Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Two Days, One Night has taken the top prize at the Sydney Film Festival, trumping favourites such as Boyhood and Locke, as well as Australian features The Rover and Ruin. Marion Cotillard stars in the picture as a woman who has a weekend to convince her colleagues to turn down a bonus and save her from being made redundant. The […]
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Tag Archives: sydney film festival
No country for big feet – Willow Creek review
June 13, 2014 
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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 […]
Continue readingOne shot – Fish and Cat review (Sydney Film Festival)
June 13, 2014 0 Comments
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 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 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 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 readingA festivus for the rest of us: Sydney Film Festival 2014 begins!
June 4, 2014 0 Comments
The Sydney Film Festival is once again upon us, and 2014’s slate is as tantalising as any that has come before. This, of course, means our editorial team will be occupied skittering from darkened cinema to darkened cinema, up all night scribbling reviews, and frantically posting them each morning for the pleasure of those unable […]
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 readingOnly God Forgives wins top prize at Sydney Film Festival
June 17, 2013 0 Comments
Nicolas Winding Refn’s ultraviolent collaboration with Ryan Gosling, Only God Forgives, has taken the top prize at the 2013 Sydney Film Festival. Jury president Hugo Weaving announced the Official Competition winner on the closing night of the fest, declaring it “a visually mesmerizing and disturbing film which polarised our opinions.” Only God Forgives trumped 11 other movies for […]
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 […]
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