Surely everyone gets excited about Christmas, right? Well Suzanne Bennington does! White Reindeer, written, directed and edited by Zach Clark, follows a period of where Suzanne (Anna Margaret Hollyman), a real-estate agent, deals with the sudden death of her husband Jeff (Nathan Williams), the local TV weatherman. This so happens during her favourite holiday season…
It is almost hard to imagine that there was once a time when the only opportunity you had to see a film was in the theatre. Once it was gone it was gone. In our modern world, where technology is developing at a ridiculous rate, we often forget to appreciate the incredible access we have…
In an unspecific time in an unspecified part of Israel, Amram Mufradi (David Tassa) is on a mission. It is his dying father’s last wish to hear ‘The Ballad of a Weeping Spring’, a song written by his band, the Turquoise Ensemble, 20 years before, but as yet unperformed due to a tragedy that has echoed through…
In it’s eight year, the Possible Worlds Film Festival has broadened its focus, premiering ten films from the United States in addition to the usual Canadian cinematic experiences offered to Australia. Within the ten Canadian films on the programme sits exploitative drama Diego Star, a probing look at social justice directed by up and comer, Frédérick Pelletier. The Diego…
Set in current day Cairo over the course of one day, Coming Forth By Day is a slow moving and bleak meditation on the life of Suad (Donia Maher) an unmarried 30-something who lives with her parents, and together with her mother (Salma Al-Najjar), looks after her ailing father (Ahmed Lutfi) . As the film…
A quietly devastating meditation on female adolescence, It Felt Like Love is the feature debut of director Eliza Pittman made on a tiny budget, and shot over 18 days in August 2012. The film opens with an awkward teenaged Lila (Gina Piersanti), childishly smeared in sunscreen at the beach. It’s this yardstick from which Lila’s character arc moves over the…
Liberace is a name known to many, but his story is often overlooked when it comes to Hollywood icons. Director Steven Soderbergh brings the classic performer and his story to the masses withBehind the Candelabra and goes big by recruiting both Matt Damon and Michael Douglas in what has undoubtedly been the most controversial roles of both of their impressive careers. After…
Gebo and the Shadow is film that prides style over pace. It tells an old tale about money, sacrifice and family. Michael Lonsdale (Munich, Moonraker) is possibly the most recognizable cast member from this French/Portuguese film. It is based on the play of the same name by playwright, Raul Brandao. The director Manoel de Oliveira makes…
With horror films these days, it’s difficult to avoid either the “torture-porn” sort of films – Saw, Hostel etc. – or the “found footage” stylings of the surprisingly never-ending Paramormal Activity series. But for those who hold the genre close to their heart, it’s hard not to look back to films like The Excorcist or The Amityville Horror and crave a more “classic” style…
Every now and then a comedy comes along that just seems to work. It’s not terribly intelligent, nor will it win any Academy Awards, but it ticks the most important box that any comedy needs to possess: it’s genuinely hilarious, without being painfully cheesy. Already riding on healthy word of mouth in American cinemas, This Is…
Guillermo Del Toro’s gargantuan Pacific Rim is every bit as fun as its trailer promised us. Forget the snotty, negative stigma that often surrounds overblown sci-fi/action films; this one makes up for any perceived lack of brains with so much brawn that you won’t be able to help yourself high-fiving and cheering whenever a destruction-driven battle scene pops…
The Numbers Station is a government conspiracy based thriller, revolving around a concept which should have been an easy sell for Danish Director Kasper Barfoed. Unfortunately, ambiguous story telling and poor character development leave this film with only a few redeeming features, which are so subtle, you could blink and miss them. Emerson (John Cusack) is a burnt…
You may think you’ve seen or heard of this sort of film before, the one where a group of people are trapped in a confined spare (ie: an airplane) and all of a sudden start dying. Sometimes you can even guess who or what the cause of the mayhem is however in the case of Airborne you’ll…
Sydney film-maker Shae-Lee Shackleford has put together a short film called The Anti-Social Network which pokes a bit of fun but also manages to highlight a growing trend in social media addiction and its impact on people’s lives. Our story follows Lucas whose life is consumed by Facebook, played by Sam Mcmillan. From waking in the morning with his phone…
After an epic three weeks, seven cities and twenty-four films, the 16th Spanish Film Festival came to a close on Wednesday night at the Verona Cinema in Paddington. The celebrations were low-key cool; guests were treated to enormous and delicious goblets of Sangria as part of a pre-screening gathering at the cinema bar, where Spanish…
The Royal Exhibition Building hasn’t seen a sight like Oz Comic Con since the zombie’s shuffled past it last year. Today there are scores of die hard comic and movie fans all streaming into the building to gain knowledge about a favourite actor, score some great purchases or meet new friends. A scene of mecca…
Brutal action scenes and a decidedly clumsy Superman is what Man of Steel will be remembered for; this reimagining of the classic superhero myth, by director Zack Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan, is loud, confronting, and grand, and this is why watching it on a screen as big as the one at IMAX Darling Harbour was absolutely essential; it’s this…
The Spanish Film Festival turned sixteen this year. To celebrate, it added Canberra and Byron Bay to its already impressive list of cities to be visited by all things Cine español. Plus, this year, Maribel Verdú, the brilliant actress from Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001), has joined the festival to participate in audience Q&As to follow…
Michel Gondry has always been one of my favourite directors. His ability to take dreamlike concepts and turn them into something visually tangible has always been his strength, and a unifying quality between all his productions – be they feature length, short or music video format. Though perhaps we won’t consider The Green Hornet in amongst this…
Jeff Buckley may have sung “So Real” on his ground-breaking, Grace album, but the bio-pic of his and his dad’s lives concentrates on their mystical qualities. Maybe it was their untimely deaths – Jeff by drowning in Memphis’ Wolf River at age 27 and Tim at age 28 from an accidental overdose – that turned them into alt-rock…
What Maisie Knew could actually be called Matilda. The former is an adaptation of the Henry Jamesnovel but it also shares a lot in common with the latter, Roald Dahl book. There is the brilliant and mature-beyond-her-years little girl who has to take care of herself because her parents only do so when it’s convenient. Although both sets of parents are…
We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks looks set to polarise audiences as much as the organisation’s founder, Julian Assange does. The documentary is the latest film from the Oscar-winning, Alex Gibney (Taxi To The Dark Side, Enron: the Smartest Guys In The Room). It attempts to paint a portrait of this organisation with snappy animation and a good musical…
This year’s Russian Resurrection Film Festival marks its 10th anniversary as the largest festival of Russian Cinema outside of Russia. Showcasing a cross section of Russian culture over a variety of film genres, the program welcomes award winning Director of comedy musical Hipsters Valery Todorovsky. Set in 1950s Soviet Russia, Hipsters follows the relationship between Mels (Anton Shagin) who is a member of…
The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival (HRAFF) is currently touring the country as a medium for showcasing, engaging and informing audiences of pressing and lesser known human rights issues. After a two week stint in its hometown of Melbourne, HRAFF landed at the Chauvel Cinema for Sydney’s opening night, screening a documentary directed by Harry Freeland titled In the…
The Wolfpack is back in the third and final installment of The Hangover franchise. You would think after the last two films that there would be not much more in the way of shenanigans these guys could partake in, but clearly director/writer Tom Phillips had other ideas.
Iron Man 3 is the third film in the Tony Stark story arc and promises more action and intensity than the previous two incarnations. Considering its box office success and it hasn’t even had a full week on screens in Australia yet; clearly the Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are flocking to watch it.
JJ Abrams helms an explosive larger than life sequel in Star Trek: Into Darkness but does it live up to the hype and fanfare? And furthermore, can it survive the nitpicky Trekkies? As somebody who is definitely NOT a Trekkie and unfamiliar with the universe aside from a very basic knowledge of who Kirk and…
The genre of the Grindhouse film usually involves a short narrative, one set and some cheap prothetics thanks to a low budget. The narrative is generally put together by posing a simple question: what would happen if a bunch of rich kids went camping and a guy with a chainsaw showed up? What would happen…
There aren’t many straightforward, non-Romantic Comedies these days. At least not ones that get a big advertising budget. And generally, when they do, they suffer from juvenile humour, a disappointing, predictable script and scenarios that illicit little more than the occasional giggle. The sorts of movies that cause geniune, belly aching laughter – at least…
From one brief look at its poster, you very much know what to expect from Safe Haven, the latest film from Dear John director Lasse Hallström, based on a novel from the author of The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks. Even that sentence will tell you all you need to know, let alone the loving embrace of…
