Tag Archives: Film
Film
High-stakes verité: Andrew Haigh’s Weekend
There’s a scene early in Andrew Haigh’s Weekend in which Russell (Tom Cullen), a handsome, semi-closeted gay man, patrols the local indoor swimming pool where he works. He plods around the pool perimeter and then looks on pensively from the lifeguard’s chair while a younger guy playfully … Read more
Column: Film and TV
A Fussy Filmgoer speaks out: cinema’s mixed pleasures
Imagine for a moment that you’re sitting with a friend in a reasonably full, darkened cinema, anxiously waiting for that film you’ve both been dying to see all summer to begin. The previews finally finish and the film’s production company logos start quietly appearing. At this moment, … Read more
Reviews
Review: Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs)
Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs) is French director Guillaume Canet’s third feature film, following his extremely successful 2006 thriller, Tell No One. Little White Lies is a drama about eight friends who decide to take their annual holiday together.. Read more
Reviews
Review: Snowtown‘s horrifying social realism
Few films in recent years have given me nightmares. But there are images and sounds from Justin Kurzel’s first feature film, Snowtown, that keep taunting me in my sleep—a bloody and burned face hopelessly spluttering; a dog shot and whimpering; a man casually smoking a cigarette, naked … Read more
Reviews
Review: Wasted on the Young
Reminiscent of Australian high school dramas such as Blackrock and 2:37, Wasted on the Young is the feature debut of writer/director Ben C. Lucas. Filmed in Western Australia, the story takes place at an exclusive private school, which we are informed is the best because ‘it’s the … Read more
Film
Review: Barney’s Version
At first glance Barney’s Version appears to be a cynical comic reply to the false promises of Hollywood romance narratives. A crude, brash and at times grotesque Barney Panofsky (played by Paul Giamatti) takes the viewer through his three failed marriages and the unsolved disappearance of his … Read more
Reviews
Goodbye God, Hello Genius: A Review of The Social Network
As I go through my morning ritual of scanning several online newspapers, the sheer number of references to Facebook or its founder Mark Zuckerberg leaves me nonplussed. There is Richard Harper’s Guardian piece on Facebook’s revamping of age-old email technology, and another in the Age that compares … Read more
Reviews
Rural noir: Winter’s Bone
Directed by Debra Granik and based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone inspires terms often too eagerly used by reviewers, like ‘grim’, ‘bleak’ and ‘at times lyrical’, because in this case they are inescapably apt. Set in what may be the last frontier landscape of … Read more
Reviews
Review: Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid
There’s a strangeness to contemporary South Korean Cinema that I find intriguing. An alluring sense of the uncanny seems to pervade its film stock, as though the South Korean worldview is just a tad bizarre, as though its gaze falls on a spot just slightly aslant from … Read more
Film
Amos Oz: The Nature of Dreams [review]
This gently illuminating documentary from filmmakers Masha and Yonathan Zur casts its gaze upon the life of critically acclaimed Israeli writer and political commentator Amos Oz. Drawing deeply from his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, the film paints a thoughtfully evocative portrait of the eminent … Read more
