Tom Duggins
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Interview: Peter Vack, PVT Chat
Perhaps better-known for his work fronting the New York art band BODEGA, Ben Hozie is also a director of stylistically-daring documentaries and independent films that centre around the unusual lives of artists and societal outcasts.
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Film Review: Stardust
★★★☆☆ It’s been five years since David Bowie passed away and filmmaker Gabriel Range has acknowledged the anniversary with Stardust, an unauthorised biopic which commemorates the pop icon’s early struggles with stardom. The film stumbles between moods, caught between overt mythmaking and something closer to historical detail, which leaves an enjoyable but incomplete picture of…
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Film Review: Tenet
★★☆☆☆ Christopher Nolan’s films are so big, so hotly anticipated, that they form their own sort of gravitational pull, and cinema chains are hoping that the draw of Tenet will irresistibly compel viewers back into theatres. For all of Tenet’s innovative, ideas-led structure, however, it lacks the sort of emotional core that elevates such films…
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Film Review: Fanny Lye Deliver’d
★★★★★ Most filmmakers who venture into the heritage industry of an English period drama make sure the detail shines on the screen: beautiful linen collars, worsted cloaks, authentic lacework. Chuck in a restored 18th century cottage or country estate and you’re transporting audiences back in time with ease. Director Thomas Clay didn’t feel like cutting…
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Interview: Thomas Clay, dir. Fanny Lye Deliver’d
It’s been over a decade since British indie director Thomas Clay had a new film set for release. After 2008’s Soi Cowboy, Clay spent time researching the English interregnum: exploring its political and social upheavals to find an untold story buried within a less frequently mined period of history.
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Film Review: Never Rarely Sometimes Always
★★★★☆ In the years since Juno offered a light-hearted but even-handed take on the subject of unwanted teen pregnancy, the discourse around reproductive rights in America has, if anything, grown more polarised. Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a subtle, quietly devastating look at how a young woman’s body is constantly subject to outside…
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Film Review: Ema
★★★★★ When Pablo Larraín took the helm of Jackie, it was the first time the Chilean director had attempted two things: a story set outside of Latin America and one with a female protagonist. With Ema, Larraín is back in his home country, weaving a tightly-controlled narrative of family and female empowerment around its magnetic…
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Film Review: The Whalebone Box
★★★★★ Andrew Kötting is a filmmaker and Professor of Time Based Media. A visual artist who uses film and photography to explore the gaps between dreams and reality, autobiography and self-mythology. It’s hard to put the multi-disciplinary Kötting’s work into a box, and yet he has made an entire film about one. A smooth, sealed-off…
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Film Review: System Crasher
★★★★☆ System Crasher is the outstanding feature film debut of German director Nora Fingscheidt. A tremendous slice of life filled with light and energy, which doesn’t shy away from the tough realities of what social care is like for children with severe developmental issues. Benni (Helena Zengel) is a foul-mouthed, rebellious nine-year-old who struggles to contain…
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Film Review: Radioactive
★★☆☆☆ On paper the story of Marie Curie, a pioneering woman of science, seems like prime awards bait: with a big central role for Rosamund Pike, playing an eccentric proto-feminist. Sadly, Radioactive is as lifeless and inert as a rock, badly let down by a dismal script, and carrying all the half-life of an unfinished…