There must be something about Grand films and ludicrous premises … not too long after watching The Grand Seduction I find myself immersed in a thriller where Elijah Wood is forced – by a sniper-rifle-toting John Cusack – to play piano or die. It’s more absurd than the low-key silliness of The Grand Seduction, so…
New Zealand drama Fantail is quite similar to this year’s excellent British film The Selfish Giant. Both address the metaphorical prison constructed by modern-day poverty and each is a loose adaptation of an old story; the latter takes inspiration from Oscar Wilde’s short story, while Fantail is based on the Maori myth of the mischievous…
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida is a contemplative experience defined by its restrained emotionality, cool black-and-white photography and its static, reflective mise en scène. The film tells the tale of Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young novice nun who’s lived with sisters for her entire life, who’s sent to visit her aunt, Wanda (Agata Kulesza). Former Stalinist prosecutor…
Zero Dark Thirty was one of the best films of 2013 (going by Australian release dates), but its relentlessly American point-of-view is arguably a failing. I don’t think that Bigelow’s film unambiguously views Bin Laden’s murder as a success, but the controversy/conversation that developed regarding the film as “pro-torture” was predicated on that very assumption.…
Thirst tackles vampirism as a metaphor for primal transgression – forbidden sexual desires and our capacity for violence – a conventional narrative that’s elevated by Park Chan-wook’s stylistic excess (that excess isn’t always appreciated – the runtime didn’t need to stretch past two hours). Song Kang-ho stars as a tormented priest turned vampire after a…
On a purely visual basis, The Boxtrolls is one of the most inventive animated films in some time. Like Laika predecessors Paranorman and Coraline, it’s animated in tremendously tactile stop-motion. Its troglodytic characters are cast amongst the cobblestone streets of a 18th century minor metropolis which brings to mind, variously: the spindly grotesquery of the…
It doesn’t surprise me to learn that British costume drama Belle came about after its screenwriter, Misan Sagay, spotted an 18th century portrait of a woman of colour, apparently an ensconced member of the aristocracy in an era where black skin was synonymous with slavery. The film is fundamentally good-intentioned, but strikes me as the…
Spectacular lip-synch scene aside, The Skeleton Twins is much lesser comedic than the presence of SNL alums Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader would lead you to believe. They play twin siblings, each possessing an air of superior condescension that barely conceals their crippling insecurity and depression. They’re re-united after Hader’s suicide attempt, and share a…
The observational mode of Mike Leigh’s storytelling in Secrets & Lies did not initially impress me. Leigh tends to stand back from his characters; his camera maintains a close proximity to working-class mother Cynthia (Oscar-nominated Brenda Blethyn), her brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) and Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the daughter Cynthia gave away decades ago …but generally…
I finally watched The Sacrament after watching Ti West’s featurette on the Criterion House release, where he articulately advocated for art-horror films that are “challenging films.” Ti West’s prior films – well, The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, anyway – weren’t for everyone, but they were interesting – and, in my book, quality…
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