PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

morrison-dylan-fan Talking to a family friend about having greatly enjoyed the 2014 Aussie Neo-Noir film The Reckoning,I started to get told about an Aussie Noir title which he had been meaning to pick up for ages.Taking a look at Amazon Uk,I was happy to see a DVD of the movie being sold at a very cheap price,which led to me getting ready to wear the monkey's mask.The plot:Retiring from the police force, Jill Fitzpatrick decides to become a private detective. Receiving a call from out of the blue,Fitzpatrick is asked by the parents of Mickey Norris if she can track down their daughter,due to Norris having been missing for 2 weeks.Visiting the last place that Mickey was seen,Fitzpatrick discovers that Norris was involved in underground poetry groups.Getting hold of Noirris poems,Fitzpatrick is disturbed to find that most of the poems involve violent sexual imagery.Tracking down Norris poet teacher Professor Diana Maitland,Fitzpatrick sets her sights on uncovering the meaning behind Norris poems,but soon finds herself writing sonnets for femme fatale Maitland,who seems to have her eyes set on writing the final verse.View on the film:Adapting Dorothy Porter's "poems novel" (!),the screenplay by Anne Kennedy gives the title a distinctive,quirky vibe,thanks to Kennedy playing around with the traditional amateur male investigator role of Film Noirs,and also offering a number of tantalising genre crashes,which leads to the movie switching from gritty Neo-Noir,to sharp lesbian Drama.Whilst Kennedy does well at offering a unique take on Film Noir,the dialogue sadly takes the sheen off the movie,due to it having a blunt feel which infects the movie with an atmosphere of Kennedy being desperate to make the dialogue as harsh as possible,which leads to it being at odds with the intelligent outline that Kennedy has given Fitzpatrick.Being one of the few women to have directed a Neo-Noir, Samantha Lang shows Fitzpatrick's (played by a very good Susie Porter,who also appears naked in the movie)growing attraction towards Professor Diana Maitland (played by a terrifically brittle Kelly McGillis) in an eye-catching manner,by making the striking sex scenes lose clarity,as Fitzpatrick finds herself getting steamy for Maitland.Making glass a prominent feature of the film,Lang shows an impressively subtle skill in using the glass to reflect clues towards Fitzpatrick,which leads to Lang slowly pushing the glass to the front of the screen,and smashing it in a deeply stylised manner,as Fitzpatrick's realises that she has uncovered missing Norris lost verse.

evraymer This movie was a big disappointment. First, it was billed as a suspense, but it wasn't very suspenseful or even interesting (I found I really didn't care that much who killed the dead woman). Second, the film is probably only appealing to those who don't mind a lot of foul language, or sex between characters who try to choke and/or insult each other. Third, elements of it were highly improbable (are murderers really that cavalier about their crimes being discovered?). I admit I switched back and forth to other programs while watching this film on TV, but it was still too long a viewing. Even Kelly McGillis couldn't save it.

matthew Let me state first of all that I liked this film. It revolves around a female PI who is investigating the disappearance of young student poet who is later found murdered. She becomes involved in an affair with the student's teacher who may or may not be involved in the murder. It flows quite well maybe abit slowly for some but to me this is the right pace. The movie is delineated into sections much like a poem and in some ways the lead (admirably played by Susie Porter) seems to float through this world of poetry readings, steamy love trysts and threatening phone calls a player yet somehow disassociated from it all.There were however some things that annoyed me a little about the whole film and while they didnt spoil it for me they nevertheless grated on me. Susie Porters character though solidly played nevertheless did not ring true to me. She is meant to be a working class ex-cop familar with the mean streets of Western Sydney now navigating her way through this bunch of artsy intellectual types. She didnt quite ring true to me - she almost seemed part of that crowd herself - her outsider status wasnt obvious to this viewer.I found the some of the use of nudity and sexual profanity abit try hard. What I mean by this is that it was almost abit forced.To me It looked as though it was saying look how comfortable we are in showing nudity etc,I suspect it was almost there to spice things up rather than being integral to the plot (to be fair a pretty hard line to draw on many occasions).I also found the whole characterisation of the murdered girl and her parents abit annoying. The parents are cardboard carictures of what inner city intellectuals view the suburbanites (with money) as -dull boring and clueless , & the murdered girl is portrayed as some spoilt little brat from the leafy suburbs on a parent subsidised rebellion - another cliche. I find this more than a little ironic as the subject matter of this film is likely to draw an audience (in Australia anyway) that is largely the arthouse end of the market (ie monied and educated) Anyway these points though somewhat annoying to this viewer really are only minor distractions.Overall the film is worth seeing.

m_mckechneay "The Monkey's Mask" knows the rules for a sex-and-crime detective adventure, involving a private eye (brand lonely-wolf), a mysterious femme fatale and a some irritating background information. It converts all those generic ingredients by involving a lesbian woman as the detective. The story is told from her perspective, making use of a voice-over now and then. The plot itself is divided up in chapters, the name of which we learn by inserts, while we see the eyes of protagonist Jill, watching. As to be expected from a Neo-Noir, the she-detective falls in love with the beautiful, but irritating female suspect. Works in creating suspense and overturning gender-cliches.