Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed is a Spanish film inspired by the iconic lyrics from “Strawberry Fields Forever”. I stumbled across at the cinemas last week and attended on title alone. As a Beatles fan I wasn’t disappointed, but how about as a film fan? It just so happened that in my spontaneous choice…
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The theme of two lovers kept apart from their families or individual circumstances is hardly anything new. But Gabrielle is a film that deals with another rarely discussed subject and one that is infrequently depicted in cinemas. It is the love lives of the disabled and this film shows this with dignity and for the…
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***MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD*** With AMC doing their whole standard mid-season split, fans of The Walking Dead are left with a few months to ponder the long overdue prison break our nearest and dearest survivors have now been forced to make. For a second there, it looked like we might have a repeat of the slow-burning…
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The Muscle Shoals documentary is as soulful as the music that came out of the Alabama County of the same name. The documentary is filled to the brim with the rich musical history of the town that gave the world The Swampers, and countless hits from The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin and way too many others…
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Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to see the Australian premiere of Venus in Fur in its original form as a production from Queensland Theatre Company. The play easily joined the ranks of my favourite experiences at the theatre, and completely won me over with its winning combination of comedy and drama. So when I heard that Roman…
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Seeing any film at the Chauvel cinema, Paddington in Sydney is like stepping into an intimate experience. The service is friendly and personalised, and the cinema itself exudes a kind of chilled-out classy atmos; before your chosen film starts, you can order a beer or glass of wine to enjoy out on the balcony, or…
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OXV: The Manual is unlike any other film you’ve seen, it’s even coined a new genre: the ‘scientific-philosophical romance’. It breaks free from genre conventions to deliver a unique story that presents a new look on fate, determinism and freewill. The film may take a few viewings to fully grasp the rules of writer/director Darren…
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Poor Camille Claudel. The famous artist would create a lasting legacy of sculptures and drawings that are still important and relevant today. But she was also one tortured artist. Camille Claudel 1915 attempts to capture all of these emotions and feelings. It’s also a French biopic that is a claustrophobic chronicle of three days in her sad life. Claudel…
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Have you ever wished that you could go back in time to stop yourself from saying something stupid? Or to return to a moment when you should have kissed someone but didn’t? Of course you have. One of the great frustrations of life is that you cannot re-live moments that have passed. But what if you…
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The plot of the recently released Runner, Runner centres around Richie Furst (played by Justin Timberlake), a Princeton student who loses all of his tuition money on Midnight Black, an online poker site run by Ivan Block (played by Ben Affleck) who then ends up working for him, moves swiftly from the get-go, but begins to pace…
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I’ve started writing this review mere minutes after seeing the film. There was even more hyperbole than what the end product suggests. I have left the cinema with an uncontrollable sense of awe. Even hours and days later, I can’t escape what I witnessed. In spite of the emotionally engaging and thrilling sequences that leave…
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Woody Allen’s directorial output has been decidedly uneven, particularly within the last decade. While highlights of the decade have included the thrilling Match Point (2005) and the joyous gem Midnight in Paris (2011), Allen has also underwhelmed us with films like You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) and To Rome with Love (2012). This is understandable given the sheer frequency of…
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Film-makers who operate in the area of short films have the unenviable task of captivating their audience in a very short period of time. There’s no time for the film to find its feet or grow on the audience; it must make its impression quickly and precisely. It is particularly impressive when a short film…
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Logan (Hugh Jackman) is back in a decidedly darker take on the iconic X-Men character, marking Jackman’s sixth appearance as the steel-clawed “mutant”. The film takes place primarily in Japan and sees Logan reconnect with a man he saved during WWII, Yashida. The plot from there, for the most part, focuses on Logan protecting Mariko (Tao Okamoto)…
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Michael Bay suffers a heavy stigma from the backlash against his grandiose, CGI-fests; yet despite nit-picking critics, he remains a highly skilled director who artfully plays with gorgeous shots of Miami to liven up what is essentially a very dark story in his latest blockbuster. The film – based on a true story – is simply…
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Some of you have seen it. Heck, some of you may have even been in a similar situation. You Make Me Feel So Young is centred on a deteriorating relationship between two American twenty-somethings. The film is the work of writer/director, Zach Weintraub who also doubles as the film’s star. He is the boyfriend of Justine (Justine Eister). After…
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Surely everyone gets excited about Christmas, right? Well Suzanne Bennington does! White Reindeer, written, directed and edited by Zach Clark, follows a period of where Suzanne (Anna Margaret Hollyman), a real-estate agent, deals with the sudden death of her husband Jeff (Nathan Williams), the local TV weatherman. This so happens during her favourite holiday season…
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It is almost hard to imagine that there was once a time when the only opportunity you had to see a film was in the theatre. Once it was gone it was gone. In our modern world, where technology is developing at a ridiculous rate, we often forget to appreciate the incredible access we have…
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In it’s eight year, the Possible Worlds Film Festival has broadened its focus, premiering ten films from the United States in addition to the usual Canadian cinematic experiences offered to Australia. Within the ten Canadian films on the programme sits exploitative drama Diego Star, a probing look at social justice directed by up and comer, Frédérick Pelletier. The Diego…
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A quietly devastating meditation on female adolescence, It Felt Like Love is the feature debut of director Eliza Pittman made on a tiny budget, and shot over 18 days in August 2012. The film opens with an awkward teenaged Lila (Gina Piersanti), childishly smeared in sunscreen at the beach. It’s this yardstick from which Lila’s character arc moves over the…
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Liberace is a name known to many, but his story is often overlooked when it comes to Hollywood icons. Director Steven Soderbergh brings the classic performer and his story to the masses withBehind the Candelabra and goes big by recruiting both Matt Damon and Michael Douglas in what has undoubtedly been the most controversial roles of both of their impressive careers. After…
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The Numbers Station is a government conspiracy based thriller, revolving around a concept which should have been an easy sell for Danish Director Kasper Barfoed. Unfortunately, ambiguous story telling and poor character development leave this film with only a few redeeming features, which are so subtle, you could blink and miss them. Emerson (John Cusack) is a burnt…
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Sydney film-maker Shae-Lee Shackleford has put together a short film called The Anti-Social Network which pokes a bit of fun but also manages to highlight a growing trend in social media addiction and its impact on people’s lives. Our story follows Lucas whose life is consumed by Facebook, played by Sam Mcmillan. From waking in the morning with his phone…
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Michel Gondry has always been one of my favourite directors. His ability to take dreamlike concepts and turn them into something visually tangible has always been his strength, and a unifying quality between all his productions – be they feature length, short or music video format. Though perhaps we won’t consider The Green Hornet in amongst this…
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We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks looks set to polarise audiences as much as the organisation’s founder, Julian Assange does. The documentary is the latest film from the Oscar-winning, Alex Gibney (Taxi To The Dark Side, Enron: the Smartest Guys In The Room). It attempts to paint a portrait of this organisation with snappy animation and a good musical…
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