Fish & Cat feels like a dream that’s forever threatening to turn into a nightmare. This bizarre and unsettling film, by Iranian director Shahram Mokri, is supposedly based on true events where a restaurant served human flesh, and its roughly two hours of runtime is filmed entirely in one shot. Imagine a re-enactment of a…
Read more
The Queen is a gritty and dazzling short presented by Argentinean director Manuel Abramovic. I’ve called this one gritty and dazzling because it is full of sequins, incredible glittering costumes but also suffering. This film is a short 15-minute vignette of Memi’s life. Memi is only 11 years old and she is going to be…
Read more
Is it too much of a stretch to imagine a crowd of rabid soccer fans turning into a mob of hyper-violent, destruction-hungry rioters? Such is the question when gearing up to watch a two-part French horror film which quite proudly displays it’s mixed-genre glory in it’s trailer. It isn’t hard too understand what’s going on…
Read more
Not everything or everyone is quite what it seems in this gripping thriller that brings a wealthy American couple and a young shady tour guide together on an increasingly tense journey across the Mediterranean as they try to evade the law. Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his gorgeous young wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst) are holidaying…
Read more
It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since we last saw Angelina Jolie on the big screen (the tepid 2010 thriller The Tourist sitting as her most recent live action affair) and in the time waiting to see her as the titular Maleficent we’ve been teased and taunted with imagery greatness, leading us to believe that…
Read more
In Lake August, screening as part of the Sydney Film Festival, what little drama occurs is almost completely subsumed by the landscapes of the film. A young man, Ah Li, drifts across a remote corner of rural China, smoking and drinking beer, but mostly just standing there, for almost two hours in a film comprised…
Read more
Since premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Lenny Abrahamson’s new film Frank has become one of the most talked about films of the festival circuit, lighting up cinemas with its iconic papier-mâché head from SXSW all the way to Sydney Film Festival, where it had its Australian premiere this weekend; the place where Abrahamson’s What…
Read more
“Australia – Ten Years After the Collapse” This is as explicit an explanation as David Michôd gives in terms of explaining where we find ourselves in his second full length feature, The Rover. Following on from the remarkable Animal Kingdom, this could not be more a different film. In place of a multitude of characters,…
Read more
Agnès Varda – the Grand Dame of French New Wave Cinema – has lived one rich and vibrant life. And in Les plages d’Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès) this is captured perfectly. The film is a strange documentary that is helmed by the doyenne art house director and lovable eccentric, as she candidly takes us…
Read more
Pulp are a band of the people. So it should come as no surprise that the film about their last concert performance in their Sheffield hometown is at times more about their fans and the locals then the self-deprecating group itself. Florian Habicht’s (Love Story) documentary, Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets plays…
Read more
“Today is gonna be a good day. Because, today is ideal day to commit suicide.” The tagline for Yuichi Suita’s short film is both poignant and funny in an absolutely guilt-inducing way. It’s also telling of how viewers are likely to feel throughout the seven-minute film. We watch the un-named and silent protagonist as she…
Read more
This beautiful documentary offers an insight into the daily life of the National Gallery in London. Unfolding over three hours, Frederick Wiseman with his characteristic unobtrusive touch allows conversations and activities to unfold in real time, giving the viewer the ability to observe in true ‘fly-on-the-wall’ style. The impressive collection housed by the gallery is…
Read more
American buffalo are so physically and culturally linked to North America that it is difficult to imagine them living in any other country. So wouldn’t it be interesting to see them roaming the harsh, wet plains of Scotland? This is the basis for Maurice O’Brien’s short documentary Buffalo Dreams, which sees the struggles of buffalo…
Read more
John Donne once famously wrote that “a man is not an island”, referencing the many connections that seep into even the most insular of spaces and tug at certain sides of our human psyche even at times when we are physically alone. It’s a sentiment which rings entirely true in Locke, a truly fascinating minimal…
Read more
In Vienna resides the Kunsthistoriches Museum (Museum of Fine Arts), a jewel in the city’s crown and home to thousands of paintings, sculptures and artefacts from all over the globe. The Great Museum follows the preparation for the opening of the Kunstkammer Gallery – a specialty gallery devoted to thousands of artefacts collected by Habsburg…
Read more
In life we are more often than not reactive creatures, responding to our environment and those around us. Sometimes the unlikeliest of people and the most random of circumstances can shape our lives, in both good and bad ways. Based on the novel by Larry Brown and directed by David Gordon Green, Joe is the…
Read more
Viewers are gifted a film which is undeniably Nick Cave with (sort-of) rock bio-pic 20,000 Days on Earth ditching everything we have come to dread of rockstar-centric films and giving us something which truly seeks the mind of this infinitely interesting artist. Filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard employ various techniques to twirl around an…
Read more
Played with deadpan composure by writer and feature debut director Desiree Akhavan, we meet Shirin in the last stage of her breakup with long-term girlfriend, Maxine (Rebecca Henderson). In the opening scene she is collecting her remaining belongings, exchanging final barbs and discussing the future custody of a shared strap-on dildo. The scene closes on…
Read more
For Those Who Can Tell No Tales is a provoking film, which serves as a poignant reminder to Australian tourists about the often silent and traumatic histories that haunt the European cities they visit. The exposure of this past forms the central premise of the film, based on the experience of Australian performance artist…
Read more
With Boyhood, director Richard Linklater further asserts himself as one of the most innovative in the business, his body of work – which includes Before Sunrise and it’s sequels – already coated with more acclaim than most of his peers. He excels with minimalist plots, painting seemingly dull and everyday occurrences as happenings which are…
Read more
The pairing of culinary delights and comedy is an appetising treat in The Trip To Italy, a somewhat slight journey through the country’s finest eating spots that will satisfy any movie-lover’s palette. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play semi-fictionalised versions of themselves, on a foodie’s getaway through Italy away from the demands of family life…
Read more
You know those tag lines they use to promote films? Well the tag line for Edge Of Tomorrow is “Live. Die. Repeat” and this movie does exactly what it says on the tin. Not to mention throw tons of sci-fi action in your face and manages to deliver an interesting story that stays focused and…
Read more
There is something about singer and guitarist John Mayer. Clearly, he is talented. He is a 19-time Grammy award nominated recording artist, and of those nominations, he has won 7, the last win in 2009 for his song “Gravity”,, for which he won the Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. But for some, his tabloid fodder…
Read more
X Men: Days of Future Past focuses heavily on the concept of time travel , and in a similar fashion to the penultimate season of Lost, approaches it with a sense of playful irreverence as we are given something much lighter than the previous X Men installment (First Class). Mystique plays a central role in…
Read more
In the privileged valleys of north-west California, the next generation are figuring their shit out. Based on James Franco’s linked short story collection of the same name, Palo Alto is the directorial debut of Gia Coppola. The premise will be familiar to anyone versed in the disaffected-slacker-coming-of-age genre: boys do stupid things, with pyrotechnics, alcohol and/or…
Read more
It’s Halloween, and the dance floor has been rolled out, the alcohol has been mixed and the candy bought: it’s time for Kevulie IX – Kevin (Christopher J Domig) and Julie’s (Lucy Walters) annual Halloween party. Their best friends, Jesse (Gregory Perri) and Jen (Amelia Martin), have been married for ten years and are on…
Read more
Instantly recognisable, the gigantic monster that is Godzilla has stalked remakes of the original Ishiro Honda classic for 60 years now, and while results have varied, the tale remains a classic. Gojira was originally conceived as a response to the tragedies which devastated Hiroshima, Negasaki, and Bikini Atoll, serving as a metaphor for the destruction…
Read more
There was a recent study which found that newborns often cry during the night because they’re trying to prevent their parents from reproducing again. This is the same sort of environment that the light comedy, Sex After Kids with tag line, “By any means necessary” comes from. This film explores sexuality and the social issues…
Read more
Woody Allen stars in this rather strange sex-fuelled love story, harking back to his prime with his classic awkwardness as he tries to navigate the fact that he is now actually a pimp. Yes, a pimp. A pimp who encourages his florist friend – playing by the brilliant John Turturro (who also directed and wrote…
Read more
Sure, some may find it easy to dismiss Bad Neighbours as just another comedy driven by Seth Rogen’s awkward humour – nothing we haven’t seen before. However, what really makes this film work – and possibly places it as one of the finest comedies of the past few years – is the on-screen chemistry Rogen…
Read more
