Reviews

The High Frontier is a very good documentary about the life and work of Gerard K O'Neil and his impact on modern space exploration. The documentary also has the same name as the book O'Neil wrote in 1976 about how space colonies could be built in the near future.

The documentary features O'Neil's family, Freeman Dyson, Jeff Bezos, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Peter Diamandis and others talking about how dramatic O'Neil's ideas were and how much impact they had on them. O'Neil was a professor of Physics at Princeton who contributed massively to the design of particle accelerators and then started to write about how mankind could go into space in the near future.

For anyone who has read The High Frontier the documentary provides interesting background on O'Neil and shows how his ideas impacted others. For anyone who hasn't the documentary should be a good introduction to his ideas and should encourage people to read the book.

Booksmart (2019) is an amusing high school film that follows Amy and Molly, two driven nerds who have succeeded in getting into their dream college as they realise they have missed out on a lot of the fun of high school.

To make up for it they decide to head to the big graduation party. Hilarity ensues. It actually does too. The film is impressively funny. It's not a great art piece but it is highly amusing and it delivers in being funny.

The main and ensemble characters are quite human, likeable and funny. It's all a bit overdone as this sort of comedy tends to be but it all largely works. For anyone who likes coming of age films that are funny it's definitely worth checking out.

Mike Leigh has made some fantastic films. I've seen many of them and will pretty much go and see any film he makes. Peterloo is also interesting historically. It should be a great match, but alas it's a boring mishmash that really doesn't work. In the theatre where I saw it a mobile phone alarm went off. At least two people were clearly woken up by it. There are too many characters and the film is confusing as it flies around. There are endless speeches. It's like going to a bad University demonstration. The costumes are great, the tone is serious but this film is a mess. It is remarkable that it has a half way decent review average.

Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet is a cool, fun documentary about the chip music scene, a number of active chip tunes artists, the Tank venue in NYC and the Blip Festival 2006.

If you're looking for more information about chiptunes this would be a great place to start. Nullsleep, Glomag, noteNdo and Bit Shifter are interviewed and account well for themselves. They are, unsurprisingly, a pretty geeky. But they are really charming and obviously pretty talented. The documentary has nice touches too in the use of Nintendo style graphics interspersed into the footage. It's simple and effective.

A number of the people in the film talk about how chiptunes are a form of re-use of technology for another purpose and how people are doing this kind of thing with all types of media and devices and that the internet has encouraged this kind of approach. Chris Burke is one of the people interviewed and it is interesting to note that he is involved with machinima and the 'This Spartan Life' series.

This documentary is well worth your time if you have any interest in this kind of thing.

This film meanders around for too long. It isn't funny enough or moving enough to overcome it's clichéd nature. It's a standard coming of age affair with some romance thrown in. There are a few laughs, but not enough to keep the film afloat. The leads are all reasonable, but in the end the banal material and predictable climax overcomes the qualities of the actors. Surely the Australian Film Finance Corporation can do better than this? Perhaps it looked better on paper. On the plus side Richard Wilson does a stand out job as a retarded young man. The two young romantic leads are both very attractive and have a few good moments together, but again, not enough to bring the mediocre script to life.

I saw this film without having read the books or having had any comment with the success in Russia and do not speak Russian.

The film is really good, it manages to be one of those rare action films that isn't mind numbingly stupid and is actually fresh. That said the plot is of the usual silliness for an action film.

The shots of Moscow feel right. Moscow is portrayed as a dirty, gritty city with all sorts of things going on underneath the surface.

The film is not hard to follow if you are paying attention.

The way the camera is used it great. The special effects are really cleverly done. They help tell the story but don't overwhelm the story. The acting is also fine. It is also so refreshing to see actors who look like real people and can act, rather than the usual stream of Hollywood Barbie and Ken dolls for whom Keanu Reaves is an acting coach.

If you want to see an action film that isn't 'Resurrected Cartoon Idea 8 : Revenge of the marketroids' this film is for you.