I love a good underdog sports story. Oh, it’s a familiar narrative, but there’s something in the time-honoured tale of overcoming the odds and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat that can’t help but resonate with me. Palio then, which pits plucky newcomer Giovanni Atzeni against veteran champion – and mentor – Luigi “Gigi”…
Over a year after the premiere of The Hunting Ground, this documentary’s insight into the darker side of American college culture is doubly relevant. Kirby Dick’s film reveals not only the regularity of rapes on campus, but how institutions value their own survival over the wellbeing of their students. With shocking clarity, The Hunting Ground…
A good horror flick is metal-as-fuck. Tasmanian director, Sean Byrne, embraces this sentiment with a twisted, electric-guitar-infused follow-up to his debut feature, The Loved Ones. With Devil’s Candy, Byrne once again demonstrates uncommon cinematic focus, but the end product is not without its off-key moments. The film immerses itself in alternative artistry from the hard…
Girl Asleep, screening in this year’s Sydney Film Festival, has a lot in common with a pair of teen-oriented films that screened in the festival last year. Like the impressive Diary of a Teenage Girl and the not-so-impressive Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Rosemary Dyer’s directorial debut uses the “Sundance aesthetic” – twee…
Tickled presents a dilemma to those reviewing it. Specifically, how do you talk about the film without getting into spoilers, without tipping your hand to its many surprises? You can discuss the documentary’s premise – a continuation of Kiwi journalist David Farrier’s investigation into the mysterious world of “competitive tickling” – but to get into…
Suntan begins as an R-rated, Greek Islands take on The Office. The middle-aged and miserable Kostis (Makis Papadimitriou) is transferred to a tiny island to serve as their only doctor. As Christmas rains give way to summer sun, Kostis begins tagging along with a group of irreverent young tourists and struggles to strike up a…
James Wan’s haunted house oeuvre is a well-oiled machine. Creaky floorboards and fearsome presences roll off the production line like clockwork; creepy, broken, grandfather clockwork. And, although The Conjuring 2 is bound by formula, when the scares are this good, I’m happy to buckle my seatbelt and enjoy the ride. Wan’s recent good form (Insidious et al) is…
I believe video games can be adapted into great movies. There’s a wealth of interesting stories to be extracted from the industry. Warcraft is one such franchise ripe for cinematic exploitation, but alas, in the name of ‘world building,’ director Duncan Jones has simply tried to cram in too many stories at once. Would it be…
The filmmakers behind Patchwork – writer/director Tyler MacIntyre and his co-writer Chris Lee Hill – have an obvious affection for classic horror cinema. It’s not merely the way their story remixes the familiar Frankenstein mythology into a three-brained she-zombie (Tori Stolper/Tracey Fairaway/Maria Blasucci), complete with an 8-bit cameo of Frankenstein’s monster. But from the Maniac homage…
Money Monster arrives amidst a groundswell of anger towards corporate greed and economic fraud in America. It’s a timely film that benefits from its social relevancy, but cannot sharpen its message to truly resonate with its audience on the same wavelength as similar films in recent years, like The Big Short. Directed by Jodie Foster…
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