Leo Woodall

Tuner

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Ruthie and Niki face to face

Tuner looks like it’s going to be a cracking drama but it hits a bum note early on, ironic in a film about a guy whose job it is to make pianos ring true. Dustin Hoffman is prominently billed, seems to be prominent dramatically too, but has been all but retired from the movie after about 15 minutes. What was shaping up to be enjoyable display of give-and-take, catch-and-release, tag-team acting between Hoffman and co-star Leo Woodall becomes something else. Hoffman plays the old master teaching his skills to Woodall’s callow youth, Niki, a kid with gifts – perfect pitch and hearing so acute he wears headphones to protect his ears. Niki’s true … Read more

Nuremberg

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Close up of Russell Crowe as Göring

Would you have guessed, when Russell Crowe was appearing in Australian TV soaps like Young Doctors and Neighbours that one day he’d be playing the lead in Nuremberg? And that he’d have gone from being a slim, handsome chap with tousled hair to someone who could effortlessly play Hermann Göring, sour-faced, fat and oozing self-regard. The self-regard maybe – actors, huh – and transformations are what actors are all about, after all. Wibbling to one side, Crowe’s performance as Göring, Hitler’s Supreme Commander of the Air Force and an unrepentant Nazi right to the last moment, is the making of James Vanderbilt’s film. Set at the Nuremberg War trials in the aftermath of the … Read more