Documentarian Errol Morris is renowned for his oddball subjects and in Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. he found another keeper. This compelling 1999 feature offers a detailed portrait of this Massachusetts native who stumbled into a very strange line of work: as a consultant to American prisons in the matter of execution apparatus construction. In the […]
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. 1999 Read More »
When Dennis Hopper passed away last year, he left behind a litany of kooky characters and broiled off-screen stories. It’s how he’ll most often be remembered, despite a late career perspicuity that cast some invaluable truths on the crazier tales of the 60s and 70s. Hopper’s work as a director can go missing in the
This is a tale of sinister motives and the posturing of a ruthless young punk, Pinkie Brown (Sam Riley), who fancies himself ascending the food chain in the dog eat dog underworld of Brighton. Greene’s version of this place was teaming with the seedy excrescence of a expanding underbelly grim faced, cold hearted bit players
Blame is one of the less distinguished local films to hit cinema screens in recent times. A tedious, single location drama that tries to extract tensions from a revenge attack that goes awry, Blame is the work of writer/director Michael Henry. Filmed in Western Australia, the film begins with a teacher, Bernard (Damian de Montemas),
Big screen candy rarely comes sweeter than this shameless throwback to a past era of moviemaking. Directed by JJ Abrams but produced by Steven Spielberg, it’s the latter’s cinematic DNA that ends up being smattered all over Super 8. In set up and setting, plot arc and execution, Super 8 is something of a sequel
There’s a beguiling simplicity to Kelly Reichardt’s films. This is no better exemplified than in her second feature length film, Old Joy (2006), which uses a story by Jon Raymond as its foundation. Essentially a two hander, the film feels like a sort of benign voyeurism in casting a detached, observational eye on a meeting
13 Assassins is a remake, of Eiichi Kudo’s original “Jûsan-nin no shikaku”, by director Takeshi Miike (Ichi the Killer). The tale is based in historic fact, although the official version of events differs somewhat from the film. The age is just 23 years before the end of the Shogun era. Edo is the capital. The
A head-turner at the Rome Film Festival in 2009, The Man Who Will Come finally receives a DVD release on Australian shores. Often it’s the case: films get passed from festival to festival to festival, the endless merry-go-round pushing back a proper cinematic release and therefore the home entertainment treatment. For those who’ve been waiting
Kelly Reichardt’s latest film shares many of the same characteristics of her past works Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008). Yet Meek’s Cutoff very definitely feels like a significant advancement on those pieces in a creative, storytelling sense, despite the qualifying long, still takes and minimal dialogue. It’s more ambitious in its objectives
The heartbreaking minimalism of director Kelly Reichardt’s work comes to the fore again in Wendy and Lucy. Admirably bereft of affectations or emotional manipulation, her third film, based on a story by Jon Raymond like Old Joy (2006) before it, charts the forlorn journey of a young woman who has been beaten down by life.
