HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE (full article at The Guardian Australia)

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a twitchy, tension-racked thriller and an incendiary statement about global inaction on the climate crisis. Released in 2023 but with an almost nonexistent theatrical presence in Australia apart from festivals, this film – loosely based on Andreas Malm’s book of the same name – is angry, overlooked and provocative.

College student Xochitl (Ariela Barer) is compelled to drop out and pursue a life as an environmental activist following the death of her mother and the diagnosis of her best friend, Theo (Sasha Lane), with terminal leukaemia. Xochitl and Theo form a group with six others, among them Michael (Forrest Goodluck), a self-taught Native American explosives expert who’s furious at the destruction of North Dakota land. There is also Texan family man Dwayne (Jake Weary), who has been driven to extreme measures by the government’s forced acquisition of his home, through which the recently constructed titular pipeline runs.

Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/13/how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-an-eco-thriller-australia-urgently-needs

IMDB: How To Blow Up A Pipeline

OCEAN'S 8 (full review at Screen Realm)

Freshly released from prison, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) teams up with her best friend Lou (Cate Blanchett) with a plan to pull off an elaborate jewel heist. Having spent the past five years plotting every aspect of their perfect crime, Debbie and Lou set about recruiting a team to steal an extremely valuable necklace from famous actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) at the prestigious Met Gala in New York.

Ocean’s 8 is threaded into the Soderbergh iteration of Ocean movies as Bullock’s character, Debbie Ocean, is the sister of George Clooney’s character Danny. It’s worth it as an excuse to see Elliot Gould cameo as Reuben, but beyond establishing a thin continuity with the previous trilogy, it’s not that necessary. Soderbergh’s version (itself a remake of the 1960 Brat Pack movie) and the sequels, although fun, are unlikely to have left anyone believing the movies to be sacred ground. In fact, in these times of superfluous remakes, the Oceans series actually looks like a perfect candidate for reinterpretation.

Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/oceans-8-movie-review/

IMDB: Ocean's 8