By Simon Miraudo June 13, 2014 Notorious comic Bobcat Goldthwait, once the bane of any ear-haver’s existence, has been steadily building a solid career for himself as a director, but whodathunk a mostly terrifying mockumentary would wind up bettering his black comedies? His 2009 cult favourite World’s Greatest Dad boasted an incredible first act, only […]
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One shot – Fish and Cat review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 13, 2014 
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By Simon Miraudo June 13, 2014 The first name that came to mind during Fish & Cat, a two-hour and fourteen-minute Iranian film shot in just a single take, was Samuel Beckett. The next was Shane Carruth. That was not a jump I was expecting to take. Promoted as a “slasher flick,” Fish & Cat […]
Continue readingHeartbreak kid – Mommy review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 13, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 13, 2014 Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy has one of the year’s best movie moments. Two even. Maybe three. Look… it’s all great. Those who’ve seen one of the sickeningly-talented 25-year-old filmmaker’s previous works could have predicted that. His camera moves so fluidly, as if in a dream, and here, contained within an […]
Continue readingTeenage dream – Palo Alto review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 12, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 12, 2014 Much wailing and gnashing of teeth awaits any film adaptation of a beloved novel, but what welcomes the cinematic retelling of a despised one? James Franco’s unintentionally-LOL-worthy collection of short stories, Palo Alto, has been condensed, refined, and infinitely bettered by writer-director Gia Coppola, who, as you can imagine […]
Continue readingBody movin’ – The Two Faces of January review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 12, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 12, 2014 The Two Faces of January, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1964 novel and set in 1962, comes from an era in which espionage thrillers needed only an enigmatic man in a linen suit to arouse suspicion. That might still be a recipe for dramatic tension in 2014. Just not this […]
Continue readingPersistence is futile – Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 11, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 11, 2014 David Zellner‘s Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a real find; a curio about a collector and obsessive made for collectors and obsessives. It begins with the camera trained on a scratchy VHS tape of Fargo, and the remainder of the movie lives up to the promise of it being […]
Continue readingThe road worrier – The Rover review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 10, 2014 1 Comment
By Simon Miraudo June 10, 2014 The Rover is a hugely stressful tone poem in which on-screen characters are constantly being shot and killed by off-screen characters. That precise trick made for a startling capper to David Michôd‘s breakout hit Animal Kingdom, and he trots it out again several times in his theatrical follow-up. It’s […]
Continue readingDrag race – How to Train Your Dragon 2 review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 10, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 10, 2014 Dragons don’t kill people. Bad people with dragons kill people. So goes the lesson of How to Train Your Dragon 2, the sequel to DreamWorks Animation’s only great movie. Kids can do with that metaphor what they will, except, hopefully, apply it to drugs or guns. Written and directed […]
Continue readingCompassion play – Two Days, One Night review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 10, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 10, 2014 Two Days, One Night is paced like a joke, but it plays like a prayer. Writer-directors the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, spend the movie repeating the setup over and over again. Marion Cotillard‘s Sandra, recovering from a nervous breakdown, has a single weekend to convince each of her […]
Continue readingLosing it at the movies – Life Itself review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 9, 2014 1 Comment
By Simon Miraudo June 9, 2014 Roger Ebert, lover of women, alcohol, cinema, and life itself, is seen at the conclusion of Steve James‘ new documentary making peace with his impending death, calling it a satisfying conclusion to his narrative. He would have hated being robbed a “third act” through sudden death. That’s remarkable chutzpah […]
Continue readingYou get what you give – Begin Again review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 9, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 9, 2014 It’s called Begin Again, but why, when once was probably enough? Keira Knightley stars as heartbroken English singer-songwriter Greta, still reeling from a break-up with a newly-minted rock star (Adam Levine) whose increasing douchebaggery can be measured by the growth of his beard and widening of his shirts’ v-necks. […]
Continue readingGone in 85 minutes – Locke review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 7, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 8, 2014 Steven Knight‘s Locke makes us ride ‘shotgun’ with Tom Hardy for 85 minutes and doesn’t let us out until the final credits roll. There are worse people to be stuck in traffic with. Carrot Top. Piers Morgan. Literally any Jenner. The makers of 1996 flop Carpool tested the limits of […]
Continue readingBless this mess – Love is Strange review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 7, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 7, 2014 Love is Strange but the housing situation in New York is stranger. “Like something out of Kafka” is how Alfred Molina‘s character, George, describes it. Suddenly made homeless, music teacher George and his partner of 39 years, painter Ben (John Lithgow), have the unenviable task of begging their extended […]
Continue readingThe young and the rest of us – Boyhood review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 7, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 7, 2014 Richard Linklater spent 12 years making the bittersweet Boyhood, shooting it piecemeal with actors Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, as well as newcomers Ellar Coltrane and Linklater’s real-life daughter Lorelei. The elders play the divorced parents, and the youngers their children, lugged around Texas as their mother seeks new […]
Continue readingSister Kristen – The Skeleton Twins review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 7, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 7, 2014 Everyone’s doing it. Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort have done it. Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are about to do it. Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader have just finished it. Call it Hollywood’s hottest and grossest new fad: incesting. It’s that thing where actors play both siblings and lovers […]
Continue readingTwee at last – God Help the Girl review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 6, 2014 1 Comment
By Simon Miraudo June 6, 2014 Finally, an answer to the question of what it would look like if a Belle & Sebastian album cover came to life, and under which reasonable circumstances a girl might bathe with a toy tiger, rest her head on a stack of books, or chill coquettishly on a Scottish […]
Continue readingUnknowing me, unknowing you – The Unknown Known review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 6, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 6, 2014 Not even Errol Morris‘ infamous Interrotron – a camera-rig that gazes right into the subject’s freaking soul – can pierce an unyielding Donald Rumsfeld in The Unknown Known. Morris’ latest documentary isolates the former U.S. Secretary of Defence and sees him grilled on topics ranging from the World Trade […]
Continue readingPiety party – Calvary review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 5, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 5, 2014 Those devilish McDonagh boys, always zigging when you think they’ll zag. John Michael McDonagh – brother of Oscar-winning In Bruges director Martin – follows up his dirt-black buddy comedy The Guard with despairing anti-hymn Calvary. It plays out like a parable, or, maybe, some half-remembered joke, with Brendan Gleeson‘s generous Father James learning of a mysterious parishioner’s desire to murder him; […]
Continue readingLose your head – Frank review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 5, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 5, 2014 Michael Fassbender covers up in Frank, though you could say that of any film he’s done in the years since Shame. The pants stay on, and now, a papier-mâché head has been added to the mix, obscuring the Irish actor’s handsome visage for the majority of the movie. Though […]
Continue readingThe top 10 films to catch at the 2014 Sydney Film Festival
June 3, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 3, 2014 The Sydney Film Festival is upon us again, and you can trust us to cover all the hits, misses, and, well, whatever word we end up using to describe that single-shot Iranian slasher flick (more on that later). Scheduling and prioritising movies can be a stressful endeavour, so here […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – The Past review
June 16, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 16, 2013 Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is taking his victory lap. He’s earned it. After winning the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar for the universally-adored crossover hit A Separation, he’s wisely replicated the formula for his follow-up, The Past. It similarly deals with a divorce, also amongst hugely reasonable parties. There […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Only God Forgives review
June 16, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 16, 2013 If a boy’s best friend truly is his mother, this guy is seriously screwed. In Only God Forgives, Nicolas Winding Refn’s laboriously paced follow-up to Drive, Ryan Gosling plays Julian, a drug-dealer based in Bangkok, seemingly hiding out from his American tiger mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas). When his brother Billy is brutally murdered, Crystal comes […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Stories We Tell review
June 16, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 16, 2013 Stories We Tell is just about the loveliest portrait of a family I’ve seen. A documentary similar in structure to Capturing the Friedmans – but ultimately more joyful and less concerned with harrowing tales of paedophilic clowns – it explores the family history of Canadian director Sarah Polley through […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Upstream Color review
June 16, 2013 1 Comment
By Simon Miraudo June 16, 2013 Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color might even be better than his previous effort, Primer. In the world of micro-budgeted science fiction flicks, that is akin to a miracle. The magic of Primer, however, is that it seems to improve on each subsequent viewing; its intricately engineered time-travel plot making more […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Borgman review
June 15, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 15, 2013 How do you solve a problem like Borgman? A puzzle movie from the Netherlands with seemingly no key, it frustrates and intrigues in equal measure. Well, maybe not equal measure. Much more of the first thing. I left the cinema mostly feeling fooled, and it’s always nicer to think […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Prince Avalanche review
June 14, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 14, 2013 What a lovely, lyrical wonder David Gordon Green‘s Prince Avalanche is. A remake of the Icelandic comedy Either Way, it transplants the tale of two poorly-paired road workers to East Texas, circa 1988, shortly after wildfires have ravaged the terrain. Their task is to paint those yellow lines on […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – The Bling Ring review
June 14, 2013 1 Comment
By Simon Miraudo June 14, 2013 If it was Sofia Coppola‘s intention to portray Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Audrina Patridge as the unfortunate, sympathetic victims of teens run rampant in The Bling Ring, then, great work? Based on the real-life crime spree that saw Hollywood’s best – if not brightest – fall victim to […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Mood Indigo review
June 13, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 13, 2013 Everything wilts, but not Michel Gondry‘s talents as an imaginative, inimitable, and incisive storyteller. With Mood Indigo, he tracks a relationship’s birth to its ultimate dissolution. Romain Duris stars as Colin, a wealthy Frenchman who spends every last cent on treatment for his ailing wife, Chloé (Audrey Tautou). Suffering […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – For Those In Peril review
June 13, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 13, 2013 Grief strikes in your gut, and then lingers for a lifetime. It can dull, or grow exponentially. There’s no way of knowing how you’ll handle it, until you’re in the midst of it. It’s kind of like love’s awful cousin. And like love, it’s a tough thing to evoke […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Behind the Candelabra review
June 13, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 13, 2013 Crossing the Rubicon of wealth and fame must be a hell of a thing. Michael Jackson arguably lived the strangest life in human history. Tom Cruise enjoys the dual pleasure of being Hollywood’s most bankable star, and perhaps the one famous person everyone is really unsettled by. Kanye West’s […]
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