November, 2010

Last weekend it was a special treat to be invited as the guest reviewer for an excellent monthly film podcast called Hell is For Hyphenates, which is “designed for cinema addicts who have absolutely no plans to kick the habit.” The podcast is hosted by Lee Zachariah of The Bazura Project (check it out, it’s [...]

In a gutsy venture into the realm of skinflint science fiction writer/director/cinematographer/penny pincher Gareth Edwards stretches every thread of a shoestring budget to try to trick audiences into believing they’re watching a “big” movie. The tale of photographer Andrew (Scoot McNairy) and his boss’ daughter Sam’s (Whitney Able) dangerous trek to America at a time [...]

Just one week after Machete sliced open the diaries of Australian cult cinema appreciators a locally made ball-breaker with striking similarities arrived: writer/director Patrick Hughes’ ferocious neo-western Red Hill. With a clop of hooves and a few thousand rounds of ammunition Hughes charters a violent path straight into the pool room of the seldom visited, [...]

The considerable comedic talents of Robert Downey Jnr and Zack Galifianakis are largely squandered despite best efforts from all and sundry in Due Date, a good-natured on the road odd couple comedy from The Hangover director Todd Phillips. Flying home for his wife’s birth, slick sharp-mouthed architect Peter Highman (Downey Jnr) accidently crosses paths with [...]

If you thought Animal Kingdom would be the only hit-you-for-six Australian genre film released in 2010, think again. A new horse has arrived in writer/director Patrick Hughes’ spectacular neo-western Red Hill (opening this week in cinemas) about a group of small town cops who get tracked down and returned to their maker when an Aboriginal [...]

Exploitation movies don’t get much more deliriously exploitative than pulpy auteur Robert Rodriguez’s high-octane tribute to grindhouse cinema, Machete, co-directed by his long-time collaborator Ethan Maniquis. Grindhouse is a genre celebrated for its so-bad-it’s-kinda-good blends of gratuitous nudity, laughably unrealistic gore and shonky plotlines perfect for late night thrill seekers – the sort of crowd [...]

News arrived last Friday that Daniel Day Lewis, the picky, brilliant 53-year-old method actor who famously demanded to be carried around the set on a stretcher during the filming of My Left Foot has signed on to play Abraham Lincoln in an upcoming biopic to be directed by Stephen Spielberg. Since The Boxer (1997) Day [...]

The big story that made the rounds this week in the movie blogosphere was, like most stories based on loose reports, speculation, scuttlebutt and the cyber world’s equivalent of Chinese whispers, essentially a non-story, but for cinephiles such as yours truly it generated more than a smidgen of interest. The kerfuffle began on Tuesday when [...]

The common argument made against Hollywood that the movies it targets towards young’uns are invariably light, fluffy and unimaginative affairs cannot be fairly levelled at the Harry Potter movies, because they are not light and fluffy at all. At least not anymore. Wading through the Potter movies post director Chris Columbus’ opening two syrupy instalments [...]

On Saturday I attended a screening of Josh Fox’s excellent documentary Gasland (released this Thursday in cinemas), a shocking expose about natural gas mining in America – particularly the process of “fracking” – and its potentially disasterous effects on people and the environment. Following the screening there was an terrific Q&A panel discussion between Fox, [...]

In the latest chapter of the gay zombie porn saga that, in the great tradition of the walking dead, simply refuses to die, the home of Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF) director Richard Wolstencroft (pictured above) was raided by police this morning. They were on the hunt for copies of director Bruce LaBruce’s horror movie [...]

The Saw franchise commands a certain kind of respect from within the Hollywood studio system. Not because of quality of the films – good lord no – or even their quantity (this is the seventh installment). It’s their frequency that’s turned heads in the brass tacks side of the moviemaking biz: seven Saw films in [...]

Here’s the movie the Mildura tourism industry has been anticipating for years: a sumptuously shot postcard drama about a romance between a fair dinkum orange grower and a traveling antipodean who soak up the sights, smells and juices of this quaint and picturesque Victorian town. Writer/director Richard Gray’s unassuming story is told largely from the [...]

The Loved Ones (currently playing in selected cinemas nationwide) is a jet black Aussie revenge/horror thriller about a diabolically sexy young woman played by Robin McLeavy (top right) who drugs and tortures a young man (Xavier Samuel, middle) after he knocks back her invitation to the high school formal. I recently interviewed McLeavy for the [...]

Red is the latest in a slew of American movies about over the hill action heroes who return to their former wild ways for a fresh round of (borderline arthritic) fisticuffs. Sylvester Stallone has been a major proponent in this surge of worn knuckle I-ain’t-dead-yet flicks with frame chewing performances in Rocky Balboa, Rambo and [...]