There must be some kind of kismet in the air this week, as right after wrapping my first – long-delayed – viewing of landmark series Twin Peaks and its darkly terrifying prequel, Fire Walk with Me, I woke to the news of Lynch confirming a nine episode continuation of the show (and I mean I…
Opening with a Thoreau quote questioning how best to tackle unjust laws, The Internet’s Own Boy makes it very clear where it stands on the issue, lionising legendary internet hacktivist Aaron Swartz’s downloading (theft, if you prefer) of library documents as a necessary act of political rebellion. The documentary is disingenuous, making the tenuous argument…
As a long-time David Fincher devotee, the first half hour of Gone Girl represents the first time I’ve doubted the director (full disclosure: I’ve never seen Benjamin Button). The film intercuts between Nick Dunne – writer, bar-owner, Ben Affleck – and his wife Amy – writer, actual-owner-of-the-bar, Rosamund Pike – through the past and present.…
Where have all the superhero origin stories gone? Turns out they’ve transformed – in this case into a cloud of bats titled Dracula Untold. Like Noah, Maleficent and Hercules before him, Count Dracula gets the origin story treatment, hewing closer than ever to the ever-popular superhero genre. The armour worn by Vlad (Luke Evans) –…
Willow Creek seems destined to disappoint hardcore horror fans. This found footage film lacks the grotesque gore or spark of originality that horror fans search for, but that doesn’t necessarily render the film ineffective. The film is constructed from Blair Witch Project blueprints with few departures, as Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) and Jim (Bryce Johnson) head…
Soderbergh’s recent interpretation of Raiders of the Lost Ark as a black-and-white silent film has critics pondering the essence of cinema: “moving images.” I was reminded of such power watching South is Nothing. Fabio Mollo’s feature-length debut focuses on a father (Vinicio Marchioni) and daughter Grazia (Miriam Karlkvist, playing a convincingly-boyish tomboy) coping with the…
Featuring in the Italian Film Festival program, The Mafia Only Kills in Summer is perfectly calibrated for a film festival audience, weaving a lightweight romantic comedy through a scaffolding of historical mafia murders in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The title is taken from an offhand comment made to young Arturo (played by Alex Bisconti…
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…
The opening film of GOMA’s Forbidden Hollywood program might as well have been Nietzschean Superwoman, following as it does the “adventures” of Lily (Barbara Stanwyck) as she sleeps her way up the big city corporate ladder, following the advice of her Nietzsche-obsessed cobbler (Alphonse Ethier). As you’d expect from a film over eight decades old,…
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…
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