The Gift opens on ominous shots of an abandoned, modernist mansion, grey stone and brown wood gleaming dully in the afternoon L.A. sun. Soon, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall), a professional couple from Chicago, will be escorted through the hollow house by a real estate agent. But for now it lies dormant, the…
It’s probably impossible to make a film about Joan of Arc without at least acknowledging the long shadow cast by Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. Luc Besson’s 1999 interpretation steers into that skid; like Dreyer’s film, significant chunks of Joan of Arc: The Messenger are filmed in close-up, but the lens of choice…
Catching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on the tail-end of a Mission: Impossible marathon brings into focus how different Guy Ritchie’s latest feels from both the average spy thriller and today’s typical blockbuster. This isn’t to say there’s anything especially innovative going on here – outside of the ‘60s setting, it’s a pretty standard spy story…
Creep isn’t so much a movie as a goof, an 82 minute micro-budget riff on Mark Duplass’s inflated New Age persona (as in seen in the likes of The Mindy Project). Despite assuming a found-footage horror genre, the film isn’t especially scary or suspenseful; despite the title, Duplass’ character, “Joseph”, isn’t so much pathologically creepy…
The Andes are thick with fog, its white all-encompassing tendrils consuming the conquistadors descending into its depths. Even as it clears, revealing the pale blue sky above a mottled green canopy and rotten brown rivers, the atmosphere of portentous doom remains. Only Aguirre, “the wrath of God” (Klaus Kinski) seems immune to the heavy weight…
Over at FilmInk I reviewed three films from the upcoming Korean Film Festival in Australia: the entirely decent comedy-action-thriller A Hard Day; the surprisingly spiky rom-com-that-isn’t, My Ordinary Love Story and the epic boats-on-boats war film The Admiral: Roaring Currents (also out on DVD and Blu-Ray). My Ordinary Love Story is definitely the pick of…
Tom Cruise is one of this generation’s most enduring movie stars. In 1986, he piloted Top Gun to the top of the box office; three decades later, well into his fifties, he launches the fifth instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise while his Top Gun contemporaries have faded into irrelevance (or television). So what is…
David Oelhoffen’s adaptation of The Guest, a short story by Albert Camus, expands the story’s scope beyond Camus’ single schoolroom setting to the desolate wilderness of the Algerian steppes. French film Far From Men fleshes out its source’s narrative by adopting Western tropes like tense standoffs erupting into gunfire while retaining its stark moral conflict.…
What is the purpose of an international film festival? This is a tricky question, with many answers. It’s a question I’m not particularly qualified to answer, either, but as I see it, the primary responsibility of a film festival is to provide an opportunity for cinephiles to see films that they otherwise might not –…
Let me get this out of the way first: Trainwreck is a very good film. That needs to be said upfront, because this one of those reviews where I’m going to spend more time talking about what didn’t work rather than what did, and that imbalance might suggest that I didn’t enjoy the film. But…
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