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  • Maria

    ★★★½

  • Conclave

    ★★★★½

  • The Six Triple Eight

    ★★★★

  • I'm Still Here

    ★★★★½

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Maria

2024

★★★½ Watched

An insight into the last weeks of the life of Maria Callas with enough documentary evidence in the form of flashback images of the diva herself. Angelina Jolie, whom I have never seen on screen before, was totally convincing as Maria - possibly the one we knew from tabloids and news years ago.
Her two companions (servants) appeared in this film to be the amazingly devoted people that such famous stars seem to acquire.
Watching the sick Maria still trying…

Conclave

2024

★★★★½ Watched

Superb performances from so many men and a very small number of women. Interestingly the last shot was of a gaggle of young female initiates (possibly, as I am not sure of the titles these days.) But then again that last shot said something important when one considered the pope that was finally elected in the last moments of the film.

Politics was the frontrunner in this film of the creating of a pope. The intrigue, the machinations and behind…

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The Wizard of Oz

1939

★★★½ Rewatched

In 1950 I first saw this film. I Was 7 years old and I was more scared than delighted. Those red shoes and the striped socks sticking out from the house destroyed in the hurricane and haunted me all these years. My abiding memory of the film. As the 'yellow brick road' has become an often cited metaphor, as has the tin man and the straw man, in our language, it occurred to me that I should have another look…

Fatima

2015

★★★★★ Watched

An acute and moving story of a mother-daughter relationship - according to the blurb in the festival programme. It is based on a short story written by an Algerian woman - Fatima Elayoubi. The mother-daughter relationship could be true of any but here it has the other dimension of one culture clashing against the other as well. The difficulty of life in another culture as well as the normal difficulty of this relationship are presented in a low-key poignant manner.

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