Wednesday, 10 September 2025

 September 11th  2025

Downton Abbey
Italian FF (Opening Friday 19th October - Melbourne)
Highest 2 Lowest (streaming)

Fans of Downton Abbey get out your hankies - this is the end! Italia-philes rejoice and start planning, a week in advance, for the Italian Film Festival. And for sofa-sitting streamers we have a new film by Spike Lee, starring the ever-watchable and wonderful Denzel Washington. 

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Dir: Simon Curtis
© Universal - glamour, scandal, family -
and how to relinquish the reins. An era ends!
Get ready to wallow in sumptuousness, family connections, upper-class manners, snobbery, deception, more characters than you can shake a stick at, but most of all a warm and uplifting story of how to relinquish your accustomed role in life, move on, and start a new chapter. Although this film stands quite well on its own, here's some background you may find useful. Written by Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey was a very successful British series running for six seasons from 2010 until 2015. Then came the movies, thrusting the life of an aristocratic British family onto the big screen and giving Dame Maggie Smith yet another iconic role, as the family's matriarch, Violet Crawley. Now, in the third and final film, Violet has died and her son Robert (Hugh Bonneville) is deciding when and how to hand the running of the family and the ancestral home to his daughter Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery). Trouble is, Mary has recently divorced and in 1930 that's a major scandal. Mary's mother Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) staunchly supports Mary, in the face of constant snubs from the local hoi-poloi. While the wealthy folk upstairs are working out their succession plans, below stairs the staff are also going through some big changes. Loyal respected head butler Mr Carson (Jim Carter) is retiring and training up his successor while chief cook Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol) is handing her role over to Daisy (Sophie McShera). Faithful lady's maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) attends to Mary, who makes matters worse by succumbing to the charms of a visiting American, Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), a financial advisor to Uncle Harry (Paul Giamatti), Lady Grantham's brother. If you're overwhelmed already, add in Edith (Laura Carmichael) Mary's sister and Lady Merton (a wonderful Penelope Wilton), who takes over running the local county fair and standing up to her stuff-shirted old predecessor.  The piece de resistance is the arrival of man of the moment, playwright, composer and singer Noel Coward (Arty Froushan), accompanied by actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West), whose previous film was made at Downton. So . . . the story is warm, at times funny and a little sad, most of the characters easy to like, the sense of time and place so perfectly recreated, and the many details (marvellous sets and costumes) very engaging. Spending time at Downton makes for an uplifting and comforting experience, depicting a seemingly simpler time (probably not!) and feeling like a welcome relief from all the drama of today's world. With its glorious ensemble cast and old fashioned story-telling, it allows you to melt into and embrace the fading values of loyalty, trust and family, while aware that their world is on a trajectory to major change.
4 - highly recommended 

St Ali Italian Film Festival 2025
Melbourne 19 Sept - 16 Oct
Palace Cinemas
For other states, all times, synopses, venues visit: https://italianfilmfestival.com.au/

Always a winner with Aussie audiences, this festival again brings the latest and best of Italian cinema to our shores. And as usual, there's a retrospective, this year featuring what's known as "giallo cinema", blending mystery, style and shock. Five unsettling films from such legendary directors as Dario Argento challenge you to be disturbed. Another notable feature, a nominee for Golden Lion 2024, is Sicilian Letters, a Mafia tale starring Tony Servillo, winner of countless awards. With other high profile, award-winning films such as La Grazia, The Mountain Bride and Napoli-New York, a feast awaits you. Including the visually impressive winner of Film of the Year from the Italian Syndicate of Film Journalists -  Diamanti. 

Diamonds (Diamanti)
Dir: Ferzan Ozpetek
© Palace - ordinary women's lives and 
not-so-ordinary costumes
The stunning gown on the cover of the festival program indicates the level of glamour and luxury evident in this film, but it's about much more than that, and much is in fact not glamorous. The real director Ozpetek, meets with his favourite present-day actresses at the film's opening and together they devise a narrative set in 1970s Rome in a seamstress studio - one that produces gorgeous garments and costumes for the film industry. Two sisters, Alberta (Luisa Ranieri) and Gabriella (Jasmine Trinca), run the atelier, which is called upon to fulfil a prestigious order from Oscar-winning director Lorenzo (Stefano Accorsi). He clashes with the head seamstress Bianca, and a woman's attempt to be heard and respected forms much of the subtext of this film, starring almost 20 actresses. While Alberta rules with an almost condescending manner, this masks hidden conflicts. So it is with all the women - one an abused wife, one a struggling mother - all with their own small backstories. The camaraderie of the women underpins it all, as does the sheer magic of creating something so beautiful through passion, imagination and commitment. Ozpetek draws this parallel with creating film, which he talks to camera about, breaking the fourth wall (which doesn't totally work for me). All in all, a lovely tribute to women, film and the costume industry.
The Italian FF is, as always, highly recommended.   

Highest 2 Lowest
Dir: Spike Lee
Length: 123 mins
Streaming on Apple TV+
© A24 - 
Any film with Denzel Washington is bound to lure me in. And when he's collaborating with director Spike Lee even better! This script is loosely inspired by High and Low (an Akira Kurosawa film), and focuses upon music mogul David King (Denzel). He's the head of successful record company Stackin' Hits, and has just received $17.5 million in investors' money to do a deal to buy back his share of company.  On that very day he receives a ransom demand from a kidnapper: his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) has been taken. King prepares to turn over the money from the deal for his son's return. But when Trey is found safe, it turns out the kidnapper has accidentally abducted his best pal Kyle (Elijah Wright), son of King's buddy and chauffeur Paul (Jeffrey Wright). So ensues a moral dilemma of the highest order. Will King and wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) risk all to buy back another man's son? Things start off dramatically un-Spike Lee-ish (with views from a lavish penthouse over New York to the tune of Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma). This deliberate choice underscores the fact that King's fortunes have been tanking; he's too attached to the past, and has lost a lot of his enthusiasm for the music - it's now just a business (and includes a lot of gripes about AI!) But after he makes a brave decision re the kidnapping, he achieves viral hero status. The film takes a dramatic turn of style, moving away from King's extravagant life, to him reconnecting with his seedier side as he teams up first with the police, then with Paul to do what has to be done. The setting moves into gritty Brooklyn, a Spike Lee favorite. Some stunningly vibrant and tense scenes ensue: a train interior pursuit that is nailbiting, a motorcycle backpack swap and police chase through a street full of Puerto Rican festa celebrations, (fabulous, tense music!), and a head-to-head rap battle between King and Rapper Yung Felon (A$ap Rocky). Like many American films, the ending is a bit too neat, but all in all, this makes for exciting viewing, and of course to see Denzel in full flight, ably suppported by Wright, is something to revel in. 
4 - highly recommended


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