November, 2011

The title may sound pompous and esoteric, but The Ides of March arrives wrapped in audience friendly packaging despite its potentially restrictive subject matter: back room machinations and interpersonal powerplays in the lead-up to an important US Democrat Primary. The film assembles four of the best and savviest in-vogue male actors the Hollywood conveyor belt has to [...]

Nominations for the inaugural Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) – a re-jigged AFI Awards — were announced this afternoon. Director Daniel Nettheim‘s Tasmanian-set cross-country drama The Hunter, starring Willem Dafoe, leads the pack with 14 nominations. Fred Schipisi’s The Eye of the Storm follows with 12, Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown with 10 and Kriv Krenders’s crowd-pleaser Red Dog [...]

Norwegian director Tom Six’s throat-clogging horror film The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) has been slapped with a Refused Classification rating by the Australian Classification Review Board (ACRB), effectively banning it from distribution in Australia. The film has been KBed from local screens despite being green-lit in May, when it was given an R rating. [...]

It’s obvious from the opening scenes of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead that wet around the ears documentarian Joe Cross never went to film school, never debated the merits of gonzo, expository or observational approaches to documentary. Cross is the antithesis of a filmmaking expert, an inexperience he spins into a virtue as the audience [...]

Writer/director Jon Hewitt takes to the streets of Kings Cross, Sydney, to plunge a low budget home ground thriller into the scungy world of street sex workers and back alley crimes. Pretty girls, dirty acts, low-rent bantering and street curb deals kick off a plot that pries open murder, on-the-run action and various tiers of [...]

To say Norwegian writer/director Tom Six’s The Human Centipede II is vastly better, or vastly more intellectually engaging, or considerably less likely to incite audiences to hurl objects at their screens than its predecessor is faint praise indeed, given the throat-clogging gratuitousness of his pointless 2009 vomit bag venture. Nor is it a selling point for the vast majority [...]

Gems ‘n’ Junk From the Cult Cache combs the vast wastelands of cinema history to unearth flicks buried beneath the surface of popular entertainment. In this instalment: For Your Height Only.  He’s smart, he’s sexy, he’s dangerous…he’s 3 feet tall! So espouses the sell-the-sizzle sentence stamped across the DVD cover of Fillipino director Eddie Micart’s unashamedly trashy [...]

Few films that deal with the pain and suffering from the loss of a loved one are as bold and innovative as Burning Man, a scorching new Australian drama from writer/director/producer Jonathan Teplitzky. His third and by far best feature film (Teplitzky also directed Better Than Sex and Gettin’ Square), Burning Man follows the whirlwind [...]

To mark the DVD release of mobster action/drama Kill the Irishman, starring Ray Stevenson, Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer, Cinetology gives readers the chance to win one of five copies of the DVD. For your chance to win simply become a fan of Cinetology on Facebook (if you already have, skip that step) then email me your [...]

No, the title of writer/director Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is not inspired by the first words Julia Gillard’s PR team have greeted her with at the kick-off of every meeting since June 24, 2010. The Kevin depicted in Ramsay’s film — a disturbing suburban thriller framed with the non-linear structure of [...]

Here comes the first line, the kick-off, the opening siren, the bit to lure the reader in, the string of letters, syllables ‘n’ words to get the ‘em interested, get ‘em involved, get ‘em to take a nibble and hopefully they’ll want to digest the rest. There might be a splash of colour, a sparkling adjective [...]

Capote director Bennett Miller takes to the field to adapt a real life sports story with a built-in triumph-against-the-odds trajectory potentially as cheesy as a deep fried Pizza Hut margarita dipped in a bucket of melted cheddar and lathered with a three inch thick coating of triple cream brie. Instead Miller shows how the syrup [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have confirmed the replacement host for next year’s Oscars ceremony after Eddie Murphy quit yesterday: veteran Billy Crystal, who has hosted the show eight times previously. After a very bad week of PR the choice is understandable but boring. In one fell swoop the Academy have moved [...]

It was always a slightly odd choice for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to hire director Brett Ratner to produce next year’s Oscars ceremony given Ratner, the “brains” behind the Rush Hour trilogy, is hardly regarded as an acclaimed talent. However, for reasons completely removed from Ratner’s iffy oeuvre the Academy’s decision — presumably [...]

Bill Murray will ditch his lackadaisical comedic schtick to play the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt (aka FDR) in next year’s historical drama Hyde Park on Hudson, to be directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Changing Lanes, Morning Glory). In a role that already reeks of Oscar bait, Murray will star [...]