>
Anwen Crawford
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Housekeeping for Beginners (2023) |
The film’s ensemble cast is uniformly strong, including tiny Dzada Selim as kindergartener Mia, raucous yet wise beyond her years. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted May 09, 2024
|
|
|
|
Barbie (2023) |
Ultimately, Barbie the film suffers from the same problem as Barbie the character: it ends up flat-footed. The film is buoyed by jokes yet heavy with speeches. - Sydney Morning Herald
Read More
| Posted Jul 18, 2023
|
|
|
|
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) |
Eliza Hittman's drama is marked by the emotional solidarity of its teen protagonists... - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Nov 17, 2021
|
|
|
|
Happiest Season (2020) |
Who among a queer viewership will want to watch a comedy in which the leading queer characters spend all their time making each other truly miserable? - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Dec 18, 2020
|
|
|
|
The Translators (2019) |
A bonkers and very bad film that isn't even willing to be properly silly, and instead skids in and out of patches of spiritless violence. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Sep 25, 2020
|
|
|
|
First Cow (2019) |
Nothing here is simple -- alliances are constantly shifting. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Aug 07, 2020
|
|
|
|
The Trip to Greece (2020) |
All this metatextual cleverness might be unbearable in another, tighter sort of comedy, but one lasting pleasure of the Trip series has been its utter shagginess. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted May 22, 2020
|
|
|
|
Judy & Punch (2019) |
The sense that we're watching events occur outside a real time or place distances us from them. The film's main achievement is in visual design. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Nov 20, 2019
|
|
|
|
The Report (2019) |
[Scott Z. Burns] personalises the villains and, in doing so, diminishes the scope of US power and the extent to which that power has been abused. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Nov 15, 2019
|
|
|
|
Blinded by the Light (2019) |
In its devotion, Blinded by the Light does something to convey the sheer desperate quality of obsessive fandom. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Oct 25, 2019
|
|
|
|
Judy (2019) |
This is the same old cautionary tale of a woman whose appetite for love exceeds what custom decrees she should settle for, and with the same conclusion: her hunger is its own inevitable punishment. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Oct 17, 2019
|
|
|
|
Amazing Grace (2018) |
The first night has the intimacy, and intensity, of something more or less private that we happen to be fortunate enough to peek in on. But the second night is charged with public expectation... - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Aug 29, 2019
|
|
|
|
Booksmart (2019) |
If you can deal with its unflagging zest -- for some I suspect it will grate like nails down a blackboard in the classroom of their nightmares -- then you may enjoy watching Booksmart. I did. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Jul 12, 2019
|
|
|
|
Little Woods (2018) |
Like so many American stories, Little Woods is a drama about personal agency, but it's also a dramatisation of what it means, in material terms, to have very little agency to exercise. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted May 17, 2019
|
|
|
|
Loro (2018) |
...why render it all over again, especially when the whole scenario is left to fizzle out, and is never revived? - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Jan 11, 2019
|
|
|
|
I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story (2018) |
They've been dismissed and patronised, but Beatlemaniacs, Directioners and other fangirls are very self-aware about their boy band "affliction." - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Dec 03, 2018
|
|
|
|
Lean on Pete (2017) |
Plummer plays the part with an emotional discipline that belies his youth. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Dec 01, 2018
|
|
|
|
Suspiria (2018) |
"No one is alone" becomes the film's concluding moral, which feels false, in so far as it cuts against a harder truth suggested elsewhere by the pile-up of symbols and subplots. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Nov 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
You Were Never Really Here (2017) |
You Were Never Really Here feels much more remote and unreal in its scenario, and though it has been compared several times already to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), I'm not sure that the comparison holds weight. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 06, 2018
|
|
|
|
BlacKkKlansman (2018) |
Some viewers may feel that Lee is being didactic, or literal, but I think that BlacKkKlansman is a vital film arriving at a critical moment. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Aug 15, 2018
|
|
|
|
Whitney (2018) |
Musical history is the film's weak spot and the consequence of that, despite Macdonald's clear affection for his subject, is to underplay Houston's impact by depriving her artistry of its proper context. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Aug 02, 2018
|
|
|
|
Disobedience (2017) |
Lelio's real strength is as a director of actors... Both Weisz and McAdams are committed and convincing. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Jun 13, 2018
|
|
|
|
Ocean's 8 (2018) |
The script is woeful: eight leading parts and not a single memorable character; every actor squandered. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Jun 08, 2018
|
|
|
|
BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) |
As the film moves fluidly between protests, meetings, club nights, and affairs...we are left with the impression of a time and a place in which nothing, not even death, seems inevitable. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted May 17, 2018
|
|
|
|
Loveless (2017) |
Something vital, his films intimates, has been lost in Russia, and perhaps not only in Russia - some warmth of the soul, a sense of civic accountability. As with the child, no one even noticed it slipping away. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Apr 25, 2018
|
|
|
|
The Death of Stalin (2017) |
The Death of Stalin is obviously a farce, in the best sense; the primary aim is never verisimilitude. The film shares something of the attitude and atmosphere that pervades a work like Dario Fo's. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Mar 27, 2018
|
|
|
|
Lady Bird (2017) |
First time writer-director Greta Gerwig, an experienced actor, is attuned to the mix of munificence and selfishness that makes up the adolescent heart. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Feb 15, 2018
|
|
|
|
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) |
The emotional stakes are lowered in Lanthimos's world, but the operation of power is much the same as it ever was. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Nov 16, 2017
|
|
|
|
High-Rise (2015) |
High-Rise has no shortage of vivid images to tempt the eager filmmaker, from a ransacked supermarket to an Afghan hound floating dead in a swimming pool. What's harder to convey is that distinctive Ballardian tone. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Manchester by the Sea (2016) |
[Michelle] Williams has only a few scenes but makes her mark in all of them. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Love & Friendship (2016) |
Love and Friendship is very funny, funnier still for its absence of moral reckoning. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
A United Kingdom (2016) |
Though A United Kingdom has an emotional arc that is too predictable, its resurrection of a widely forgotten piece of twentieth-century history is worthy. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Berlin Syndrome (2017) |
The navet of the main character feels far less credible. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) |
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night deftly mixes genre tropes while creating its own singular, surreal universe. I've never seen another a film where a female vampire dressed in a chador rides a skateboard, that's for sure. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Things to Come (2016) |
Things to Come is a rare and welcome film for not suggesting that a woman is unnatural or unfeeling to care for her work as much as for her family. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
A Quiet Passion (2016) |
A Quiet Passion, like most films about writers, sticks to the life that can be dramatised, rather than the writing process, which can't. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
God's Own Country (2017) |
[Francis] Lee allows more optimism into his film, including the suggestion that agriculture itself might still have a future in England. - Australian Book Review
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Macbeth (2015) |
This is a Macbeth that retains Shakespeare's language but makes free and easy with edits, rearrangements, and a few bold reinterpretations of key scenes. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Selma (2014) |
Selma gives back to the Civil Rights movement its urgent and motivating anger, when too often the movement has been misrepresented as a cause of infinitely patient, infinitely forbearing martyrs. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
The Gift (2015) |
The Gift is efficiently and quite memorably chilling. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Sherpa (2015) |
In [Jennifer] Peedom's film we see a mountain that is both workplace and sacred site, integral to both the economic livelihood and the religious beliefs of the surrounding Sherpa community. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Bill Cunningham New York (2010) |
New Yorkers love nothing more than a story about themselves. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) |
Borrow a young relative for cover if you must, but believe me, you are not too cool for a kid's movie when it's this much fun. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
A Most Violent Year (2014) |
A Most Violent Year is uneven in pace and tone, as events threaten to erupt and then simmer down again, but despite its flaws, it lingers in the mind. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
It Follows (2014) |
It Follows is unnerving without being bloody, and more than this, that it cleverly inverts the sexual politics on which so much popular culture, most especially the horror film, often depends. - Kill Your Darlings
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Suffragette (2015) |
The bravery and the radicalism was real. I wish, though, that the film itself was a little braver, a little more visceral. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Spotlight (2015) |
If there is any heroism in Spotlight then it's a very humble one: the heroism of getting the facts right, which seems, today, almost too much to ask of mainstream newspapers. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Spectre (2015) |
Spectre is an elaborate justification for the relevance of the gun-toting, martini-drinking spy in a post-Snowden world. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) |
Though it is doubtful that [Nina] Simone, were she still alive, would be much impressed with [Kanye] West's music - she once said that she didn't like rap at 'all' - she might recognise in him a fellow spirit. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|
|
|
|
Listen Up Philip (2014) |
Listen Up Philip [is] an uneven mixture of satire and homage. - The Monthly (Australia)
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2017
|