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 […]
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Tag Archives: sff
You get what you give – Begin Again review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 9, 2014 
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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 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 unveils its 2014 program
May 7, 2014 0 Comments
The Sydney Film Festival’s 2014 program has been loosed upon the world, boasting the Australian debut of David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom follow-up The Rover and Richard Linklater’s decade-spanning Boyhood, as well as hotly anticipated international titles such as Bong Joon-ho’s first English-language effort, Snowpiercer, and the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night, starring Marion Cotillard. All four of those features will screen in SFF’s official competition, alongside 20,000 Days on […]
Continue reading‘God Help the Girl’, ‘Frank’ bound for 2014 Sydney Film Festival
April 3, 2014 0 Comments
The first batch of features bound for the 2014 Sydney Film Festival have been unveiled. Lenny Abrahamson’s music comedy Frank, starring Michael Fassbender in a giant papier mâché head, will make its Australian debut at the festival, as will Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch’s directorial debut, God Help the Girl. David Gordon Green and Nicolas Cage’s collaboration, Joe, […]
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 – 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 […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Monsoon Shootout review
June 12, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 12, 2013 Once, twice, three times a disappointment, Amit Kumar‘s Monsoon Shootout offers us three variations on the same cataclysmic event in the life of a rookie homicide detective. Officer Adi (Vijay Varma) corners Indian gangster Shiva (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) in a back-alley at the end of a foot-race through the rain, […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Lovelace review
June 11, 2013 1 Comment
By Simon Miraudo June 11, 2013 Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are fine documentarians. They struggle, however, to breathe life into their narrative features. Howl, a portrait of Allen Ginsberg and the publishing of his incendiary book of poetry, was basically turned into a drab courtroom drama, and not even some animated illustrations of Ginsberg’s […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Monsters University review
June 11, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 11, 2013 You can’t go home again, but you can go back to school, and that’s precisely what Pixar have done in Monsters University. They’ve taken characters we’ve long loved and plonked them in the middle of a raucous college comedy. The result is one of the funnier films the studio […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – The Rocket review
June 10, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 10, 2013 Crowd-pleasers come in many mysterious packages, and there might not be a bigger crowd-pleaser this year than The Rocket; a disarming fable about a makeshift family desperately seeking a place to live in a ravaged Laos. Australian writer-director Kim Mordaunt continues the work he started with 2007’s documentary Bomb […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Closed Curtain review
June 10, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 10, 2013 We accuse directors who indulge in metatextual moviemaking of disappearing up their own rear ends. In the case of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, it’s a choice between there and prison. Panahi was put under house arrest by the Iranian government for producing, in their eyes, “propaganda against the Islamic […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – Before Midnight review
June 9, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 9, 2013 Lightning just keeps on striking for Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke when it comes to their Before saga; so much so, I’m beginning to suspect them of performing shamanistic rituals in their backyard before embarking on each new instalment. They reunite for the third time in eighteen […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – The Iceman review
June 9, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 9, 2013 Michael Shannon stars as notorious hitman Richard Kuklinski in The Iceman, a decent yet hysterically directed thriller. No one can play a slowly unravelling creep quite like Shannon, except for perhaps Ray Liotta, so it’s handy that he’s in this thing too. Liotta appears as Roy DeMeo, underboss of […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival – The Look of Love review
June 7, 2013 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo June 7, 2013 Steve Coogan takes on the role of Steve Coog … er, I mean, Paul Raymond in The Look of Love, his fourth collaboration with director Michael Winterbottom. No one would accuse the distinctive British comedian of disappearing into his roles. Yet, just as Tony Wilson in 24 Hour Party […]
Continue readingSydney Film Festival unveils first batch of films for 2013
April 4, 2013 0 Comments
The first batch of titles headed to the 2013 Sydney Film Festival have been unveiled on the SFF’s official website. A couple of the pictures were expected by arthouse aficionados to make the cut, including Park Chan-wook’s English-language debut Stoker (which was delayed from its original March release date to instead debut at the fest), and Noah Baumbach’s […]
Continue readingIn dignity – Amour review
August 3, 2012 0 Comments
Amour – Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, and Isabelle Huppert. Directed by Michael Haneke. Originally published June 11, 2012. By Simon Miraudo. Amour plays the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 3 and 13, 2012. It does not yet have an Australian release date. This review was first run during the Sydney Film Festival. Who […]
Continue readingTastes like chicken – Killer Joe review
August 3, 2012 0 Comments
Killer Joe – Starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, and Juno Temple. Directed by William Friedkin. Originally published June 18, 2012. By Richard Haridy. Killer Joe plays the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 3 and 8, 2012. It does not yet have an Australian release date. This review was first run during the Sydney Film Festival. Killer Joe is a grubby blast of […]
Continue readingLook who’s laughing – The Comedy (Sydney Film Festival)
June 19, 2012 0 Comments
The Comedy – Starring Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and James Murphy. Directed by Rick Alverson. By Richard Haridy. The Comedy played the Sydney Film Festival. It does not yet have an Australian release date. Rick Alverson‘s The Comedy is a caustic critique, not only of modern hipster culture, but also a wider generational inability to […]
Continue readingAlps wins top prize at Sydney Film Festival
June 18, 2012 0 Comments
The winner of the 59th Sydney Film Festival’s Official Competition was announced yesterday. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Alps was named by the jury as the best of the fest, beating out heavy competition from Sundance hit Beasts of the Southern Wild and Cate Shortland‘s long-anticipated Lore. Lanthimos’ Alps is the Greek director’s follow-up to Oscar nominated Dogtooth, […]
Continue readingInterview: Miguel Gomes (Tabu)
June 15, 2012 1 Comment
Interview: Miguel Gomes (Tabu). By Simon Miraudo. “When you can be moved by things that are unbelievable, that’s when cinema starts to be really interesting for me.” Miguel Gomes‘ beguiling Tabu won the Alfred Bauer Prize for Artistic Innovation and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival this year, and is set […]
Continue readingIn memoriam – Tabu review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 14, 2012 1 Comment
Tabu – Starring Teresa Madruga, Ana Moreira, and Carloto Cotta. Directed by Miguel Gomes. By Simon Miraudo. Tabu played the Sydney Film Festival. It does not yet have an Australian release date. Miguel Gomes‘ Tabu plays like a dream, but not in the David Lynchian fashion that has come to define the cinematic depiction of […]
Continue readingGeneral admissions – Liberal Arts review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 13, 2012 0 Comments
Liberal Arts – Starring Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen, and Richard Jenkins. Directed by Josh Radnor. By Richard Haridy. Liberal Arts plays the Sydney Film Festival on June 15, 2012. It does not yet have an Australian release date. In Liberal Arts, Josh Radnor (Ted from How I Met Your Mother) continues to go the Woody […]
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