A gangster movie out of Iceland, Black’s Game [Svartur-Leik] was executive produced by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. As such, comparisons to his recent Drive — the best film of last year — are inevitable and perhaps not unwarranted. Both films are unashamed in their attempts to make every frame as cool as humanly possible. But while Drive employed ice-cold restraint and was a success, Black’s Game goes the [...]

“All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing”. Never has this famous saying been truer than in the case of the brutal stabbing murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964, a crime that occurred within earshot of thirty-eight people, none of whom lifted a finger to prevent it. A grim indictment of human cowardice and apathy, the case has been referenced and [...]

If ever there was a movie made for movie critics, it is Hugo. Directed by Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island), the film, based on the children’s book by Brian Selznick, is on its surface a bright and colourful 3D fantasy about a Parisian orphan boy in the 1930s, whose friendship with the granddaughter of an enigmatic toy-shop owner yields secrets about his own relationship with his father. But peel back [...]

In the back of an ambulance, a paramedic tries to keep a critically injured car-crash victim talking. He asks her name, and if she has any siblings. At first it seems like he’s just trying to help her remain conscious, but then his questions grow more obscure and personal. It’s just one of many early clues in Alps that something in this world is seriously amiss. This new film from [...]

In Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a man’s penis turns into a power-drill while having sex with his wife. She’s into it. In the sequel, Body Hammer, a man’s arm ruptures and transforms into a gun, which he then uses to shoot his infant child. Japan’s answer to David Cronenberg (The Fly), the films of Shinya Tsukamoto have always been horrifically confronting. But his latest outing – Kotoko – deals less [...]

You know, if it wasn’t for the gigantic sea monster stomping its way through New York City, I can’t imagine it being terribly difficult convincing someone that Cloverfield is a real home video. That’s what I love about found-footage films; they lend credibility to the incredible, creating an illusion of reality that is far more immersive than that of a conventional film.

Well, that’s the idea anyway. Sometimes they end up [...]

In Room 514, a young, idealistic military investigator tries to get to the bottom of alleged abuses of Palestinian civilians by a decorated Israeli commander. A minimalist low-budget drama set largely in the eponymous interrogation room, the picture is earnest in its attempts to explore the difficult issues it raises, and is at times compelling in its storytelling. But the ugly camera-work and unpolished script are such a constant hindrance, [...]

Prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike is best known for ultra-violent, controversy-sparking pictures including Audition, Ichi the Killer and last year’s 13 Assassins. His most recent film, however, might be most readily described as a family comedy, based on a popular Nintendo video game called “Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney”. Well, as it turns out, when it comes to Miike I’ll take bloody over funny every time. Goofy without being amusing, [...]

The Wicker Man by way of Pulp Fiction, Kill List does not go where you expect it to. Shot on an indie-film budget by sophomore director Ben Wheatley’s (whose debut film Down Terrace garnered considerable acclaim), the film follows two contract killers driving around the English country-side with a list of people they’ve been hired to rub out. But mysterious things are afoot, and soon the mission takes a nightmarish [...]

When twenty-something Bernhard (Christoph Luser) discovers that he father is sleeping with a prostitute, he thinks that’s bad enough. But after learning that his father asks to call the woman “Lydia” – the name of his own daughter and Bernhard’s younger sister – the reverberations threaten to tear apart his entire family. Still Life [Stillleben], from Austria, boasts a challenging but fascinating conceit, only to waste it amidst long stretches [...]

Clip is a Serbian film that I found more disturbing than A Serbian Film. The latter picture gained notoriety last year for its graphic depictions of rape, incest, paedophilia and necrophilia, and was the result of additional controversy in Australia after it was refused classification – banned – by the Australian classification review board. Personally however, I found the content of director Srđan Spasojević movie to be so ludicrous – [...]

Boy meets horse. Boy looses horse. Boy gets horse. It’s the classic formula for a Hollywood love story – albeit with a slightly equestrian twist –and also the plot of War Horse, the latest film from director Steven Spielberg (Tintin), based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo and the award-winning stage production by Nick Stafford. The story follows a horse, named Joey, in a war, named The Great War, [...]

Released back in 2003 when twilight was still a time of day, the original Underworld was a mildly entertaining B-movie that did the whole vampire vs. werewolf thing before, you know, doing the whole vampire vs. werewolf thing was considered uncool. The film was made on a comparatively small budget of $22 million, lending it a certain underdog appeal as it went up against box-office goliath Pirates of the Caribbean: [...]

The sophomore effort of writer/director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories), Take Shelter calls to mind the story of Noah, only to repaint the biblical hero as a paranoid schizophrenic. It begins when a Middle American family man named Curtis LaForche, played with ground-shaking intensity by Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road), becomes convinced that an apocalyptic storm is just beyond the horizon and is compelled to take drastic action in order to [...]

From Abrams (Super 8) aping Spielberg,  Allen (Midnight in Paris) namedropping Bunuel and Scorsese (Hugo) paying homage to one of cinema’s earliest icons, lately we’ve seen filmmakers increasingly looking back. It’s a trend born, one suspects, of a desire to return to what many perceive as a simpler, more innocent time; a time when artists, not accountants, decided when and how a movie was to be made. Call [...]