46 Results

The title might sound like pretentious gobbledygook, but watch documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog’s The Cave of Forgotten Dreams and you’re likely to emerge entirely convinced of the veracity of those words. Herzog landed one hell of a find: access to a cave  in Southern France decorated with remarkably well preserved 32,000 year-old drawings. The Chauvet [...]

Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie revisits the blood and garlic splattered territory of Fright Night, a fun mid-80′s vampire flick about a teenage boy whose life is turned upside down when a blood sucker moves in next door and nobody believes him. The story has been shifted to Las Vegas, a perfect, [...]

“God hates fags, God hates fag enablers; therefore God hates Kevin Smith.” — a Westboro Baptist Church spokesperson. Defying audience expectations in a manner as bold and brazen as Quentin Tarantino calling “cut” on a syrupy Hollywood rom-com or Michael Bay producing a quirky indie drama, writer/director/cranky airline commuter Kevin Smith – who is best [...]

It’s true in cinema, as it is in real life: sometimes we look back through the haze of nostalgia and remember things to be better than they actually were. Conversely, sometimes we look back and — jaded by age, muddled by circumstance, or justified by something as simple as “not in the mood” — we [...]

Superhero movies have a way of sucking the credibility out of Hollywood actors – even those who didn’t have much to begin with. Brandon Routh’s career stocks plummeted after donning the undies-outside-your-pants-look in the dreadful Superman Returns (2006). Billy Zane is still red in the face from squeezing into the purple suit in The Phantom [...]

The real dilemma in watching Ron Howard’s new movie is not the one the characters mull over – whether a man should tell his best buddy that his wife is having an affair, which is obviously YES – but rather what to make of this noodle-scratching dramedy and the spectacular incompetency the veteran director exhibits. [...]

Director Roger Michell’s feel good comedy Morning Glory, set in the sleep deprived world of early morning TV broadcasting, is a lightweight crowd pleaser that makes very strong and very different statements about its two top billing stars. The first is that Rachel McAdams, whose bubbly champagne charisma and girl next door good looks are [...]

The usually liquid and lusty figures of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie look feeble and worse for wear in 2010’s most befuddling high profile American release: the awkwardly timed, awkwardly acted, awkwardly written action/comedy/crime caper The Tourist from German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who wrote and directed the enthralling Oscar winning political thriller The [...]

It’s rare for a film to employ a non-linear multi timeline narrative as effectively as director Derek Cianfrance’s equal parts heart warming and heart wrenching story about a couple (Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling) meeting and falling in love in one time period and enduring a bitter falling out in another. In hindsight Blue Valentine [...]

Set during the 1930s, when the British royal family were slowly making peace with the realization that the monarchy was no longer about ruling and governance but about stage managing media representations, The King’s Speech is the story of King George VI’s transition from a blubbering stutter-stricken wreck to a smooth spokesperson for the throne. [...]

Director John Erick Dowdle’s two parts psychological one part supernatural thriller Devil has been billed as coming “from the mind of M Night Shyamalan.” That’s a good start, because the dire quality of Shyamalan’s recent work (The Last Airbender, The Happening, Lady in the Water) suggests ideas have been coming out of quite a different [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]