Shane Danielsen

Feb 29, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Shane Danielsen

At the beginning of February there were reports that members of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party had for the first time been invited to attend the Berlin Film Festival’s opening night. The outcry was immediate. More than two hundred members of the European film industry signed an open letter protesting at the invitations, declaring them ‘incompatible with the festival’s commitment to being a place of “empathy, awareness and understanding”’.

Feb 22, 2024 | themonthly.com.au | Shane Danielsen |Martin McKenzie-Murray |Jonathan Green |Anna Krien

The debut film from writer-director Cord Jefferson, American Fiction arrives highly recommended: five Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture, for Jefferson as screenwriter, and a Best Actor nod – his first – for star Jeffrey Wright. Adapted from a terrific novel, Percival Everett’s Erasure, it premiered to glowing reviews at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival and placed high on many US critics’ best-of-2023 lists.

Feb 5, 2024 | themonthly.com.au | Shane Danielsen

Even after 30 or so years, there are some things about the Netherlands I’ll never understand. How can an entire country live on sandwiches? Why are the stairs so ridiculously steep? (Seriously, it’s like risking death every time you descend.) And most baffling of all, why do none of Rotterdam’s cafes seem to open before 9am? As I crossed the chilly Schouwburgplein – head down against the wind, hands jammed into my coat pockets – I felt cold and hungry and, yeah, pissed off.

Dec 13, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Shane Danielsen

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in Riyadh, attending a conference on the future of film criticism, where I felt obliged to point out that, like most carbon-based activities, it probably didn’t have one. Not exactly a popular opinion among my fellow panellists, the comment nevertheless drew a round of applause from the audience, and slightly puzzled, I asked what they were applauding – my candour, or my prognosis? The answer, it turned out, was both.

Nov 23, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Shane Danielsen |Jess Hill |Katherine Wilson |Anthony Ham

Emma Stone seeks a moral conscience in Yorgos Lanthimos’s upended Frankenstein grotesque, while Andrew Haigh delivers a metaphysical coming-out story Adapted from a novel by the Glaswegian writer Alasdair Gray, Poor Things marks the second collaboration between Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara, who inaugurated their partnership with 2018’s The Favourite.