It’s 1997 and the Asian Financial Crisis is in full swing. Companies are downsizing, people are feeling the pinch and the burden of providing for one’s family is high. It’s in this pressure-cooker environment that first-time Singaporean director Anthony Chen brings Ilo Ilo. For many, Ilo Ilo is not just about class systems but also…
Awarded the Special Jury Award winner at the Sundance Film Festival, Love.Love.Love is a charming short documentary film about the notion of love as seen through the eyes of a group of woman ranging from young girls to elderly women. Love.Love.Love was developed via the Cinetrain initiative, a cinema event that takes place in Russia…
There’s only one time in my life that I can recall having something that I can only describe as an anxiety attack. It was at a Brian Cox lecture in Sydney last year and I believe it was when the rockstar physicist was describing the moment when the Earth would cease to exist. The very…
Dior & I could be renamed “Dior & Co.” or “Dior & Us”. The documentary film goes behind the scenes at the French fashion house as the new creative director for Dior Haute Couture, Raf Simons prepares his debut collection. After John Galliano was unceremoniously fired amid controversy (he’d made anti-Semitic comments at a Parisian…
Of all of the films screened at the 2014 Sydney Film Festival, At Berkeley is perhaps the timeliest, considering the recent reveal that the budget here in Australia could see considerable changes to the tertiary education landscape. At Berkeley acts as a peek into how the University of California, Berkeley, is run in the…
Abuse of Weakness, the latest offering by French filmmaker Catherine Breillat, is an intriguing and compelling film that unflinchingly portrays Breillat’s own curious story. The autobiographical film is based upon Breillat’s experiences, beginning with her suffering a stroke in 2004 and following her through the long recovery process and adapting to life partly crippled. During…
The theme of two lovers kept apart from their families or individual circumstances is hardly anything new. But Gabrielle is a film that deals with another rarely discussed subject and one that is infrequently depicted in cinemas. It is the love lives of the disabled and this film shows this with dignity and for the…
Fish & Cat feels like a dream that’s forever threatening to turn into a nightmare. This bizarre and unsettling film, by Iranian director Shahram Mokri, is supposedly based on true events where a restaurant served human flesh, and its roughly two hours of runtime is filmed entirely in one shot. Imagine a re-enactment of a…
The Queen is a gritty and dazzling short presented by Argentinean director Manuel Abramovic. I’ve called this one gritty and dazzling because it is full of sequins, incredible glittering costumes but also suffering. This film is a short 15-minute vignette of Memi’s life. Memi is only 11 years old and she is going to be…
Is it too much of a stretch to imagine a crowd of rabid soccer fans turning into a mob of hyper-violent, destruction-hungry rioters? Such is the question when gearing up to watch a two-part French horror film which quite proudly displays it’s mixed-genre glory in it’s trailer. It isn’t hard too understand what’s going on…
Not everything or everyone is quite what it seems in this gripping thriller that brings a wealthy American couple and a young shady tour guide together on an increasingly tense journey across the Mediterranean as they try to evade the law. Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his gorgeous young wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst) are holidaying…
It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since we last saw Angelina Jolie on the big screen (the tepid 2010 thriller The Tourist sitting as her most recent live action affair) and in the time waiting to see her as the titular Maleficent we’ve been teased and taunted with imagery greatness, leading us to believe that…
In Lake August, screening as part of the Sydney Film Festival, what little drama occurs is almost completely subsumed by the landscapes of the film. A young man, Ah Li, drifts across a remote corner of rural China, smoking and drinking beer, but mostly just standing there, for almost two hours in a film comprised…
Since premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Lenny Abrahamson’s new film Frank has become one of the most talked about films of the festival circuit, lighting up cinemas with its iconic papier-mâché head from SXSW all the way to Sydney Film Festival, where it had its Australian premiere this weekend; the place where Abrahamson’s What…
“Australia – Ten Years After the Collapse” This is as explicit an explanation as David Michôd gives in terms of explaining where we find ourselves in his second full length feature, The Rover. Following on from the remarkable Animal Kingdom, this could not be more a different film. In place of a multitude of characters,…
Agnès Varda – the Grand Dame of French New Wave Cinema – has lived one rich and vibrant life. And in Les plages d’Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès) this is captured perfectly. The film is a strange documentary that is helmed by the doyenne art house director and lovable eccentric, as she candidly takes us…
Pulp are a band of the people. So it should come as no surprise that the film about their last concert performance in their Sheffield hometown is at times more about their fans and the locals then the self-deprecating group itself. Florian Habicht’s (Love Story) documentary, Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets plays…
“Today is gonna be a good day. Because, today is ideal day to commit suicide.” The tagline for Yuichi Suita’s short film is both poignant and funny in an absolutely guilt-inducing way. It’s also telling of how viewers are likely to feel throughout the seven-minute film. We watch the un-named and silent protagonist as she…
This beautiful documentary offers an insight into the daily life of the National Gallery in London. Unfolding over three hours, Frederick Wiseman with his characteristic unobtrusive touch allows conversations and activities to unfold in real time, giving the viewer the ability to observe in true ‘fly-on-the-wall’ style. The impressive collection housed by the gallery is…
American buffalo are so physically and culturally linked to North America that it is difficult to imagine them living in any other country. So wouldn’t it be interesting to see them roaming the harsh, wet plains of Scotland? This is the basis for Maurice O’Brien’s short documentary Buffalo Dreams, which sees the struggles of buffalo…
John Donne once famously wrote that “a man is not an island”, referencing the many connections that seep into even the most insular of spaces and tug at certain sides of our human psyche even at times when we are physically alone. It’s a sentiment which rings entirely true in Locke, a truly fascinating minimal…
In Vienna resides the Kunsthistoriches Museum (Museum of Fine Arts), a jewel in the city’s crown and home to thousands of paintings, sculptures and artefacts from all over the globe. The Great Museum follows the preparation for the opening of the Kunstkammer Gallery – a specialty gallery devoted to thousands of artefacts collected by Habsburg…
In life we are more often than not reactive creatures, responding to our environment and those around us. Sometimes the unlikeliest of people and the most random of circumstances can shape our lives, in both good and bad ways. Based on the novel by Larry Brown and directed by David Gordon Green, Joe is the…
Viewers are gifted a film which is undeniably Nick Cave with (sort-of) rock bio-pic 20,000 Days on Earth ditching everything we have come to dread of rockstar-centric films and giving us something which truly seeks the mind of this infinitely interesting artist. Filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard employ various techniques to twirl around an…
Played with deadpan composure by writer and feature debut director Desiree Akhavan, we meet Shirin in the last stage of her breakup with long-term girlfriend, Maxine (Rebecca Henderson). In the opening scene she is collecting her remaining belongings, exchanging final barbs and discussing the future custody of a shared strap-on dildo. The scene closes on…
For Those Who Can Tell No Tales is a provoking film, which serves as a poignant reminder to Australian tourists about the often silent and traumatic histories that haunt the European cities they visit. The exposure of this past forms the central premise of the film, based on the experience of Australian performance artist…
With Boyhood, director Richard Linklater further asserts himself as one of the most innovative in the business, his body of work – which includes Before Sunrise and it’s sequels – already coated with more acclaim than most of his peers. He excels with minimalist plots, painting seemingly dull and everyday occurrences as happenings which are…
The pairing of culinary delights and comedy is an appetising treat in The Trip To Italy, a somewhat slight journey through the country’s finest eating spots that will satisfy any movie-lover’s palette. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play semi-fictionalised versions of themselves, on a foodie’s getaway through Italy away from the demands of family life…
You know those tag lines they use to promote films? Well the tag line for Edge Of Tomorrow is “Live. Die. Repeat” and this movie does exactly what it says on the tin. Not to mention throw tons of sci-fi action in your face and manages to deliver an interesting story that stays focused and…
There is something about singer and guitarist John Mayer. Clearly, he is talented. He is a 19-time Grammy award nominated recording artist, and of those nominations, he has won 7, the last win in 2009 for his song “Gravity”,, for which he won the Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. But for some, his tabloid fodder…
