I walked into the cinema not knowing a thing about what turned out to be a decidedly unusual adult animated drama. As the final credits rolled and I saw the name of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) featuring prominently, it all made sense. He deals with the obscure and…
In 2013 Canadian director Dennis Villeneuve gave us the tough and taut claustrophobic thriller Prisoners (starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal), which made many critics’ lists of the best films of the year. He returns with Sicario, a powerful, hard hitting and gritty thriller that takes a look at the US’s war on drugs. It…
Contact sports and head trauma go hand in hand, but until relatively recently the potential long-term consequences of repeated knocks have gone largely unnoticed. Based upon a GQ article titled Game Brain by Jeanne Marie Laskas, Concussion is a dramatic thriller surrounding the true story of a Nigerian immigrant to the United States, Dr Bennet…
Legend certainly won’t be remembered as a brilliant gangster movie. You certainly can’t compare it with a gangster epos like The Godfather or The Untouchables. This film about the notorious Kray twins surely exhibits a successful retro look and shows how the brothers founded their business empire full of glamor and violence, and how it…
There have been many film versions of Shakespeare’s bloodiest and most cinematic play, from Orson Welles’ idiosyncratic 1948 version through to Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood in 1961, which reinvented the play as a samurai drama. More recently Australian director Geoffrey Wright (Romper Stomper) gave us a more contemporary take on the play, setting the…
Slow moving but compelling, Felix and Meira is a Canadian drama concerns a young, unhappy Hasidic wife and mother, Meira (Hadas Yaron), who wants more out of life than the cards she has been dealt. She finds the strictures of her ultraorthodox upbringing are choking her vitality. Meira likes lively popular music – much to…
In the vein of Black Hawk Down (2001), 13 Hours is a war thriller based upon fact dealing with events in Libya leading up to and on 11 September 2012 – the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. Directed by Michael Bay, it focuses upon a crack security team of six who fight to defend the American…
– Eye in the Sky – Only in cinemas from 24 March 2016 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to eOne Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE From a script by BAFTA winner Guy Hibbert and the director of Ender’s Game, Eye in the Sky follows Colonel Michelle Madden,…
Patricia Highsmith is a name familiar to many movie buffs. Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley and The Two Faces of January are just a few of the films based on her writing. Of course, these fall into the mystery-thriller genre, but Highsmith’s writing was broader than that. In Carol, director Todd Haynes…
Recently we saw Eden, Mia Hansen-Love’s drama following an aspiring young DJ pursuing success and tracing the rise of Daft Punk and the development of garage dance music in France, which left me a little cold. This low budget feature from America also looks at an aspiring DJ who is aiming to make a name…
