Reviews

Kim Farrant’s Strangerland has a magical and mythical quality to it, making full use of the Australian outback with rich, rocky-red landscape shots that swallow the film’s characters in expansive, ambitious cinematography. But while visually impressive, Strangerland’s flaws lie in a commitment to ambiguity, presenting itself as one thing and then veering off into another…

Being an adult is hard. Relationships are hard. Making new friends is hard. Exercising and eating right is hard. Having big dreams is hard. But what we really want is the result. The thing at the end of all that hard work that makes it worthwhile. Sometimes getting to that point can be a little…

Every mention of Lily Tomlin is preceded by “the incomparable” because it’s a universal truth, but the famed American comedian has been a rare sight on the big screen in recent years, featuring primarily in supporting roles in TV series like Web Therapy and Malibu Country. Thankfully that drought is over, with not only her…

Station to Station isn’t so much a feature film as it is a travelling art experiment, the execution of a concept born years prior that is now travelling the globe. The film documents a train as it travelled from the Atlantic (we presume Union Station in NYC) to the Pacific (we presume Union Station in…

On the surface Last Cab To Darwin is not just a film about euthanasia, but a film about the people you meet on the greatest journey you take of all, living the one single life you have. A road movie that’s a drama with heart and emotion at its core and a cast of genuine…

Over 86 minutes, this chilling documentary details how a (very) small, quiet town in North Dakota slowly transformed into a breeding ground for hatred and paranoia over the course of a few months. It’s easy to watch Welcome to Leith as a highly effective thriller, forgetting that the events going down in the film actually…

Madame Bovary is a pleasant film but it’s an unnecessary adaption. The iconic novel by Gustave Flaubert has been adapted multiple times for film and television over the past few years. But what distinguishes this latest offering is that it is the first one to be directed by a female (Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls)). Here,…

The Daughter is the second Australian film screening at the Sydney Film Festival this year to be adapted from a play (or, more accurately in this case, “inspired by”) that originally appeared at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney – that being Simon Stone’s 2011 adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (the other, Cowell’s Ruben…

Isabella Patterson’s arrival into the lives of a group of people in New York City brings about a chain reaction akin to a relationship shit-storm in Peter Bogdanovich’s new film, She’s Funny That Way, now showing as part of this year’s Sydney Film Festival. Originally written 15 years ago, it is now seeing the light…

For singer songwriter and musician Amy Winehouse the last couple of years of her life were fodder for tabloids and the entertainment news machine monster. You may not have been a fan of her music but you were familiar with her and her drug-fuelled antics. But sometimes what gets overlooked when her name is brought…

Slow West is the story of a young, wide-eyed Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who undertakes a journey to find his ‘true love’, Rose (Caren Pistorius). Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender) soon enters the picture, vowing to help him survive his journey for a small fee. Unbeknownst to Jay, a bounty has been placed on the heads…

At the height of Entourage’s TV fame, the world was a different place. We hadn’t yet been exposed to the juggernaut that was to become the Kardashian’s reality TV popularity, and, if truth be told, we were still watching bloody The Hills for our reality TV fix. There were still remnants of Paris Hilton floating…

Note: This review contains some spoilers of the film and the original play. “How brave of you to stop drinking alcohol in this alcoholic country” – Zoya (Abbey Lee) With a penchant for young girls, alcohol and most of life’s vices (as well as a “me before you” attitude), Ruben Guthrie isn’t a particularly likeable guy….

This is not the first time Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd has been adapted, but it’s certainly the finest interpretation out there. The Victorian-era story is based around heroine Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) and the fierce commitment she has to maintaining her own independence after inheriting a large farming estate from her uncle….

Aloha tells the story of skeptical military contractor, Brian Gilcrest’s (Bradley Cooper), who returns to Hawaii after losing himself to the “grey side” of the military. It is here he is given a fresh start with the military and is reunited with his ex girlfriend Tracy (Rachel McAdams) after 7 years of lost contact. With the company of…

Few films of recent years have had ingredients for wonder so specific as Birdman. Michael Keaton portraying a washed up, former comic book star trying to revitalise his career in an inventive script co-written and directed by the man who brought us Biutiful; the potential for amazement is through the roof and somehow, the film…

San Andreas is a fault line that extends through a large majority of California and is overdue for a BIG earthquake. “It’s not a matter of if but when” is the premonition that Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) a professor of seismology gives his class at Caltech, and after years of research into the prediction of earthquakes,…

What do you get when you put one perpetually optimistic scientifically curious teenager with one former boy-genius now middle aged man jaded by disillusionment on a mission to find a mysterious place in time and space? A quintessential Disney film that somehow manages to be an action-adventure-secret joyride with a surprisingly funny cast that tries…

During World War II, the painting The Woman in Gold by renowned painter Gustav Klimt was illegally taken from the home of Adele Bloch-Bauer by the Nazis, and would eventually end up in the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna. It was a practice that went on throughout the war, when many Jewish homes were ransacked, their…

While not exactly a shot-for-shot re-make, Gil Kenan’s version of classic supernatural-horrorPoltergeist sticks fairly close to the original, at least when it charges into the brunt of the action. The 1982 original, from horror masterminds Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg, has been cemented into popular culture so the story should be familiar to most. You…

Earlier this year Larry Heath checked out Paul Feig’s action-comedy film Spy that got a showing at the SXSW Film Festival in Texas. An unorthodox approach for a mainstream comedy however with the film set to release in Australian cinemas this week, we take a look back at Larry’s review from then. Spy reunites Feig…

Blackhat opens with exhilarating paranoia. The camera soars, impossibly, through a computer chip, where tiny lights flicker with an ominous trill. We are watching a hack that triggers the overheating of a nuclear plant in China and nullifies the warning signs. People die because of a series of numbers. A similar but harmless breach is…

There will be many adjectives thrown about when it comes to describing Mad Max Fury Road and I can guarantee you that all of them will be accurate. Breathtaking, explosive, relentless, spectacle, intense, awesome, mind-blowing, and even epic. This film lives up to all of those and quite possibly does the impressive job of surpassing…

Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story is a food documentary that will leave you being unable to look at your fridge and food in the same way again. Documentary filmmakers, Jenny Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin have put together a tight and informative look at the issue of food waste. It offers some eye-opening statistics…

Girls just wanna have fun. Except that in the film, A Royal Night Out, those two ladies are Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret at ages 19 and 14, respectively. The film is a fun and warm-hearted historic romp that does feel like it’s being played a little too safe at times. On V.E. Day (8…

In the bustling city of Sapporo, Anna (Sara Takatsuki) sits alone and silently sketches the other, happy girls. Presumably they don’t have asthma, their parents are alive and, unlike her foster parents, they don’t keep them just for the tax benefit. After she has an attack that asthma cannot fully explain, her foster mother, Yoriko…

The century is the 23rd and the world’s population is, for the most part, impoverished. In an effort to escape the rat race, the poor take jobs in dangerous extraterrestrial industries, of which even the commute, via a process of data transmission known as slipstreaming, is treacherous. Whit Carmichael (Daniel MacPherson) is one such worker….

They are back, pitches. Whether you invited them or not. As Pitch Perfect 2 opens, the Barden Bellas are at the zenith of competitive acapella group achievement, having dominated the scene imperiously since capturing the national title for the first time three years prior. However, a wardrobe malfunction of Janet-Jackson-circa-Super-Bowl-XXXVIII proportions during a televised performance,…

Charlotte Campbell-Stephen is one incredible and inspiring Australian woman. She’s also the subject of the raw and gritty documentary film, I Will Not Be Silenced. This tells the story of Campbell-Stephen’s steely resolve and determination in pursuing justice in a flawed legal environment. The film is written and directed by veteran filmmaker, Judy Rhymer. It depicts Charlotte’s…

It would be hard to deny Unfriended as an imaginative and innovative film; Director Levan Gabriadze takes an initially uninspiring concept and makes it work with admirable attention to detail and a genuine sense of tension. However, in the film’s pursuit of as much realism as possible, the viewer is left unable to escape from…