Xavier Dolan’s sixth feature film, It’s Only the End of the World, had its Australian premiere at Sydney Film Festival from a precarious position. Arriving from Cannes with a pair of strange, if increasingly common bedfellows – widespread critical derision and the Grand Prix prize – it’s perched on a pedestal that demands either full-throated…
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…
It’s easy to snicker about Swiss Army Man. Since its Sundance debut, the film has quickly become characterised as “the farting corpse movie”, earning smirks and nudges and “Have you heard about this?” It’s understandable. This is a film, after all, which features The Boy Who Lived playing the man who died and can be…
Goldstone, Ivan Sen’s sequel to 2013’s Mystery Road, begins with sepia-toned photographs of Australia’s past. White families gathered around dining room tables. Gold miners dusted with grime. Indigenous children bedecked in white frocks. A procession of Chinese immigrants walking through the centre of a mining town. These photographs simultaneously hint at Goldstone’s allegorical intent as…
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…
Along with another one of last year’s directorial debuts – John Magary’s The Mend – Josh Mond’s James White signals a new direction for New York indie cinema. Inspired by the improvisational energy of early Cassavettes and Jarmusch’s calculated coolness, James White offers an unconventional coming-of-age narrative that incorporates tragedy without allowing it to sublimate…
Read a synopsis of A Second Chance and you might go in expecting an especially spicy episode of SVU. The story’s packed with crime, parental neglect and a particularly potent package of twists. But what prevents this from being a feature-length Danish Law & Order episode are the steady hands of director Suzanne Bier. Perhaps…
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