Martha Marcy May Marlene
Writer-director Sean Durkin’s debut feature is subtly, almost perfectly calibrated between idyllic and terrifying, all the way to its chillingly ambiguous... read more...
Weekend
Weekend does an excellent job portraying the many modern day complexities of meeting someone you like, letting (or not letting) them know, and starting... read more...
'Buck' Interview
Directed by Cindy Meehl, Buck (screening at Perth Festival) reflects on real-life cowboy Buck Brannaman’s transformation from an abused, affection-starved... read more...
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
In Alfredson’s hands, the MI6 offices – “the Circus” – become suffocating brown panopticons whose tea-sipping inhabitants scrutinise each other’s... read more...
Young Adult
Jason Reitman’s dramedy recalls Bad Teacher in its fearless refusal to make its heroine likeable, and Diablo Cody’s shrewd script explores how we... read more...
The Iron Lady
What better traditional holiday entertainment than a rollicking English pantomime? This political fairytale is seasonably hilarious, and ultra-conservative... read more...
The Skin I Live In
Both preposterously serious and blackly playful, Pedro Almodóvar’s melodrama explores how trauma and perversion are literally inscribed on the body.... read more...
Don't Need You - The Herstory Of Riot Grrrl
To understand why Riot Grrrl mattered, you need to know that ’80s punk and hardcore shows were a major sausage fest. Mostly male bands played to... read more...
Happy, Happy
Anne Sewitsky’s Happy, Happy offers a level-headed and amusing look at marriage, family and infidelity. read more...
Attack The Block
English writer-director Joe Cornish (of cult comedy duo Adam and Joe) splashes with a feature film debut that’s just plain fun. It’s the anti-Harry... read more...
Restless
Restless lacks the uneasy mood that pervades Gus Van Sant’s Elephant and Paranoid Park, and has very little original to say. But I found its obviousness... read more...
Melancholia
I feel strongly that Lars von Trier is fucked in the head and that we should condemn his films’ glorying in women’s psychological (and sometimes physical)... read more...
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Okay, here’s what Eva and Franklin (Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly) need to talk about – how they ended up with a Eurasian kid (Ezra Miller; as a... read more...
The Tall Man
The documentary is based on the book, and its Chauvel season marks the sixth anniversary of Mulrunji’s death. It unfolds as a character-driven... read more...
The Debt
The Debt intertwines two stories: a Mossad operation in 1966 East Berlin to arrest the ‘Surgeon of Birkenau’ (a wonderfully malevolent Jesper Christensen);... read more...
Moneyball
Moneyball has all the sports-movie ingredients: an underdog team; a manager haunted by past failures; talented but overlooked players; an amazing true-story... read more...
Drive
Pastiche doesn’t always work. But although Nicolas Winding Refn’s neo-noir recalls Risky Business, Blade Runner, Collateral, To Live and Die in LA... read more...
Autoluminescent: Rowland S Howard
Autoluminescent is a film about Rowland S Howard – guitarist, songwriter, artist and an instrumental figure in the Australian rock scene most... read more...
Midnight in Paris
‘Charming’, ‘beguiling’, ‘witty’ and ‘delightful’ spring to mind to describe Woody Allen’s latest... read more...
Bill Cunningham New York
Over two years, Richard Press tracked the life and work of an impish, bike-riding, octogenarian photographer whose “On the Street” column is a New... read more...
Red State
The most intriguing thing about Kevin Smith’s latest film is how un-Kevin Smith-like it is. Yes, there are extended, static slabs of dialogue… but... read more...
Take Shelter
This powerfully allegorical film is a study in slow-building anxiety. Ohio construction foreman Curtis (Michael Shannon) has a happy life with wife Samantha... read more...
The Hunter
Daniel Nettheim’s adaptation of Julia Leigh’s novel manages to be both tense and meditative. Van Diemen’s Land made more evocative use of the same... read more...
Project Nim
Man On Wire director James Marsh has ostensibly made a documentary about Nim Chimpsky (1973-2000), a chimpanzee raised as a human and taught sign language... read more...