Search Party – Season 1
Search Party’s really about the search for purpose in your twenties – a search that is often ludicrous, misguided and self-absorbed.
Digging For Fire (2015)
On the surface, Digging For Fire doesn’t diverge significantly from the previous Joe Swanberg flicks I’ve seen. It’s populated by funny, attractive actors (the likes of Brie Larson, Orlando Bloom, Chris Messina, Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell) casually the shooting the shit (often in various states of undress). Pretty much everyone is on the boundary…
Unfriended (2015)
Most conventional horror films fall somewhere on the sadomasochistic continuum. They either allow the audience to assume the role of sadist, monitoring the physical and psychological torment of the film’s protagonists like Jigsaw peering through his surveillance cameras, or manoeuvre viewers into enduring the victims’ ordeals, much like a masochist cherishing their punishment. While I…
Proxy (2014)
Proxy is two hours of emotional and narrative withholding which combines preposterous thriller and horror movie tropes together into a flat, underwhelming experience. That flatness is almost certainly intentional (it’s hard to imagine any director getting such unemotive performances unintentionally), but it only served to disengage me from the proceedings, blunting the impact of a…
The Sacrament (2013)
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…
Sydney Film Festival Roundup
2014’s Sydney Film Festival was only my second film festival (after last year’s Brisbane International Film Festival) and my first time travelling to attend a festival. All told I caught eleven films over a long weekend, and had an excellent time, thanks to so much more than those films (though I remain jealous of anyone…
Sydney Film Festival: Happy Christmas (2014)
Improvisational comedy is fast becoming the norm. Whether it’s This is the End, Bad Neighbours or Anchorman 2, the construction is the same: narrative skeleton to keep the audience interested interspersed with some carefully-honed gags and a lot of loose improvisation, edited into something tighter. I’m not complaining, mind; I love the shooting-shit-with-your-mates vibe of…
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