Festivals: SIFF Reviews
BluRay Review: WEEKEND
When Weekend director Andrew Haigh talks about his film carrying a message for everyone, gay or straight, it's a welcome mission statement. Queer cinema tends to divide opinion like few other genres, not least because at one extreme when it's...
BELLFLOWER Review
I think the moment I realized I hated Evan Glodell's directorial debut, Bellflower was about the third or fourth time one of its vacuous, dull characters conflated Mad Max with its sequel, The Road Warrior. The characters make constant reference...
SFF 2011 Review: 33 POSTCARDS
33 POSTCARDS is a film of special significance, as it marks the first official Chinese-Australian (New South Wales) film collaboration. At the Sydney Film Festival this year, where it had its world premiere, it won the Community Relations Commission...
SFF 2011 Review: THE GREAT BEAR
THE GREAT BEAR is an animated film that younger audiences will no doubt fall in love with. The story begins with a couple of young children, Jonathan and younger sister Sophie, going on a visit to see their grandfather....
SFF 2011 Review: THE MISSING KEY
In the wonderful world of cinema, there are many good films; some great ones; but only a few are special. Australian filmmaker Jonathan Nix's animated short film THE MISSING KEY, which was shown at this year's Sydney Film Festival,...
SFF 2011 Review: END OF ANIMAL
END OF ANIMAL is Jo Sung-hee's feature film directorial debut and was funded through a graduate grant from the Korean Academy of Film Arts. The film is set in a darkly atmospheric world. A young pregnant woman is riding...
SFF 2011 Review: ELITE SQUAD 2: THE ENEMY WITHIN
Easily one of the best action films in recent years, ELITE SQUAD 2: THE ENEMY WITHIN sets new standards in the action genre with a perfect mix of compelling drama and explosive violence. While it works well as...
SFF 2011 - STAKE LAND Review
A vampire epidemic has swept across America and seemingly the rest of the world. What is left of the nation's abandoned towns and cities are traversed by Mister (Nick Damici), a vampire hunter, and his protégé and companion Martin (Connor...
SFF 2011 Review: AFRICA UNITED
Heart-warming movies make great crowd pleasers. At the Sydney Film Festival so far this year, a clear crowd favourite is AFRICA UNITED, which stands a good chance of taking out the Audience Award. At its screening, the packed cinema...
SFF 2011 - HANNA review
The Sydney Film Festival brings the best new films from around the world right to the audiences of Sydney. It runs from 8-19th of June and is one of Sydney's biggest annual events.A sixteen year old is raised in the...
SIFF 2011: THE TRIP (2011) Review
The Trip is a movie that's funny until it isn't, that's keeps returning to the idea of what constitutes "real humor" and then slips into "dramedy" territory. I think if anyone else besides Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon starred in...
SIFF 2011: SUBMARINE Review
Young Oliver Tate, the lead of Submarine as played by Craig Roberts, is terrified that his parents are going to break up. Try as he might, he just can't quite get to the root of their mutual dissatisfaction, and takes...
SIFF 2011: THE LAST CIRCUS Review
I'd classify The Last Circus as one of the angriest comedies I've had the chance to see recently, with a sense of humor so black that some viewers may have a hard time seeing the joke. This is a film...
SIFF 2011: DETENTION Review
I anticipate a lot of people will intensely dislike Detention, the John Huges mixed with John Carpenter hyper-aware, so post-modern-it's-pre-future movie written and directed by Joseph Kahn. The movie is a ultra-kinetic, fast-talking, self-referential sci-fi comedy slasher film set in...
SIFF 2011: OUTRAGE (2010) Review
Takeshi Kitano's return to the ultra-violent world of Yakuza film has been, perhaps, misnamed by its writer-director. Outrage conjures up a sense of injustice, of a rejection of the almost normalized criminal behavior depicted in the film which sees Japanese...
SIFF 2011: THE STOOL PIGEON (2010) Review
The problem with Hong Kong director Dante Lam's new crime film The Stool Pigeon isn't that it's a bad movie but instead that it's depressingly only half a good movie. That half follows recently-released criminal thief and illegal street racer...
SIFF 2011: WOMB
There can be no doubt that Rebecca, Eva Green's character in Womb, is a monster. Her actions are born of a particular kind of selfishness and madness that poison her life and that of her "son," Tommy. In writer-director Benedek...
SIFF 2011: KOSMOS (2011)
I'm not sure how to approach writer-director Reha Erdem's mystical drama Kosmos. There are layers of culture and faith embedded within this film that defy access even for a critical viewer. It is--I'm presuming here, having been exposed to very...
SIFF 2011: KARATE-ROBO ZABORGAR Review
By most objective standards, the films of director Noboru Iguchi (Machine Girl, Robogeisha) aren't very good. Their mix of low-budget gore and lowest common denominator slapstick sit side-by-side with flabby pacing and broad, generally goofy performances. But then that's almost...
SIFF 2011: LOVE Review
The greatest failing of first-time feature director William Eubank; Love is that ultimately, it's less than the sum of its parts. While nearly every frame of this stranded astronaut film by the former commercial director is immaculately-composed and is occasionally...