July, 2009

First time director Serhat Caradee and a cast of fresh-faced talent pack a wallop with Cedar Boys, a tense and sharply observed drama about Lebanese-Australian Sydneysiders who dabble in the drug trade. Caradee makes certain from the get-go that his messing-with-the-big-boys narcotic-peddling plotline isn’t at all endowed in the wise crackin’ coolness and gangster-riffin’ style [...]

It’s a tough slog for any filmmaker to squeeze something fresh and innovative into the well-flogged genre of in-space-nobody-can-hear-you-freak-out psychological dramas, but the debut feature from director Duncan Jones is a doozie. Sam Rockwell contributes a career high tour de force performance as an astronaut afflicted by a severe case of space cabin fever in [...]

The latest quirk-laden Australian film from writer/director David Caesar (Idiot Box, Mullet, Dirty Deeds) ain’t exactly a straight-up romance between a man and a woman. It’s true that Dubbo-based protagonist Thomas (Michael Dorman) does find, marry and have a bub with his crush-cum-lover Melissa (Emily Barclay), but Prime Mover is really about a ménage a [...]

Short film director Rachel Ward’s feature film debut is a ruminative heal-the-past drama with an incestuous twist. In Beautiful Kate Bryan Brown plays a dying pale-faced codger who is visited by his estranged son Ned (Ben Mendelsohn) in an attempt to ameliorate old familial wounds before the miser takes his last bitter breath. The film [...]

So far 2009 has been littered with must-see Australian films and, ladies and gents, here is another one. Cedar Boys is a gripping crime-don’t-pay drug drama about two Lebanese-Australian Sydneysiders who happen across a massive bounty of ecstasy. Expect a review later in the week and, on Friday, my interview with up-n-comer lead actor Les [...]

Computer geeks ahoy! That’s not exactly geek vernacular but what the hey. Here is a slice of news that’ll be Bigger Than Jesus for a select but (very) sizeable audience of computer gameophiles: Spiderman, Evil Dead and Drag Me To Hell director Sam Raimi has signed on to direct a big screen live-action adaptation of [...]

A Hollywood-produced Michael Jackson feature film (or two or three) was always going to be on the cards, but it may come sooner than you thought. Variety report that Sony Pictures is close to reaching a deal with AEG Entertainment to make a feature out of the 80 odd hours of footage from the rehearsals [...]

Beautiful Kate is yet another high pedigree entry in the seemingly endless lineup of finger-lickin-good Australian films released in 2009. It is the feature debut of short film director Rachel Ward and tells the story of Ned (Ben Mendelsohn) who returns to his family home to say goodbye to his dying father (Bryan Brown) and [...]

Ang Lee’s films are nothing if not varied. Lee’s body of work almost seems deliberately intended to defy expectations; like Aussie auteur Rolf de Heer he’s an impossible to pigeonhole filmmaker who swings from genre to genre and rarely if ever treads the same ground twice. How else to explain the one man directing films [...]

According to Variety the American premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince smashed the U.S. box office record for the highest grossing midnight release of all time. The film debuted on 3003 screens across the country at 12:01am last night and gobbled up $US22.2 million ($A27.95 million), surpassing the previous record of $US18 million [...]

Harry Potter movies mean different things to different people. I was reminded of this after I exhaled a long face-heavy yawn two or so hours into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and noticed the sound of sobbing – not crying, but sobbing – coming from someone in the row behind me.  After six movies [...]

The Chinese Government has demanded that the Melbourne International Film Festival remove the documentary The 10 Conditions of Love from its program, reports today’s The Age. Directed by Melbournian Jeff Daniels (not to be confused with the actor Jeff Daniels) the now controversial film focuses on millionaire Uighur businesswoman and activist Rebiya Kadeer (pictured left, [...]

The first still (left, click to enlarge) has surfaced from the set of director Wes Anderson’s stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s novel Fantastic Mr. Fox. It depicts PJ-clad Mr and Mrs Fox (voice of George Clooney and Meryl Streep), a young child fox and Badger (voice of Bill Murray). While the image itself isn’t [...]

Following the phenomenal success of mockumentary chef-d’oeuvre Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, crazy-eyed shock satirist Sacha Baron Cohen slips into the skin of another well-oiled alter ego for another round of decorum-destroying faux pas. Frenetically directed by Larry Charles in the style of a very long episode of [...]

Director Glendyn Ivin strikes acting gold with the pairing of heavyweight Hugo Weaving and young wide-eyed neophyte Tom Russell in Last Ride, a grim but ponderous father/son character study told in the style of a hazy road movie with no obvious starting points or destinations. Ten year old Chook (Russell) is a bushy-tailed portrait of corruptible [...]

It’s the movie exposé we’ve all been waiting for: a comparative analysis of cinema’s most lurid latrines. Using Australia’s own beloved dunny scrubber Kenny as the overalls-wearin’ john-dwelling mascot, Total Film have revealed their 7 Most Disgusting Movie Toilets. Given my well publicised fascination with all things ass throne-related, this list is right up my [...]