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LFF 2010: ‘Leap Year’ review
★☆☆☆☆ A depiction of intense loneliness and psychosexual torture, Michael Rowe’s minimalist debut feature Leap Year (Año bisiesto, 2010) raises many a difficult question with regards to its seemingly complex gender politics. It follows the life of Laura, played with vulnerable perfection by Monica Del Carmen, a lonely freelance journalist who lives alone in a small Mexican apartment.…
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LFF 2010: Carlos review
★★☆☆☆ To begin, I must admit that I have only been exposed to the 2 ½ hour ‘movie version’ cut of Olivier Assayas’ Carlos the Jackal biopic Carlos (2010), truncated from the original 5 hour TV mini-series by its director in order to make it more palatable for cinema audiences. From other, informed accounts, the longer version…
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LFF 2010: ‘Let Me In’ review
★★★☆☆ Predictably, there was an almost universal outcry of both lamentation and disgust when an American-based, English language remake of Swedish vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In (2008) – retitled Let Me In (2010) – was announced last year. Even the dual association of Cloverfield (2008) director Matt Reeves and British horror institute Hammer…
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Raindance Film Festival 2010: ‘Son of Babylon’
★★★★★ Son of Babylon (2009) is set in 2003, in the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s fall, and tells the story of a Kurdish grandmother and the search for her son, Ibrahim, a soldier missing since the Gulf War in 1991. A letter from a fellow soldier informs her that he had been arrested and…
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Raindance Film Festival 2010: ‘Rebels Without a Clue’
With debut feature Rebels Without a Clue (2009), director and writer Ian Vernon attempts to blend elements of so-called gritty social-realism with black humour, in a film that is about as misguided as it’s unfortunate title suggests. The tag line, “Teenagers with guns, drugs and a cool car. All they need to do is lose their…
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DVD Review: ‘The Loved Ones’
★★★☆☆ The last ten years have seen a resurgence in the low-budget, Ozploitation comedy horror thanks to films like Undead (2003), while titles such as Wolf Creek (2005) have carried the more extreme fringe of Australian cinema to a new generation of cinemagoers. It would seem the Ozploitation genre – almost forty years on –…
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Theatrical Releases: ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’
The original Wall Street was one of those films that defined the era in which it was made, as well as providing us with workable credos such as “greed is good” and “lunch is for wimps.” It earned Michael Douglas – already a very seasoned actor and producer – an Oscar for his role as Gordon Gekko,…
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Film Review: ‘A Town Called Panic’
★★★★☆ Anyone who has seen the ongoing series of mad-cap Cravendale adverts, featuring an ensemble cast of miniature plasticine figurines ranging from farmyard animals to pirates and farmers (Cue maniacal howls of “MILK, MILK!”) should find themselves at home with the first theatrical release from Belgian stop-frame animators ‘Pic Pic André’ – AKA directing duo…
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Raindance Film Festival 2010: ‘Boys on the Run’
★★★☆☆ Having watched films like American Pie (1999) and the 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), we have all been exposed time and time again to the ridiculous experiences of the modern day ‘man-child’ and his struggle with sexuality in the 21st Century. Much like these films, Daisuke Miura’s Boys on the Run (2010) can be seen as…
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BAFTA: ‘Enslaved: Odyssey to the West’ Showcase
Compared to the age of the film industry – who would by now be knee-deep in birthday cards from Her Majesty – the video games industry has barely made it out of its spotty, gangly teenage phase. This hasn’t, however, stopped a growing confluence between these two powerhouses of visual entertainment over the past several…
EIFF 2026