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. […]
Brad Anderson’s first feature length horror film, made after two comedies and three years prior to his international breakthrough, The Machinist (2004), is a cannily constructed chiller, utilising a real-life location the site of the former Danvers State Hospital near Boston to great effect. An imposing bat like structure and home to the spiritual remnants
Miguel Arteta has a damn fine batting average. Mixed in with some impressive TV credits (most notably Six Feet Under), the director is responsible for helming two fine independent projects; the first, cult item Chuck and Buck (2000), in the second, the should be better known dark drama, The Good Girl (2002), he extracted perhaps
Tyrannosaur marks the uncompromising, gut-wrenching directorial debut of Paddy Considine. Watching this emotionally-charged film of damaged people is like been unable to turn away from a car crash. This is a stark reminder, too, of Samantha Morton’s The Unloved (2010) which screened at last year’s Festival and was another directorial debut similar in tone. The
Roberta Torre’s spasmodic Lost Kisses is a missed opportunity. This lackadaisical film about a 13 year old girl in the town of Librino revered for a vision and subsequently treated by the local community as a saint, fails to capitalise on its best ideas. Manuela (Carla Marchese) is a quiet girl, overshadowed by her extroverted
Using clichés as crutches, writer-director Massimiliano Bruno has taken a very safe route with his latest film, Escort in Love (Nessuno mi può giudicare) (2011). No shipping into unchartered waters for Bruno who, with co-writer Edoardo Falcone, contrives a scenario in which as 33 year old woman used to opulence and bossing her caricaturised migrant
Writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s Corpo celeste is a welcome dosage of social realism from Italy. Taking her cue from the visual aesthetic perenially employed by the Dardennes brothers, Rohrwacher has crafted a poignant tale of religious awakening in a girl, Marta (Yle Vianello), who has returned to Calabria after ten years in Switzerland with her mother
After a rapid ascension to the acting sub A-list in films like The Departed (2006) and Up in the Air (2009) (for which she received an Oscar nomination), Vera Farmiga has thrown her weight behind a more intimate, personal story for her directorial debut. Based on a non-fiction book by Carolyn S. Briggs and adapted
Writer-director Ti West very neatly blended lavish servings of comedy to the mix when writing his most recent chiller, The Innkeepers. Recently, at the Melbourne International Film Festival, he claimed a shift in pace was required after the relentless darkness of his previous film, the 80’s set shocker, The House of the Devil (2009). The
For newcomers to the craze of pursuing deadly weather events conjured by Mother Nature, Sean Casey’s Imax short Tornado Alley will be a tasty bite-size introduction to the nutty passion that drives certain motivated scientists and the meteorologically inclined through the central southern states of America for a few months each year. However, anyone familiar
