Geek of Oz

  A thriller about a family on a tropical holiday who discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age, reducing their entire lives into a single day... M. Night Shyamalan’s latest mind-bending, twisty-turny effort Old , fails to live up to the best of his filmography. Perhaps he’s unfairly labelled as the twist guy, but we don’t get to choose our monikers in this life. His career has justifiably been built upon an ability to pull the rug out from under the audience, which perhaps has left us a little jaded over the years.Twists and turns are always appreciated, but they must be in service of the plot or character development. Sadly here the inevitable reveal didn’t really serve either.  Old primarily takes place on a idyllic beach, where a group of strangers are experiencing a phenomenon of accelerated ageing. I’ll be frank, there’s an intriguing kernel of a story at the heart of Old , it’s just never fully realized. The...

In 1988, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet bowed to international pressure and consented to a referendum, asking Chile whether his rule should be extended for a further eight years. The referendum was simply yes or no, and took place after just 27 days of campaigning, with each side presenting a nightly 15-minute televised address. No , the latest film by Pablo Larrain, follows the campaign of the anti-Pinochet camp, headed by Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), an advertising executive who has just returned home from the United States. For me, the joy of cinema is discovering stories like this, which put historical events in a human perspective in a way that might never otherwise have been appreciated.