The Piano (15)
Directed by Jane Campion
★★★★★

NEW Zealand film-maker Jane Campion’s justly lauded Oscar-nominated third feature film deservedly won Academy Awards in 1993 for best screenplay and Oscar nominations for best picture and best director.

Re-released after a quarter of a century, The Piano's potent dramatic force, extraordinary performances and uniquely compelling story reinforces its status as a cinema classic along with enhancing the reputation of Campion — the first woman director to win the top prize at the 1993 Cannes film festival — as a genuine auteur.

Set in the mid-1850s, the film tells the story of Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) and her young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) who arrive in New Zealand after a lengthy voyage from Scotland but end up left on a beach with their belongings and a piano.

McGrath, mute from childhood, has been sold into marriage with local Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill) but rejects him when she becomes attracted to George Baines (Harvey Keitel).

Campion persuasively underscores the emotional depths of the protagonists, creating genuinely credible and affecting characters while involving them in a story that cleverly bring them to life with a sly wit that engages even when emotions are running dangerously high.

The director hits every note perfectly and the performances are spot-on, with Hunter and Paquin both winning Oscars. Atmospheric location cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh and a haunting score by Michael Nyman embellish a true masterwork.

Alan Frank

The Ciambra (15)
Directed by Jonas Carpignano
★★★★

This fresh and mesmerising coming-of-age tale is set in the Ciambra, a small Roma community in Calabria in Italy, where the teenage Pio is on the cusp of manhood.

The 14-year-old drinks, smokes, gambles and is taught to steal cars by his older brother Cosimo (Damiano Amato), a charming and cheekily lovable rogue who wins you over from the first time he appears on screen.

He's played effortlessly and convincingly by Pio Amato, a non-professional actor, who is a natural and whose real-life family, the Amatos, appear alongside him in this drama shot in fly-on-the-wall style.

Pio moves effortlessly between the Roma community, local Italian mafias and African immigrants as the film explores the tensions between the different regional factions.

Writer-director Jonas Carpignano works wonders with his mainly non-professional cast and gets the most extraordinary performances from each and every one of them, with the young Roma kids captured at play stealing the show.

This is gem of a film about the survival of the fittest which show growing up fast and becoming a man isn't all it is cracked up to be, as Pio discovers the hard way. A must-see film.

Maria Duarte

Ocean’s 8 (12A)
Directed by Gary Ross
★★★★

APPROPRIATELY, soon after thousands of women marched in Britain celebrating the centenary of their winning the right to vote in 1918, this latest Ocean riff — a bright and breezy crime caper — is more a “shequel” than a sequel since the “impossible” heist of gems at New York’s annual Met Gala is planned and executed by female criminals

In it, Debbie, played by Sandra Bullock as the sister of Ocean’s 11’s Danny Ocean, has left jail after five years and, joining up with fellow criminal Lou (Cate Blanchett), recruits an all-woman gang for the crime of the century.

Co-writer and director Gary Ross deserves credit for a lively crime tale that's light on logic and credibility but still entertaining enough and it's put over with suitable enthusiasm by all its players, including, memorably, Helena Bonham Carter as a distinctly daffy designer.

AF

Hereditary (15)
Directed by Ari Aster
★★★

FOR a debut feature, this is a surprisingly slick and stylish horror film but “a new generation's The Exorcist,” as one of the poster quotes suggests, it sadly is not.

It does take slow-burning action to new heights, with first-time writer-director Ari Aster setting the scene for over half of a film driven by a stellar performance from Toni Collette as a mother of two. Crippled by grief and mental instability — disturbingly, she makes miniature tableaux of key moments in her life — she starts uncovering the family's deadly secrets on her elderly mother's death.

But, if you're going to spend such an inordinate amount of time building up the tension and the premise, then the final twist and pay-off must be mind-blowing and frighten you out of your wits. Unfortunately, Hereditary fails on all counts. This is more horror style over substance, without providing any fresh spine-chilling surprises.

Hereditary relies on many of the usual horror tropes, including creepy kid, played brilliantly by Milly Shapiro, unexplained possessions and the familiar sight of a bird crashing into a window and dying.

It's The Babadook meets Rosemary's Baby except that the former deals with the exploration of mental illness in a more nuanced, insightful and haunting and skin-crawling way and Rosemary's Baby still sends shivers down the spine.

Even so, it's a very well made and Aster is definitely someone to watch in the future. Just keep your expectations in check.

MD

Studio 54 (15)
Directed by Matt Tyrnauer
★★★★

NEW York’s 54th Street was apparently the go-to place in 1977 if you wanted to get mugged.

But that didn't stop long-time friends Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager transforming a derelict theatre into the legendary nightclub Studio 54 as the epicentre of 1970s hedonism — “a monumental magnet for beautiful stars, casual sex and mounds of cocaine … a den of excess that defined its own rules and enshrined the ostracised, queer and fabulous.”

Rubell died of Aids and so it's Schrager who heads a fascinating roster of interviewees decorating director Matt Tyrnauer’s riveting documentary about the rise and fall into ignominy of Studio 54, finally brought down — “success went to everybody’s head” — by the law.

The “supporting cast” includes Ringo Starr, Liberace, Cher, Liza Minelli, Andy Warhol and Michael Jackson, celebrity guests who let it all hang out in the once-hallowed premises. They add glitzy impact to what's a sad and fascinating story of the once iconic venue.

AF