Paul Verhoeven

Benedetta takes glee in its farcical and graphic depiction of nunsploitation: Mardi Gras Film Festival Review

If there’s one thing director Paul Verhoeven loves to do, it’s poke the bear.  As he has so gleefully outraged audiences and critics across his career, his latest exploitive project – the “based on a true story” nunsploitation drama(?) Benedetta – could easily be dismissed as blasphemous, but there’s also an alarming sincerity to his…

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Film Review: Benedetta is a blasphemous, confronting farce from director Paul Verhoeven

If there’s one thing director Paul Verhoeven loves to do, it’s poke the bear.  As he has so gleefully outraged audiences and critics across his career, his latest exploitive project – the “based on a true story” nunsploitation drama(?) Benedetta – could easily be dismissed as blasphemous, but there’s also an alarming sincerity to his…

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Ten podcasts from Australia and around the world you have to subscribe to right now

While even the non-avid Podcast listeners have likely heard of series like Serial and Comedy Bang! Bang!, the Podcast world is full of thousands of regular Podcasts that each have their own dedicated audience. We’ve scoured through quite a lot of them and present to you the ten that we think you need to subscribe…

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MIFF Review: Elle (France, 2016) is sensationally subversive

Elle, the latest from Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven, is sensationally subversive. Part unnerving psychosexual thriller, part searing familial comedy, the film commences disturbingly with the sounds of the violent rape of the film’s protagonist, Michèle LeBlanc (Isabelle Huppert), in her Parisian home. We do not witness the crime, only the immediate aftermath: masked assailant having…

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