Breaking down a film festival program – especially one that stretches to 370 films, as does this year’s Melbourne Internal Film Festival – is a daunting task. And, frankly, kind of futile. Unless you’re a Melbourne-based cinephile with no day-to-day commitments, the films you choose to see are going to determined more by scheduling than…
Freezing Vibration is the follow-up to Freezing, a 2011 fanservice anime which suffered from lacking any apparent target audience. Taking a conventional premise – a primarily female-populated high school spiced up with frequent magically-augmented battles – the first season failed to provide any kind of interesting plot, wasting its time on progressively tiresome hierarchical disputes.…
It’s hard to fault the craft behind this live action adaptation of iconic Japanese gentleman thief; it is nothing if not competent. It looks very professional, with a sleek, slickly colour-graded aesthetic that resembles an up-scale watch or automobile advertisement. The action scenes – of which there more than a few – are crisply edited…
On the way to completing my Science degree, most of my electives were spent on Philosophy courses, thanks to a roughly-equal combination of intellectual inquisitiveness and a desire for bludgey subjects. My favourite course was probably the one titled Philosophy of Time Travel, which looked at the philosophical and metaphysical ramifications of time travel; specifically,…
Amanda Adolfsson’s Young Sophie Bell is an intimate insight into female friendship; passionate and personal, combative and competitive all at once. Sophie (Felice Jankell) – whose surname is actually Karlsson – has been best friends with Alice (Hedda Stiernstedt) since infancy. They shine together, as exemplified by the opening scene, where their vibrant pink and…
That Sugar Film manages to be both entertaining and educational; no easy task when you’re spending your runtime lecturing your audience on what they’re putting into their body. Director – and ‘subject’ – Damon Gameau (who I interviewed earlier this year) shifts from a wholesome no-sugar diet to forty teaspoons of the stuff a day,…
Cormac McCarthy had no hand in the production of The Homesman, but his shadow stretches long over Tommy Lee Jones’ neo-Western. The spare landscape, lensed with wintery clarity by Rodrigo Pietro, embodies the harsh tone of the author’s prose while also allowing for the glimpses of poetry that pervade his writing. The setting is, of…
For whatever reason, I seem to have been watching a lot of documentaries lately, and I’m becoming increasingly aware that, by and large, my reaction to the genre is a shrug and an “It was okay, I guess.” I’ve seen so many good documentaries, portraits of fascinating people telling fascinating stories … and, yet, I’ve…
Whether or not you’re familiar with the life story of Brian Wilson, Beach Boys leader and troubled genius, Love & Mercy’s story will be a familiar one. How that story is told distinguishes is what the film from a raft of interchangeable musician biopics. Its potentially conventional rise-fall structure is softened by splitting the narrative…
Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) finds herself torn between three suitors in Thomas Vinterberg’s Far From the Madding Crowd. There’s the honest, earthy masculinity of Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), the restrained respectability of wealthy William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) and the hot-blooded lustfulness of Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge). Vinterberg establishes Miss Everdene’s independence amidst gorgeous, pastoral…
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