for. Hereditary is intelligent measured film making,each of its sucker punches delivered with focus and precision to the best effect. A hybrid of PET CEMETERY, ROSEMARY’ S BABY and sprinkled with the sickly paranoia of the WICKER MAN it has all recognisable elements for a horror fan, but still has a unique look and feel. When I watch a horror movie I always ask myself a question - would my 13 year old self love it. In regards to HEREDITARY the answer is NO. Would it scare me - hell yes. Would it bore me to sobs? That too. Would...

6/10 A father and a son are trying to reconnect during the trip to a remote shack when unexpected guests arrive in the face of drug traffickers. They had hidden the drugs in the shack thinking it was abandoned and now asking for what is theirs. There’s only problem with that - they will not leave witnesses. Father and son have no choice but to fight back.  Jason Momoa has his time in the spotlight with his big blockbuster AQUAMAN coming to us this year. This much smaller, almost Arthouse, effort take us back right into early nineties. This is a B action thriller with charismatic protagonists, creepy villains, and where not much makes much sense (and it’s for the better).  Don’t try to analyse it - you get handful of invaders who are going to be dispatched in various fashions, they are so hopeless that sometimes one wonders who is the real victim here. The stakes are never too high and every protagonist seems to have some superhero skill (mostly it involves b...

9/10 Some unions are made for reasons other than love. The marriage of Zhenya and Boris   is falling apart. Boris is having a baby with another woman and Zhenya has a rich older lover who can provide for the life she has always dreamed of. The only inconvinience is their son Alyosha. One night the boy hears his parents fighting and disappears the next day. When Zhenya and Boris start a frantic search for their son their conflict deepens, wounds are opened and the final masks are torn off.  How does one carry on in a LOVELESS world? Russian director Sergey Zvyagentsev is a contradiction. Russian viewers claim that he makes films for Europe and they are very un-Russian with their cold style and unfavorable characters, while the rest of the world sees Russia through the prism of his films. LOVELESS definitely hits the mark while describing Russian middle class, the type of conversations people have, the interests and values. While in LOVELESS all the characters ar...