Sydney Film Festival 2024 - select highlights

WAKE UP

(France/Canada, 2023)

I’ve got a fleshy soft spot for a good slasher flick, and with the stalk’n’slash sub-genre making a notable resurgence (like a steadily approaching Michael Myers), I’m on the lookout for one’s that tick some of those crucial boxes (both likeable and unlikeable victims, solid practical effects, quick pacing, highly suspenseful, to name a few). The latest from RKSS (Road Kill Super Stars), the team behind cult fave Turbo Kid, and is their second entry into the slasher arena, following 2018’s Summer of ’84. The three filmmakers, François Simard, and brother and sister Anouk and Yoann-Karl Whissell, have fashioned a highly-entertaining movie, pulling all of the tropes and slapping them around. This one will no doubt be gaining a lot of bloodied traction in the months to come.

A good-looking bunch of Z-Gen activists sneak into a home superstore (think: IKEA) and hide in waiting for the store to close so they can parade about in their animal masks spraying anti-deforestation slogans, dumping offal on show pieces, uploading the protest videos to social media, and indulging in a game of paintball for good measure. Meanwhile a couple of after-hours security guards are at a loose end; one of them quickly getting drunk, the other an embittered sociopath who has narrowly escaped being fired, and is now seething, passing the time making a crossbow. Why? Because he’s a frustrated survivalist itching to get his hands bloodied with the kill of a wilderness hunt.

It goes without saying that things are going to get ugly, especially when the security guards confront a couple of the young troublemakers. Soon it’s every guy and gal for themselves as the nutjob security guard goes into rampaging Full Hunter Mode, setting booby traps and screwing with the activists’ agenda. With a healthy dose of black humour, especially during the second half of the movie, some terrific kills, and an ending you won’t see coming, Wake Up definitely lives up to its namesake, keeping viewers on their toes as the hunter stalks his prey. How many trophies will he get? Will the surviving activists manage to stay alive until the store re-opens?

IN VITRO

(Australia, 2024)

It is some years in the near future, on a remote farm property of the Monaro Plains in the Australian countryside. A husband and wife, Jake (Ashley Zukerman) and Layla (Talia Zucker), are a very industrious couple, using Jake’s advanced cloning biotech, following ecological disaster that wiped out cattle production, in the hope they can save themselves from financial ruin. They have a farmhand, Brady (co-director Will Howarth), but apart from him, the team work alone. It is soon revealed that Jake has been duplicitous, undertaking nefarious experimentation, much to the horror of his wife.

The work of partners Howarth, Zucker, and co-director Tom McKeith, the three creatives have written a tightly-constructed morality tale that tackles the imminent mis-use of cloning, and the extraordinary ramifications it might have on humanity (as a kind of parallel concern to the meteoric rise – and misuse – of Artificial Intelligence). Superbly lensed by Shelley Farthing-Dawe, capturing an inherent isolation and loneliness that exudes from the rugged beauty of the landscape, and ominous skies. This is further enhanced by the stunning score by Helena Czajka and sound design by Matt Perrott, almost creatures in themselves.

This is a frighteningly astute projection of the dangerous potential of cloning, the ruinous nature of narcissism and megalomania. While it plays on the age-old “Man playing God” scenario, it does so from a fresh and thrilling perspective, and never once feels ludicrous, which with such high-brow science-factual-fiction, a plot like this can run the risk of becoming risible. I thought I saw certain things happening, and was pleasantly surprised when they didn’t, yet entirely satisfied by where the narrative ended up. The excellent performances from the two central roles cements this as a new Australian modern classic.

SKYWALKERS: A LOVE STORY

(US, 2024)

Sometimes I can be a real glutton for punishment. Case in point, this startling new documentary that celebrates the unusual relationship trajectory between two adrenalin junkies against the backdrop (drop being the operative word) of what is known as rooftopping, or skywalking, an extreme form of climbing made “popular” over the past fifteen years by Russian nationals scaling the highest man-made structures they can find, but more importantly, they can conquer.

Ivan Beerkus set out to be the top rooftopper in the world, finding the highest, most challenging buildings, towers, and cranes, trespassing and climbing without the aid of any harness. It’s an incredibly dangerous and highly illegal game of death. But the spectre of death, although immediately apparent to any sane viewer, does not deter, as Beerkus is utterly fearless. And, most definitely crazy. With Ivan’s Instagram account at the top of the Followers, it isn’t long before someone else is challenging him. Enter: Angela Nikolau, a trained gymnast. While Beerkus is all about the next challenge, Nikolau wants to bring a level of artistry to the picture. Their paths eventually cross and become intertwined, as they seek the second-highest skyscraper in the world as its construction nears competition. Their goal is to climb to the top of the spire before security technology is properly installed.

Filmmakers Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina document the journey, and with access to the couple’s videos dating back to 2015, filling in the background of where these outrageous stunts originated, completing a portrait of the two charismatic extremists. While the doco never really digs deep into the psychology of why people such as Ivan and Angela do what they do (I see it as a deathwish myself), it’s a compelling, superbly shot, and utterly heart-stopping experience to watch. A missed opportunity not to release this in 3D, but hey, the 2D Go-Pro footage is terrifying enough, especially in IMAX where I saw it.

HUNTING DAZE

(Canada, 2024)

The literal translation of this French-Canadian production is Day of Hunting, so it’s curious that the international distributor has tweaked the title to suggest something more, shall we say, out of control. And, this weekend in the North American forest is one that definitely wanders from the path of least resistance. This is a dark meander into toxic masculinity and female survivalism. Yes, it’s well-worn territory, but the rules have been broken.

Nina (a terrific performance from Nahémi Ricci) is an exotic dancer and sex worker. She’s a gut-full of her boss/pimp and we enter the narrative somewhere in the midst of this breakdown in trust, on a lonely stretch of wilderness road. Merde will hit the fan. Nina is abandoned, but mercifully one of the bachelor’s from the party she just performed at reluctantly agrees to her joining him and the other reprobates in a cabin for further bucks’ shenanigans. Nina is wary, but it’s any port in a storm. At first, she doesn’t suffer the fools gladly, and almost gleefully accommodates their feral hazing. Later the plot thickens like mountain stew, and Nina’s situation becomes more tenuous.

This is a powerful, uncompromising, and very assured debut feature from director Annick Blanc, who wrestles the existential question, “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” and then buries it, along with many preconceptions. While the movie doesn’t reward in the usual ways, the tone and nightmarish elements are harnessed and wrestled with such striking confidence it’s impossible not to be impressed, especially the photography and camerawork. Beware the exit game, it bites.

KILL

(India/US, 2023)

There are movies and then there are Bollywood movies. This, however, is not a Bollywood movie, though it takes great influence from Hollywood, but takes more of its inspiration from South-East Asian hardcore action flicks, and it does so with a surplus of relish. Not a dance in sight, or a song to be heard, but close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat junkies will savour this one with glee.

Army Captain Amrit (Lakshya), a skilled commando, and buddy Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), are set to enjoy a little post deployment r&r, but Amrit’s secret lover Tulika (Tanya Manitktala) informs him of her upcoming arranged engagement, much to their shared chagrin. Amrit, with Viresh in tow, boards a crowded train bound for New Delhi (with much of Talika’s family as passengers) so he can intervene and elope with Tulika. But bandits are also onboard, lead by the firecracker Fanli (Raghav Juyal), armed with knife and posse, ready to rob the entire train.

There will be carnage. Lots of it.

While Kill, as the title so aptly says, is chiefly a claustrophobic, violent action flick – and yes, it is gleefully ultraviolent – it is also a romance, and as such, there is an incongruous, but oh so Bollywood, tone of unbridled romantic sentiment that sits like a sickly Baklava on the smorgasbord of savoury bloodletting. If you can tolerate the mix of extreme brutality with the sweet love then this brew will be for you. It’s not my cup of tea, but I was able to keep the sentiment at bay whilst I relished the choreographed exhibition of mayhem. Kill is no John Woo, guns are almost entirely absent, nor is it at the high level of The Raid, with its elaborate martial arts and stunt work. It’s closer to Timo Tjahjanto’s The Night Comes For Us, just not quite as brutal, or as impressively staged. This is not saying Kill is soft, by any stretch. Kill is not for the squeamish.

Fantastic Film Festival Australia 2024 spotlight

STING

Ritz Cinemas - Wednesday 17 April 7pm & Lido Cinemas – Thursday 18 April 7pm

Kiah Roache-Turner returns with his fourth feature, and it’s a creature feature doozy: giant alien spider attacking and eating people inside an apartment block. Oh yeah, bring it on! Utilising NZ’s legendary special effects team Weta to bring to life this truly horrifying fanged menace, and featuring a top-notch cast, lead by Ryan Corr and young Alyla Browne, it tells the plight of a family and other residents in a claustrophobic old building in wintery NYC after Charlotte (Browne) secretly welcomes the arrival of a rather unusual arachnid in her bedroom. Before you can say “Incy wincy…” all manner of enormous eight-legged hell has broken out. Once again Turner delivers the cinematic terror with stylish aplomb, navigating the interior terrain and the visceral shocks with gusto and a cracking pace. Special mention to comic relief Jermain Fowler as a pest controller out of his depth, and Silvia Colloca as the lonely drunkard neighbour who gets more boozed than she bargained for! Oh, and the title? It’s Charlotte’s nickname for her wee pet.

DIVINITY

Lido Cinemas - Friday 19 April 8.45pm & Wednesday 1 May 8.10pm, Thornbury Picture House – Tuesday 30 April 8.35pm, Ritz Cinemas - Saturday, 20 April 8.40pm & Wednesday 1 May 6pm

Like some kind of mutant strain between Beyond the Black Rainbow and Tetsuo Iron Man with further perverse sensibilities a la Cronenberg and Lynch, comes experimental filmmaker Eddie Alcazar’s second narrative feature, and continuing his predilection with the connections between the psyche and the physical self, this is the survival of the fittest. Stephen Dorff plays Jaxxon, the son of a maverick scientist (Quantum Leaper Scott Bakula) who sought immortality for humankind. The setting is some kind of barren Earth, no blade of grass in sight. Jaxxon’s appropriated quest and his arrogant control is interrupted by two brothers from another planet - and interstellar purity source - with the purpose of upsetting his grand scheme. But can the additional arrival of dark seductress Nikita (Karrueche Tran) circumnavigate this cosmic intrusion? Will Ziva (Bella Thorne) and her perfect specimens follow through? Stunning 16mm monochrome cinematography and a gorgeous production design elevate this mindfuck (literally) excursion and deliver (literally) an existential organic skincare commercial from the retro-future.

THE BRAZEN

Lido Cinemas – Thursday 25 April 8.50pm & Wednesday 1 May 6pm, Ritz Cinemas – Thursday 2 May 8.10pm & Monday 6 May 8pm

Not too many Latvian horror movies come this way, and this curious tale of domestic upheaval is a beautifully performed character study of madness and obsession as Helena (Marta Grase) and her husband, teenage son and young daughter return to her father’s decrepit stone cottage in the countryside. As each family member grapples with the building’s icky presence, the walls begin to crawl. And crawl. And crawl some more. A slow-burning psychological nightmare with skeletons in the closet that bear six legs or simply writhe in their multitudes. If you’re insect squeamish, beware! Terrific art direction awash with sumptuous dark colours, writer/director Aik Karapetian has fashioned a deeply unsettling take on broken memories and the fragility of familial relationships. Grase is superb in the central role, as the unhinged mother wrestling with her wayward family, and hoping her dance career – and her mind - will remain intact long enough to conquer the past.

CANNIBAL MUKBANG

Lido Cinemas – Saturday 27 April 8.30pm & Monday 6 May, 8.30pm, Thornbury Picture House – Friday 26 April, 8.40pm, Ritz Cinemas – Wednesday 24 April 6pm & Friday 3 May 6.30pm

We love a good low-budget indie horror, and writer/director Aimee Kuge’s debut feature is a delightfully perverse take on the girl-eats, err, meets-boy romantic comedy. Taking its cue from the internet phenomenon that features YT hosts videoing themselves tucking into all manner of sweet and savoury dishes, essentially all for the salivating pleasure of the viewer, rather than being any kind of proper food critique. The mukbanger in this story is kissed-by-fire Ash (April Consalo). The object of her hot-and-cold affections is Mark (Nate Wise), a bit of a dweeb, but good-looking and inoffensive enough to warrant a soft-kidnapping and emotional manipulation. Soon enough they’re partners in outlandish vigilante crime. But this dish will ultimately taste better cold. Consalo gives a wonderful, stand-out performance - my favourite so far this year - effortlessly harnessing her character’s damaged goods and sly foxy nature. The dialogue crackles with an American Psycho kind of satirical edge, there’s a refreshing element of subtle eroticism, and, oh, yes, there is plenty of flesh and blood.

THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY

Lido Cinemas – Friday 19 April 6.15pm & Friday 3 May 8.30pm, Ritz Cinemas – Thursday 25 April 6.30pm & Saturday 4 May 6pm

Just when you thought you’d seen enough QT-inspired takes on classic genre tropes, along sidles writer/director Francis Galluppi’s debut feature, and spittoons the hell out of the dusty thriller-in-the-desert flick. Reminiscent of Oliver Stone’s cult fave U Turn, and the early revisionist films of John Dahl such as Red Rock West, there’s a strong self-conscious streak that runs through the picture, but it’s so well-saddled that this horse fairly gallops along. Half the job is done with such sterling performances from, and not limited to, Jim Cummings as the kitchen knife salesman (nope, he doesn’t get a name), Jocelin Donahue as Charlotte behind the diner counter, Richard Brake as soft-spoken bank robber Beau, Sierra McCormick as Southern belle Sybil, and an all-too-brief appearance from indie darling Alex Essoe. The whole dang cast is bang on! There’s a Mexican stand-off that is the best one I’ve witnessed since Reservoir Dogs. So, what is it about Yuma? I’ve made a note to avoid that place, seems the only kind of joe that’s brewing there is terrr-rubble. That said, make sure you catch this movie on the big screen, it’s the one-stop crime-hop you need to make! Yeehaw!

Fantastic Film Festival Australia kicks off tonight in Sydney, and tomorrow in Melbourne. Visit here to check out the entire program.

70th Sydney Film Festival - select highlights

NIGHTSIREN

I love me a good folk-horror flick, and Slovak-born Prague-based director Tereza Nvotova has co-scripted with Barbora Namerova an intriguing tale of toxic masculinity and liberated womanhood, but side-stepping the usual trappings. This is a dark fable of grief and joy, of subterfuge and identity. It weaves a narrative that combines naturalism with splashes of magic realism as it explores the folklore of white witchery and sex magic, reflecting contemporary issues of oppression and hypocrisy whilst slyly existing in a wilderness that could be from decades, maybe centuries ago. 

It’s been twenty-odd years since Sarlotta (Natalia Germani) has been home to her mountainside village on the outskirts of an unnamed Eastern European city (you catch the occasional glimpse of a motorway in the distance). She is plagued by the flashback memory of her younger sister’s tragic death, falling over a cliff edge, accidentally caused by a young Carlotta. She struggles to deal with the guilt and push through this emotional, psychological barrier, and after local men taunt her, she is befriended by a curious young local woman, Mira (Eva Mores), a free spirit with secrets to spill, yet Sarlotta has her own demons too.

Unfolding with the deliberate slow burn of an evocative novel, marked with chapter inter-titles, and stunningly photographed, Nightsiren is a dark, mystical concoction of beautiful and bewildering elements. Both Germani and Mores give terrific performances, essentially as dual lead roles. There is a raw sensuality, very much from a feminine perspective, but there is brutality too, and while it may not deliver in ways you’d expect, ending as enigmatically as it starts, Nightsiren’s imagery and atmosphere lingers like that of a strange, haunting dream. 

SISU

From the Finnish director of Rare Exports, Jalmari Helander, comes this wild and striking hybrid flick, channeling the war action b-movies of the 70s, but upping the graphic violence level, infusing a sense of magic realism, and spiking with black comedy. Sisu sports a crisp, stylish, high-end edge.It takes its title from a uniquely Finnish word to describe the kind of extreme courage and grim determination that only a person who has been pushed to the utter limit will experience. In this case it is Aatami (Jorma Tommila in an almost silent role), a 60-something veteran, minding his own business in the desolate, rugged landscape of Lapland, 1944. He’s discovered a rich vein of gold, and nothing and no-one will take what is rightfully his. Especially not some damn platoon of Nazi arseholes. 

Prospector Aatami Korpi, with his trusty little dog by his side, is intent on getting his nugget haul to the nearest bank. But it’s a long trek to Helsinki. SS officer Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie) has a fuck-off tank, a bunch of women prisoners in a truck trailing behind, and is intent on making Aatami’s life sheer hell. Eventually, after Aatami has lost the horse he was on to a minefield, and lost his swag of gold to Helldorf and his cronies, including henchman Wolf (Jack Doonan) and tank driver Schutze (Onni, Jorma’s son), the “Koschei” (The Immortal) - as he’s known - confronts his enemy, grabs the bulls by the horns, and takes no prisoners.

This is easily Helander’s best movie, a glorious, hilarious, bloody salute to war exploitation cinema, and an instant cult fave. This will be the future WWII go-to viewing with a bunch of mates over pizza, popcorn, beers, and whatever else takes your fancy, once its on Blu-ray, or one of the streaming platforms. But if you get a chance to see this in the cinema, it’s definitely designed for the big screen. Punctuated by six chapters: Gold, The Nazis, The Minefield, The Legend, Scorched Earth, and Kill Them All, I was reminded of the kind of deep trash stylistics of Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, Planet Terror, Machete), yet Helander hammers his nails home with style and humour to burn.

BIRDEATER

Local boys Jack Clark and Jim Weir deliver their debut feature and it’s a doozy. A hybrid relationship drama, dark romance, with a strong darkly comic spine and itchy fingers probing into experimental thriller territory. The curiously titled Birdeater is one of the most original and unique Australian films I’ve seen in years. I was reminded of the American indie film Bellflower (also obscurely titled), with its audacious blending of genre elements, its study of flawed, damaged masculinity, and its elusive tone.

Mackenzie Fearnley plays Louie, who is engaged to English ex-pat Irene (Shabana Azeez). They’ve got an unusual relationship, seemingly dependent on each other, yet there are skeletons in the closet. Secrets and truths will come frothing to the surface before the weekend is over. Yes, this is a retreat to remember, as Louie insists on a buck’s party with a key difference: his fiancée and another female friend will be joining him and a clutch of his dearest male friends, well, not all of them as dear as one assumes. To say there are hidden agendas running amok would be an understatement. Tears before bedtime? Oh indeed. But sometimes it’s darkest before the dawn.

With the exceptional help of fellow ex-AFTRS students Roger Stonehouse as cinematographer and Ben Anderson as editor, Jack and Jim have crafted an instant classic, albeit one that may not be to all tastes. Birdeater has definitely more cult appeal. Terrific acting from the ensemble cast, and an amazing score from Andreas Dominguez that cleverly incorporates familiar themes, and memorably uses unusual instruments. While the narrative is unruly and idiosyncratic, the music, camerawork, editing, and performances brings it together in a cohesive, yet delightfully surprising way.

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL

You’d be hard-pressed to figure out that this film is an Australian production. It’s the third feature from siblings, Cameron and Colin Cairnes, who made two of my favourite Aussie horror films of the past fifteen years, 100 Bloody Acres (2012) and Scare Campaign (2016). Their latest, a darkly funny satire of US talk shows and occultism, is by far their most accomplished, and is easily one of my favourite films of the year. It’s bloody sensational!

David Dastmalchian, currently playing a small role as a haunted father The Boogeyman, is Jack Delory, a fictional late night talk show host, striving to have the best television ratings in the land of the free. It’s the late 70s, and Johnny Carson rules the roost. Delroy has done all he can to grab and hold viewers attentions, but he’s got one last ace up his sleeve, and maybe this will be the “Night Owls” episode that does the trick. Indeed, a hell of an episode it’s gonna be! 

With authentic art direction, wardrobe and styling, a brilliant opening montage and title sequence that is, in itself a tribute to the harrowing and memorable documentary The Killing of America (1982), and bang-on casting (apart from American Datmalchian, the rest of the ensemble cast are Australians putting on faultless American accents and are superb, especially Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Josh Quong Tart, and young Ingrid Torelli) the Cairnes brothers have superbly captured the colourful dynamics of US television, play cleverly with the found footage format, and have created a startling, suspenseful, funny, enthralling, and damn entertaining take on greed and corruption… and the Devil. Hopefully it will get a local theatrical release, don’t miss it. 

Fantastic Film Festival Australia 2022 - A Night of Horror co-presentations

What Josiah Saw

Sunday April 24th & Saturday April 30th, The Lido, Melbourne

Saturday April 23rd & Wednesday May 4th, 6.20pm, The Ritz, Sydney

On his third feature Vincent Grashaw knocks the ball clean out of the park. It’s the tale of a family imploding, dark secrets seething inexorably to the surface, as three adult siblings grapple with the open wounds of deep trauma, under a dark patriarchal shadow, their mother long gone.

Robert Patrick is Josiah, a booze-addled menace, with a tight rein around his youngest son, the simple-minded, naive Tommy (Scott Haze), who has taken shelter in the family homestead, estranged from his partner and child. Nick Stahl plays Eli, the elder son, living on the outskirts of town in a trailer home, held down by addictions, parole, and the ominous threat of debt, while middle sister Mary (Kelli Garner), is in a fragile marriage, emotionally unhinged, and struggling to relate to those around her. All three are damaged goods, but just where the good lies is difficult to fathom. It will take the lucrative offer of an oil company wanting the land the homestead lies on to bring them together to face their demons. 

This is a contemporary Gothic drama lying bedfellows alongside the sharp spine of horror. Superbly directed and edited by Grashaw (he was one of the editors, and an actor, on Evan Glodell’s brilliant Bellflower), working from a fabulously amoral script from Robert Alan Dilts, that crosses genres, as it tells its story in four narrative chapters, one for each of the siblings, and one to wrap them up in hell. The first three chapters are so well defined and unfold with such assurance they could quite easily be feature films in themselves, especially the middle Tarantino-esque narrative that follows Eli and his gypsy quest. Terrific score and cinematography too, this is easily one of my favourite films of the year, a coal-dark and disquieting portrait of ruinous relationships, with a scorpion sting in its tail. 

Good Madam

Thursday April 28th & Sunday May 1st, The Lido, Melbourne
Friday April 29th & Sunday May 1st, 6.30pm, The Ritz, Sydney

South African filmmaker Jenna Cato Bass collaborated with screenwriter Babalwa Baartman and the cast to tell a slow-burn tale of supernatural malevolence from within the confines of a wealthy urban estate. It is a story that is heavy with historical relevance, and one that bristles with an elusive nightmarishness that rears its head from time to time, most notably in the film’s finale. 

Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) moves back to her Capetown childhood home with her young daughter Winnie (Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya), into a mansion that is looked after by her mother Mavis (Nosipho Mtebe), who is the caretaker for the Madam (Jennifer Boraine), a rich white woman, now bed-bound and at death’s door. It soon becomes apparent, and is something Tsidi tries to explain to her daughter, that it’s not that she dislikes the house, but that the house does not like her. There are grim memories attached, much of which stem from the lost and lonely memories of the black servants whose gravestones are hidden behind the trees at back of the property. Something dark and mysterious lingers, its tendrils groping out for Tsidi. 

A visually striking, unique, and memorable take on the usual haunted house tropes, dealing with the impact of entrenched racism and the long arm of generational ills, Good Madam (Mlungu Wam) is one of those quietly spooky stories that mostly bark (or in this case, growl), yet saves its savage bite for the very end. With solid performances from the cast, it’s one of the most original films of the year. 

For more festival information and the full program visit here.

Sydney Film Festival 2021 - reviews in brief

The Beta Test

Friday, November 12th, 9.45pm - Dendy Newtown

Jim Cummings, in his third feature, as both director (co-directed and co-written with fellow actor PJ McCabe) and lead actor, tackles infidelity and the dangerous allures that power and prestige can present. It’s also about losing control, how we’re all just raisins in a giant fruit salad. And some of the fruit is rotting. 

Cummings plays Jordan Hines, a shark in a leading talent agency. He’s capable of baring very sharp teeth, and his assistant bears the wounds. Jordan is engaged to Caroline (Virginia Newcomb), but it looks like there’s potholes on the surface of their road-to-matrimony. Jordan receives a purple envelope with an invitation to cheat. He can’t help himself, and into the trap he falls. 

Like the TV show Entourage, The Beta Test is a satire of the entertainment industry in the US, but its belly is much darker, and its tendrils probe mercilessly into the soft fabric of deceit. While not wholly successful in the merging of its black comedy, drama, thriller elements - Thunder Road is still the best example of Cummings’ writing, directing and acting - it showcases Cummings’ charismatic presence to a fault, his acting style now verging on histrionic. Imagine Jim Carrey, in motormouth mode, but slightly less cartoonish. There’s the cringe factor, and there’s the disturbing reflection of narcissism, each ramped up, to almost farcical level. 

Zola

Friday, November 12th, 8.45pm - The Ritz, Saturday, November 13th, 8.30pm - Dendy Newtown

In October of 2015 a young black woman named A’Ziah “Zola” Wells unleashed a torrent of Tweets (148 of them) detailing her eye-opening experience with a “white bitch” named Jessica, and their weekend trip from Detroit to Tampa, Florida, to strip, with Jess’s bipolar boyfriend in tow, and a Nigerian pimp leading the fray.

The Tweets went viral, and five years later a feature has been made, because you can’t write that shit! Well, turns out, you can! Director Janicza Bravo has turned the Tweetstorm into a darkly comic thriller that feels like Springbreakers as observed by QT, or thereabouts. It features two of the best performances of the year from Taylour Paige, as feisty @Zola and Riley Keough as southern trash @Stefani (read: Jessica). There’s also terrific support from Nicholas Braun as Stef’s maudlin boyfriend, and Colman Domingo as X, the pimp with serious attitude. It’s a case of unreliable, but utterly compelling narration, with Stefani even chiming in halfway through, as if to quash Zola’s narrative, but only accentuate the absurdity.

I’ve read the Tweets, and admittedly, they were hard to follow, as the vernacular is so millennial and urban it hurts, but apparently the screenplay follows the thread rather faithfully. It’s a vibrant, funny, provocative study of deceit and manipulation, a cautionary tale, a portrait of the grimy world we know is seething just under the surface of social media, and the persuasive influence of the sex industry on impoverished minds. One of my faves for the year.  

Pleasure

A Swedish/Dutch/French co-production, set in the glaring lights of the City of Angels (and demons). Or, to be more specific, the torn tinsel of the the Californian porn industry, where young girls are swallowed up and spat out an an alarming rate. It’s another cautionary tale, grim, graphic, and well-made, and while it doesn’t offer anything new, there’s a curious dark charm. 

19-year-old Linnéa (Sofia Kappel) has left her quiet life in Sweden to pursue that of a porn star in America. She has lofty aspirations of being the next big thing. She’s got roommates in the same boat. She’s got an agent getting her low-rung gigs, but she is eyeing up the glamour girls, and is determined to wear those bedazzled heels. She’ll even allow herself to be treated like absolute shit to get there. Does she get there? 

Swedish director Ninja Thyberg has turned her 2013 short into a feature, and she uses mostly real porn players playing fictional versions of themselves. The decision actually works, and performances are solid. Kappel is especially good, pretty when made-up, very girl-next-door in the rough of the morning. Her lower register speaking voice, with a Euro-American acccent, gives her character added appeal. It’s unpleasant in many of the porn scenes (the film’s title toying definitely with irony), and the ending isn’t surprising, but the way Thyberg weaves her way, lingering with a kind of mumblecore vibe, provides the film with an edge, and a strong sense of self.

Wyrmwood: Apocalypse

The boys are back in town. Well, to be precise, they’re back in the rural wastelands of a zombie-ravaged Oz, burning rubber, pumping shotguns, blasting heads apart, generally causing havoc, and saving the world, or at least a few folk, from the clutches of the methane-spouting undead. It’s the hugely anticipated sequel to the Roache-Turner brothers Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead instant cult classic Wyrmwood. Only this time, it didn’t take them nearly four years to make the movie, and it eats the first one for breakfast (well, maybe not for breakfast, but it gives it a serious run for its money). 

Rhys (Luke McKenzie) is a soldier with skills to burn. He’s holed up in his own makeshift fortress on a field, keeping a bunch of zombies trussed up, servicing his mechanical needs, whilst he keeps the chomping hordes at bay. He delivers human survivors and/or scum to the Surgeon General (Nicolas Boshier), in the hope a cure will be found. But the Surgeon is a rogue quack, and the military aid is duplicitous. It’ll take the return of infected Brooke (Bianca Bradey), warrior Barry (Jay Gallagher), and two indigenous mercenaries, Maxi (Shantae Barnes-Cowan) and Grace (Tasia Zalar), to shake up the party. And boy, it’s a hell of party. Prepare to get splattered. 

There was a scrappy DIY charm about the first Wyrmwood flick, much like the early films of Peter Jackson, a kind of “fuck you” attitude, but also, a genuine, “here rip the scab of this tinnie, mate”. With director Kiah Roache-Turner’s second movie, Necrotronik, he tasted the studio picture, and so with Apocalypse, he’s back to guerrilla basics, with all the control, and an even sharper eye and teeth. This is a relentless ride, with a pounding score from Michael Lira, suitably desaturated, but striking cinematography from Tim Nagle, awesome production design from Esther Rosenberg, and fantastic special effects work from Mariel McClorey and team. Best damn Aussie flick in yonks. See it in the cinema if you can!  

A NIGHT OF HORROR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2021 OFFICIAL SELECTION & VIRTUAL EVENT PROGRAM FOR 13TH EDITION

Australia’s original and longest-running dark genre film festival celebrates its lucky 13th edition this year, and has teamed up with the streaming platform, xerb.tv, to bring you a terror-ific virtual program full of late-night tricks and treats, all in time for Halloween! 

There’s a swag of premieres: the blackly comic slasher, My Cherry Pie, from Melbourne mischief-makers Addison Heath & Jasmine Jakupi; the Filipino supernatural spookery of Sunod from festival alumni, Carlo Ledesma (The Tunnel); The Chilean real-time tour-de-force, La Casa, from Jorge Olguín; Shot in the Dark, the brutal, noir-shrouded debut of Keene McRae from the US; the darkly sensual, diabolical manifestations of Memory, from Austrian Tina-Maria Feyrer; the pandemic paranoid nightmare of Red River Road, courtesy of the American Schuyler family; the intense Lovecraftian dread of Masking Threshold from Austrian, Johannes Grenzfurthner; the razor-sharp satire of Struwwelerror from Germany’s Lenny Heller; The Unsettling’s deep suburban haunting from Harry Owens, an African in America; Londoner Adam Ethan Crow and his self-appointed family of filmmakers’ vicious demon shocker Lair; the genuinely chilling found footage diary, Day of Disappearance, from Hawaiian filmmaker Ian Grant; Julie Kaufman and Paul Hunt’s rousing and hilarious look at US grassroots horrorphiles in the documentary, The Brilliant Terror; and last, but certainly not least, Alex Galvin’s seriously twisty Kiwi adaptation of Henry James’ classic Gothic tale The Turn of the Screw. 

There’s also an exclusive live-streamed talk from Aussie legend Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood), on the hard fun of DIY horror! This includes a Q&A that will be essential for any budding guerrilla genre filmmakers out there, Kiah’s got great war stories! 

Of course, the program would not be complete without the sensational short film programs. This year we have TWO International Shorts Showcases and an epic-length Australian Shorts Showcase. Some of the best short films we’ve seen in years. 

With the festival being an online, virtual event, the program will be available across Australia nationwide, and viewing options are not tied to the session’s duration. That’s right, the virtual event provides the leisure of the entire festival to watch the films. Sickly sweet! 

Click here to check out the 2021 Official Selection and purchase tickets or passes.

Revelation - Perth International Film Festival 2021 - reviews in brief

Jumbo

8.20pm - Saturday, 3 July, 8.30pm - Saturday, 10 July (Luna Leederville)

Only the French could make a romance as strange and beguiling as this. Jeanne (Noémie Merchant) is a young introverted woman, still living in a small-town home with her extravert mum (Emmanuelle Bercot), and her miniature models. Jeanne is the janitor at the local amusement park, where the new attraction, a Tilt-A-Whirl carousel (also known as Round Up, depending on what country you live in), becomes, quite literally, Jeanne’s new attraction. She suffers (or enjoys, depending on who you empathise with) from objectophilia, or OS Objectum Sexuality, where a person becomes emotionally and sexually attracted to objects. Not necessarily inanimate, as in the case of Jeanne, who names the object of her affection “Jumbo”. 

This all sounds remarkably silly, but writer/director Zoé Wittock treats the subject matter with deep sincerity and seriousness, especially the response of those people around Jeanne. Wittock is not interested in making a mockery of such an unusual disorder, and mental illness is a key theme here, despite the unbridled escapism at the heart of the narrative. Yes, it is about orientation too, and Wittock even pushes the boundaries into curious eroticism, in a scene where Jeanne “makes love” with Jumbo, all ecstatic white surrounds and ejaculations of machine lubricant oil. Yes, it has to be seen to be truly appreciated.

Wittock has a great eye, and there are some stunning, colour-drenched sequences, but the film’s success, ultimately lies with Merchant, and she does a wonderful job of capturing a genuine sense of innocence, of naivety, and of quiet fierceness. She’s a woman stunted in terms of adult emotional growth, trapped by her own predilections, and yet yearns for acceptance, in particular, from her mother, who tries in vain to steer her into a “conventional” relationship with co-worker Marc (Bastien Bouillon). Wittock navigates a curious path, never allowing Jumbo to be truly humanised through Jeanne’s distorted view, yet he (it?) is possessed with a supernatural charm. It’s as if Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was re-imagined as some kind of earthly courtship. 

Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break

6.30pm - Monday, 5 July, 6.3opm - Thursday, 8 July, Saturday, 6.15pm - 10 July (Luna Leederville)

Camera operator-turned director Nick Gillespie delivers his second feature, and it’s a sensational pitch-black comedy up there with the inspired brilliance of Sightseers, Prevenge, and Aaaaaaah! In fact, actor-directors Alice Lowe and Steve Oram have small parts in Gillespie’s biting satire on fame, social media, bullies, and geekiness. Co-written between Gillespie, Brook Driver, and Matthew White, the story sees one Paul Dood (Tom Meeten), a middle-aged no-hoper with huge aspirations for success. He’s got the ambition and the full support of his invalid mother, Julie (June Watson), and he practices his performance routine all the time. Paul is itching for a chance to woo the world with his sequinned magic moves, via Jack Tapp (Kevin Bishop)’s national variety show, “Trend Ladder”. As long as he can fit the audition into the lunch break from his job in the charity shop. Oh the beautiful irony. 

But, a calendar date confusion aside, there are a few people who will get in his way, and this becomes Paul Dood’s Rub. A tale of vengeance and attitude unlike any other, Gillespie has fashioned a truly hilarious, ultraviolent (in a very cartoon kinda way), and surprisingly heartwarming portrait of one man’s struggle against the trials and tribulations of day-to-day life, the hypocrisy and the ingenuity, the tragedy and the joy. It all unfolds with alarming, brutal absurdity, and cringe-inducing awkwardness, in spades. It’s as if Edgar Wright had directed The Young Ones or maybe Fawlty Towers. 

An inspired performance from Meeten, who inhabits the role with gleeful abandon. He is the backbone of the movie, in almost every scene, and you believe every crazy antic and expression. One of those nutty characters you love to laugh at and with, and one day meet at a party. But mention must be made on the plethora of support actors, each one nailing it. Alice Lowe as a vindictive nun, Steve Oram as a dipshit platform inspector, June Watson as Dood’s mum, Kevin Bishop as the narcissistic Tapp, Katherine Parkinson as Clemmie, the mall janitor who ends up one of Dood’s biggest supporters, and Lloyd Griffith as the Kiwi charity shop assistant, who steals almost every scene he’s in. Yes, Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break will very likely be my favourite comedy of the year. Bloody excellent. 

Gaia

4.15pm - Thursday, 8 July, 10.35pm - Saturday, 10 July, 8.15pm - Sunday, 11 July (Luna Leederville)

From South Africa comes this compelling and surreal fantasy horror that sees two park rangers fall foul in the depths of a primordial forest (shot in the lush Garden Route region). Directed by Jaco Bouwer and written by Tertius Kapp, the film is a dual-language (English and Afrikaans) study of humankind’s relationship and treatment of Mother Earth, told through the contrasting perspectives of intruder and defender, and the dark, mossy area in-between. It’s a unique, if slight take on the age-old eco-nightmare scenario of Nature biting back, that more than makes up for in stylistic direction and a rich melange of practical effects and CGI. 

Gabi (Monique Rockman) is on a surveillance mission with colleague Winston (Anthony Oseyemi), deep in the jungle, using a drone and checking planted cameras. The drone confronts a man in camouflage and is felled. Gabi sets off to retrieve it. Trouble ensues, communication is severed, and the rangers are separated. Gabi is taken undercover by two apocalyptic survivalists, wary father Barend (Carel Nel), and older teenage son, Stefan (Alex van Dyk). Widow Barend has brought a lot of emotional and baggage into the undergrowth, and it’s soon apparent that there are other creatures, working closely with the flora, lingering in the shadows of the bush. It is this flora, under the manipulation of Mother Earth, that exerts control over the fauna (read: human). Will Gabi escape the hungry tendrils and fleshy lichen? 

Gaia is one of those heavily symbolic, sometimes downright obscure horror movies that you shouldn’t try to analyse too deeply. Just enjoy the ride. Bouwer gets decent performances from his small cast, but it’s the visual narrative, the film’s atmosphere and and striking special effects that are the real stars, coiling and weaving like a strange hallucinogenic dream, something fetid and fungal. There is an elusive sensuality, a pungent sexuality that crawls along the forest floor, but dig too deep and the mud and roots became entangled and sludgy in psychosexual nonsense. It’s Annihilation without the alien interference - but instead derivative plant-men - and shrouded in a more immediate existentialism, with an ending that reminded me of We Are What We Are. Enjoy the scenery, but watch out for the roots and don’t eat the shrooms.

For full Revelation program and further festival information please click here

Revelation - Perth International Film Festival 2020 - documentary highlights

iHuman

4.15pm Thursday December 10th - Lunda Leederville & online from December 14th

Tonje Hessen Schei’s look into the immediate future - the startling progression of Artificial Intelligence, or, more specifically, A.G.I. (Artificial General Intelligence) - isn’t designed to be seen through rose-tinted glasses. This is a future reflected off chrome and silicon. It is a future that is simultaneously awe-inspiring and terrifying, and this documentary paints a glistening portrait that glowers with a coiled intent, like a snake protecting its eggs. Don’t put your hand too close to its mouth, it may just bite. 

Tracing this rapid growing industry - so fast it’s threatening to put those who’ve invented it out of work - iHuman is very much right now, but it’s also like running across the sand barefoot, watching your footprints disappearing in the surf, as the challenges and impact merge and are swallowed. Will humankind make the right decisions about how A.I. is controlled? Will we be able to use it wisely enough to aid our progress and not end up desperadoes in some kind of Skynet apocalypse? Okay, maybe I’m being a bit overly dramatic … 

In between some of the tech gurus - Michal Kosinski, Jurgen Shmidhuber, Ilya Sutskever, for example - waxing sombre about the state of the art and the state of the world, there are dark, but impressive computer animations, some generated from scratch like a kind of grotesque executive puzzle, others that manipulate urban travelogue imagery. Set to an intense and brooding score, courtesy of Olav Øyehaug, it’s hard not to feel a certain sense of apprehension. And so we should. It is a pivotal time, and a documentary like this is required and engrossing viewing. 

You Don’t Nomi

2.10pm Thursday December 10th, 8pm Saturday December 12th (with Showgirls) - Luna Leederville, and 7.20pm Sunday December 13th - Luna on SX

I reviewed Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 movie Showgirls when it was first released. Like most critics at the time I roasted it like the turkey it appeared it be; “Arrogant, reprehensible filmmaking that showcases the worst kind of attitudes in Hollywood. It may be set in glitzy Las Vegas, but I don’t recommend the gamble.” Ha! And that was that. I had no interest in revisiting the trials and tribulations of Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) as she pouts and struts and pushes and shoves her way to the top of the heap as the new “Goddess”. Until I saw this documentary. 

Okay, I’m not about to write off my original review and say I didn’t know what they hell I was talking about. Showgirls is still a terrible movie. But it is a terrible movie made by a great director from a pretentious screenwriter, and featuring some really solid performances. I learned that Verhoeven purposefully had Berkley deliver everything at a fever pitch, which didn’t serve her well in the movie’s critical aftermath. That sex scene in the pool is still one of the most ludicrous, period. It’s revealed that Kyle MacLachlan, in a recent interview, plainly stated that during the shoot they believed they were making a hard-hitting drama. So any claim by Joe Eszterhas or Verhoeven that it was a satire that audiences and critics failed to understand is bullshit.  

Jeffey McHale’s superbly constructed retrospective look at how a movie so bad became a cult fave among the camp set and is now regarded by many as a “masterpiece of shit” is a surprisingly enthralling and affectionate study of how movies can be misconstrued and maligned, yet underneath their crass veneer they possess elements that seemingly transcend their notorious shortcomings. It’s a fascinating reshuffle of the cards. I especially loved how the filmmakers slyly incorporate Showgirls scenes into other Verhoeven movie clips. You don’t need to have seen the movie to enjoy this doco. But it helps. Go on. You know you want to. 

He Dreams of Giants

Online from December 9th.

Some fifteen years after first documenting Terry Gilliam’s disastrous attempt at trying to bring his beloved pet project, “Don Quixote”, to the screen, Lost in La Mancha (2002), filmmakers Kevin Fulton and Louis Pepe return to the scene of the “crime” as Gilliam once again (the magical seventh attempt) tries to capture the elusive tale of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Can Gilliam get past the seventh day of shooting? Will his actors fall ill, will Mother Nature intervene, or will he simply run out of money? Sister Fate is a cruel mistress, but even crueller is the harsh treatment of Terry’s own psyche. He’s his own worst enemy. But he also has a survivalist’s sense of humour. I mean, he was one of the Monty Python team after all. 

This is a fabulous portrait of the artist. Beautifully put together, and cleverly juxtaposing scenes of the younger Gilliam, the earlier attempts at filming the novel, behind the scenes and on location as Gilliam struggles, perseveres, resigns himself, and is, ultimately, rewarded. It’s a riches to rags to riches to rags to riches story, if only in terms of joy and sorrow, heartbreak and optimism. As the filmmaker re-iterates, making art is hard, and he has never chosen the easy route, for better or for worse. 

He Dreams of Giants is an inspiring journey, chaos and tranquility entwined. Terry Gilliam has made some astonishing movies, and he’s made some turkeys too. I’ve not yet seen the completed movie, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but it received a twenty-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Cannes. This delightful study of the creative process, with all its hurdles, is essential viewing for anyone remotely interested in how making art is not just about the big picture, it’s about keeping focus on all the small, beautiful elements that fill it. And keeping a sense of humour, no matter how dark it gets. The comedy as well as the drama.

iHuman, You Don’t Nomi, and He Dreams of Giants are screening as part of Revelation - Perth International Film Festival. For more information including online screening details please visit the website here. 

14th Sydney Underground Film Festival - 2020 - online shorts spotlight

2020 is the year that keeps on giving. The star attraction has been COVID-19. It’s wreaked havoc with the film festival circuit. Many festivals have cancelled or postponed for the foreseeable future, others have pivoted into the online platform. One such festival is Sydney Underground Film Festival, now in its 14th year. 

The usual main program of features and feature-length documentaries has been jettisoned, and instead there is an online Inhuman Screens conference, a focus on Ukranian cinema, and the Take48 Challenge entries. But the featured event is the SUFF short film programs the Festival is (in)famous for.

The spine of film festivals are the short films. A chance to see talented, emerging filmmakers on the often long and arduous road to recognition. Rest assured, SUFF only plays the best and weirdest, spread out over seven different categories. There’s the strictly Aussie flavours in “OzPloit!”, the deep mind-fuckery of “WTF!”, the tripped-out hits in “LSD Factory”, the perverted desires of “Love/Sick”, the creepy nightmares in “Sh!t Scared”, the doco treats in “Reality Bites”, and a bunch of wacky adult animations in “Late Night Cartoons”.

I took a gander at the “Love/Sick” and “Sh!t Scared” programs, and the sick shit I was subjected to is well worth buying an online ticket for. 

LOVE/SICK

Sex and romance gets a real working over in these twelve short films. “Deep Clean” sees one queer man taking his objectophilia to the next level, as he gets it on with an old-fashioned hoover. All set to the bump and grind of electro-pop song “Sexual”. “The Plunge” is an old-fashioned rom-com about going the extra distance for your lover, “Dinner For Two” puts the goosebump back in roast chicken, ’nuff said. A couple of diner work mates are forced into a painful situation, in “I Love Your Guts”, but through the blood they may find love. “Fucking Ghosts” is exactly what the title says, but with sheet in cheek. “Smiles” is like a lovely meeting-the-parents dream gone, horribly, horribly wrong. “Lovesong” tackles the age-old siren scenario with plenty of salt in the wound. A sustained closeup of a young woman reflecting on her troubled youth, is actually still in her troubled youth, in the sticky “Heatstroke” (my fave of the program, just because its so minimal, hypnotic and wtf?!). “Stream” takes the love of pissing to a whole new level. Yup. “Nailbiter” is not a thriller, it’s a pedicure, with a difference. “Some Kind of Humanity” starts with a warning to viewers, and it should be taken with some heed … seriously. Leaving us, rather suitably, with “Karaoke Night”, a sleazy performance that will leave you reeling in hilarity and disgust. You’ve been warned. Now, go buy your tickets, and settle in for 90 minutes of outrageous titillation and sexual depravity.

SH!T SCARED

Nine blood-curdling nightmares, some garish and extreme, others shrouded in strangeness, and some just plain fucking bizarre. We kick off with the blackly comic family shenanigans of “Satanic Panic 87” channeling the dark heart of the 80s, then we’re into the deeply frightening slow burn pursuit of “Regret” (definitely my fave of the horror bunch). From there we find a poor mother trying to protect her young son … from something, at “Bed Time”. “Ferine” features a feral woman seeking sustenance in a seemingly foreign world (a most curious, twisted delight), while “Double Tap” plays on our worst social media fears (terrific, funny stuff). “The Devil’s Harmony” is a high school tale of sly choral revenge and more, while the monochrome “Mushi” feels like the most tenebrous and Lynchian of bad dreams, and “Taylor and Vanessa” is just plain depressing, but beautifully done. Finally, the fabulous Caitlin Stasey is put through the psychological wringer as she battles with her shocking inner demon in “Laura Hasn’t Slept” (another wee fave). If you’re looking for a horror kick to lead you into A Night of Horror International Film Festival (Sept 24-26), then SUFF have got the goods, so get yourself a ticket for this kick-arse program. 

Love/Sick and Sh!t Scared short film programs are part of the 14th Sydney Underground Film Festival’s 2020 online edition. For ticketing, program and other Festival info click here. 

Fantastic Film Festival Australia - six picks!

Sator

Friday, February 21st, 8.45pm (Lido rooftop), Sunday, March 1st, 9pm (Lido), Sunday, February 23rd, 9pm (Ritz)

Two adult brothers and their grandma, in the woods. Grandma has stories. She knows of a presence in the forest, a supernatural entity called Sator, that might have something to do with the disappearance of their mother years before. Reminding me of the haunted existential, cosmic horror Resolution, also set in the woods and dealing with some kind of supernatural entity, able to fuck with space and time, this take on grief, mental illness, and familial bonds, is a real coal burner. But the burn feels good. 

It also looks sensational too. Writer/director Jordan Graham is a one-man movie machine, handling almost every single department with the exception of the pproducing, which he shares with a few others. While Sator might not satisfy horror hounds looking for more conventional fare, if you like your creepiness with a subtle dose of Lynchian in between moments, then this is the folk horror for you. I hope Graham continues on the horror path, and delves even darker.

The Mute

Friday, February 21st, 9pm (Ritz), Sunday, March 1st, 8.45pm (Lido rooftop & Ritz laneway) 

If Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising had been made by Andrei Tarkovsky it might have looked a bit like The Mute, a simultaneously gorgeous and grotesque Polish rumination on faith, trust, and survival of the fittest, as the narrative follows the plight of two men, somewhere in the Middle Ages, somewhere in Europe, somewhere where the shadows of xenophobia run long, where the tenebrous treachery of faith cuts to the bone. A determined older Christian en route to convert the pagans, and a young knight, who leans into a more empathetic approach, and opts for an extreme decision.

One of the most exquisite looking films I’ve seen in a long time, with its cold, hard hues, the stark, rugged beauty of the landscape, the ritualistic pagan face paint. The performances are stellar. It’s not an uplifting movie, yet it moves in mysterious ways. A dark and powerful film about humanity and trust in a time when you were only as reliable as your last glance. “God’s blood” spilled that stains the mind, its imagery burnt onto your retina.

S He

Saturday, February 22nd, 4.30pm & Sunday, March 1st, 7pm (Lido), Sunday February 23rd, 7pm & Sunday, March 1st, 4.30pm (Ritz)

Like something out of a very strange dream, Shengwei Zhou’s stop-motion animated feature is, literally, in a realm of its own. An authoritarian world run by shoes (men), who keep the high-heels (women) imprisoned, and when they have baby stilettos, the men have them immediately transformed into baby shoes. It’s a cruel and harshly chauvinistic existence for the high heels. Until one of them seeks freedom and retribution for all the shoes’ injustice.

Imagine the early animated work of David Lynch, combined with the equally surreal stop-motion work of Jan Svankmajer, and the dark satirical gender twistings of Pedro Almodovar. And then add a drop of acid. Yup, this is weird-dream-as-kitsch-nightmare, its black comedy slapping you about the face with a cold hard slipper. No dialogue, just grunts and gasps of indignation and exasperation. A brilliant sound design, inspired production design, and startling use of animation. It probably would’ve worked better as a long short film, but it’s definitely worth investing ninety minutes in, you’ll feel oddly inspired, strangely moved. 

Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror

Monday, February 24th, 7pm (Lido, Melbourne & Ritz, Sydney), Saturday, February 29th, 4.30pm (Ritz)

A documentary based on the book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror films from the 1980s to the Present by Robin R. Means Coleman, the history actually dates back many more decades. Coleman, and a couple other historians, along with numerous actors and filmmakers, wax lyrical about the plight of the African-American in cinema, and the path made toward proper representation. From 1940’s Song of Ingagi through to Jordan Peel’s breakout Get Out via Night of the Living Dead, the influence of blaxploitation - especially Blacula - and the token use of the sacrificial and magical Negroes.

Actors Keith David (The Thing), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), Rachel True (The Craft), Tony Todd (Candyman), and Loretta Devine (Urban Legend) are just a few of the familiar, but older faces nestled in a small cinema auditorium watching clips and discussing their culture’s place, both rightful and sidelined, in vintage and contemporary genre cinema. It’s a rich and fascinating journey, with a healthy sense of humour, and it never meanders or gets bogged down in unnecessary academics, despite the strong socio-political nature. [Ed: I never realised how enormous Tony Todd’s hands are!]

Nobadi

Saturday, February 29th, 7pm (Lido & Ritz)

Well, I’ve not seen a movie quite like this one. Almost impossible to categorise. The studied observational distance of Ulrich Seidl with a real sting in its tail. The less you know about this one the better. Suffice to say, it deals with a grumpy, elderly man who lives in a Viennese allotment. His dog has died, and he wants to bury him in the back yard. Begrudgingly he hires an insistent young vagrant, an Afghanistan migrant (without a visa), to do the hard work. The young man has a nasty, festering wound on the sole of his foot. It is this injury that will lead the two men to an alarming and very serious situation. 

Most of this movie is the kind of flick Jim Jarmusch might have made if he’d decided to film in Europe in the native tongue. But the last third is something else entirely, and squeamish be warned! Brilliant performances from the two leads - and this is very much a two-hander chamber piece - Nobadi seemingly does nothing and everything at the same time. It’s an elusive study of the peculiar bond of complete strangers pulled together in extraordinary circumstances, each one forced to appreciate the others shadowy, very fallible thoughts. It’s grace under pressure, it’s the end of the line, with fresh secrets buried under old soil. You won’t forget this one in a hurry! 

Suicide Tourist

Tuesday, February 25th, 7pm (Lido), Saturday, February 22nd, 7pm (Ritz)

Max is a life insurance agent with a terminal disease. An investigative job takes him to a remote alpine hotel, Aurora, which is actually a clinic where his client’s missing husband had signed on the dotted line for an assisted suicide. It is here that Max faces his own mortality, his relationship with his devoted wife, and what appears to be a clandestine organisation with a seemingly sinister agenda. But just how much of Max’s reality is reliable?

A Danish/Norwegian/German co—production, constructed as a slow-burn drama that gently evolves into a mystery thriller, but never quite pays off in the conventional sense, yet rewards and satisfies in other delicate and elegant ways. I’m reminded of Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy for similar reasons. Strong performances from Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Tuva Novotny as husband and wife, and striking direction from Jonas Alexander Arnby, Suicide Tourist slyly swerves past the controversial nature of its premise, whilst delivering a stylish, very watchable mood piece. 

For complete program, all venue times, and ticketing please visit fantasticfilmfestival.com.au

SUFF 2019 - highlights!

FRANCES FERGUSON

In what is probably my favourite performance for the year, Kaley Wheless plays the titular character in this dry-as-a-bone satire on small-town prejudice and disaffection. Frans is a very attractive, and entirely dissatisfied young woman with a young daughter, Parfait, in a loveless marriage to a useless husband, Nick (Keith Poulson). She takes a substitute position at a high school and finds herself distracted by a handsome student. Next thing you know, she’s involved in a sex scandal and finds herself going through the lengthy US judicial and penal process. 

Narrated by Nick Offerman, adding a mockumentary element, the narrative traces Frans journey through her home life, the school, court, prison, community service, group therapy sessions, and the immediate beyond. All the while Frans rolls with the punches, seemingly unperturbed by the gravity of her situation, now she’s become a registered sex offender. It seems her estranged relationship with her stepmom (Jennifer Prediger) has played its own part. Frances Ferguson oozes ennui.

Indie director Bob Byington has fashioned a fascinating and very funny narrative, developed with Wheless, and penned by Scott King. The cast are uniformly excellent, but it’s Wheless and her subtle, almost deadpan reactions to everything that cements this film into something special. I didn’t want it to end, I loved peering into this quirky window, and I was so keen to keep following Frans’ curious journey. With a quirky soundtrack - including repeated use of a wee nu-disco gem titled “Vanilla Friase” by L’impératrice - it’s a definite fave for the year. 

TONE-DEAF

Writer/director Richard Bates Jr returns with his fourth feature, and it’s another doozy. The dark comedic elements are firmly in place, as is the deliberately over-the-top use of sound design and some truly jarring imagery. This is one hell of a satire on generational dissatisfaction; the wry cynicism of youth vs. the sour spit of (s)age. This is another demented, compelling, and exceptional hybrid from the talented maverick filmmaker. 

Olive (Amanda Crew) bites the bullet and gets the hell out of the city for a weekend on her own, having been fired from work, and another bs relationship gone pear-shaped. She rents a country house from an ageing widower, Harvey (Robert Patrick), but it isn’t long before his psychopathic agenda erupts. Can her neo-hippie mother (Kim Delany) come to the rescue, or is she too wrapped up with one of her trailer park fuck-buddies? And, what about all those missing local girls? And will anyone tell Olive the truth about her piano skills??

With his striking visual flair - a big nod to the cinematographer and production designer - rebel attitude to conventions, a gift for witty dialogue, and penchant for shock imagery Bates keeps things in check for awhile, allowing his two leading actors to really work their magic: Crew and Patrick are in top form here, but nice to see AnnaLyne McCord making a return (albeit small), also Ray Wise in great Ray Wise mode, and keep an eye out for Keisha Castle-Hughes in one short scene as a gas station drug dealer. If only Bates had finished the movie on Olive’s last line - delivered to camera - instead of the last scene, which felt tagged on and unnecessary … but it’s a small quibble on an otherwise terrific, black and brutal comedy. 

KNIVES AND SKIN

Writer/director Jennifer Reeder has created a most curious amalgam of elements to tell her strange  story about the disappearance of a high school girl, Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) in a small American town, and the effects of her vanishing on the people who knew her, including several of her school mates, but especially her mother, Lisa (Marika Englehardt), all of whom are pushed into dealing with their own insecurities and desires, as the search for sweet Carolyn continues. 

Like a fusion of the incestuous fragility of Twin Peaks and the mystical vibe of Donnie Darko, Knives and Skin is n study of identity and curiosity, bathed in a delicious palette - great cinematography from Christopher Rejano - and is provided with a superb ambient score from Nick Zinner. The cast of unknowns are all ones to watch, especially the young women portraying the school students. 

The moody, dreamy tone of Knives and Skin is lifted to another level with the inspired use of several early 80s pop tunes, which are sung acapella by the students in the guise of the school choir, as lead by a distraught Ms. Harper, in particular “Our Lips Are Sealed”, “Blue Monday”, and “Promises, Promises”. But the film isn’t strictly a teenage musical, nor is it a simply a noir-thriller, or a troubled romance, or a magic realism-infused fantasy … It’s all of those, and yet it’s another elusive, exotic creature entirely. 

THE BEACH BUM

I’m not the biggest fan of Harmony Korine’s films. I disliked Gummo, and I loathed Trash Humpers. But I enjoyed Spring Breakers. His latest indulgence feels like it dated Spring Breakers. It has a similarly lush and charismatic feel. The cinema verité stylistic he’s employed on all his films is in firm position here. There’s no plot, and it’s all fabricated, but much of it feels like a documentary. Well, when I say it’s all fabricated, I don’t think that’s entirely true, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that much of the random, hedonistic activity on-screen was done in the Method approach. Haha! 

Moondog (Matthew McConaughy) is a full-time stoner, part-time poet, living on a cruiser in the Florida Keys, and sponging off cash injections from his uber-wealthy wife Minnie (Isla Fisher). He drifts around with a perpetual joint in his mouth, mouthing pseudo-poetic diatribes, downing cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and when the opportunity presents itself, screwing randoms in burger joints, generally having a whale of a time. But the time comes - abruptly - to face the music. There’s money and recognition at stake. Not to mention the approval of his grown daughter, Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen), can Moondog rise to the challenge? 

Featuring a huge cast of support players in small roles, featuring hilarious performances from Zac Ephron, Jonah Hill, and Martin Lawrence, also Snoop Dogg as Minnie’s lover Lingerie (yup, that’s right). This is the kind of movie you either love or hate. There’s really no sitting on the fence. I was totally disarmed and completely immersed. French cinematographer extraordinaire Benoît Debire has captured Moondog and company’s antics in stunning light and colour, while editor Douglas Crise would’ve had his work cut out for him, and he does a fabulous job. I was thoroughly entertained. I’ve earmarked it to watch again, armed with a blunt, four fingers of bourbon, and several beer chasers. I feel inspired!

A SUFF selection - 2019

Them That Follow

Friday, September 13th, 8.30pm (Cinema 1)

Brittany Poulton and Daniel Savage have written and directed their first feature, set in the deep religious heart of Appalachia where white lightnin’ strikes the fear of God into anyone who strays from the path of righteousness. This is a drama fashioned with the rough edges of an atmospheric thriller, and a fine effort it is.

Mara (Alice Englebert) is the dutiful daughter of the local pastor, Lemeul (Walter Goggins), who holds fort in his church clutching the bible in one hand and handling deadly snakes in the other. The serpent is powerful in this community, and its bite will soon be felt, for Mara is harbouring a deep and dangerous secret. She’s involved with Augie (Thomas Mann), who has strayed from the church, yet she’s being betrothed to devout Garrett (Lewis Pullman). There’s gonna be tears well before bedtime. 

I do love a good fundamentalist tragedy set in the woods, and Them That Follow is a powerful tale of morality and the loss of faith, and although the climax doesn’t quite hit the high marks it hopes to, the journey is strong and consistent, the performances excellent - especially Australian Englebert, Goggins, and Olivia Colman as Hope, the woman desperate to save a nasty situation. 

Underground Inc: The Rise & Fall of Alternative Rock

Friday, September 13th, 8.30pm (Cinema 4)

A documentary tracing the trajectory of 90s alternative rock after Nirvana’s meteoric rise to fame. But, as the opening blurb states, this doco is not telling Nirvana’s story. And it’s not telling Pearl Jam’s or Soundgarden’s or Jane’s Addiction’s story either. This is mostly about the bands that almost never got to release their second album. Talented bands that were signed to a label and dropped unceremoniously within a couple of years. This is the story of US corporate greed within the music industry. Nothing new, that greed has always been there, but the 90s alternative rock scene happened while the internet was still a baby. It was a very different scene. And while the bands struggled, as Matt Tecu from the band Dig says, “There’s only one Keith Richards and 100,000 boys died trying to be Keith Richards.” 

Australian filmmaker Shaun Katz has put together a swift and blistering account of what went down. An impressive line-up of musicians and industry folk spill the beans, talk turkey, dish the goss, and provide the lowdown, including members of Sugartooth, Cop Shoot Cop, Jawbox, Biohazard, Only Living Witness, Stegosaurus, Big Black, Primus, Clutch, Filter, and many more. Special nod to Walter A. Kibby II from Fishbone, and Helmet’s Peter Mengede as two of the documentary’s fountains of wisdom.

Adding great flavour to the documentary, which is essentially talking heads and clips and stills of the bands at play, is animation from JB Sapienza, who also co-edited. The wild graphics, including pertinent quotes, also adds a subversive, slightly satirical edge to the documentary. Even if alternative hard rock - the younger punk rock kids - isn’t your grab bag, this doco is a fascinating nostalgic date stamp on an incredibly furtive time in American rock history, and a wee life lesson for the budding rock stars of today; if you put your soul into it, you’ve already making it. 

Dreamland

Friday, September 13th, 10.30pm (Cinema 1) & Saturday, September 14th, 6pm (Cinema 2)

According to director Bruce MacDonald (who made Hellions, one of my fave horror movies of recent yearsthe premise to his latest, a strange, blackly comic hybrid flick, is “On the night of the strangest wedding in cinema history, a grotesque gang boss hires a stone cold killer to bring him the finger of a fading, drug-addicted jazz legend.” Well, yes, this is true, but Deamland is much more than that. It’s a Lynchian romp that refuses to play by the rules, pulling you along with its colourful nightmare logic. Written by Tony Burgess and Patrick Whistler, it’s a story that almost defies description. You simply watch it unfold. 

The always excellent Stephen McHattie plays a dual role, that of Johnny, a cool-as-a-cucumber hitman, and the acclaimed trumpet player, the object of Johnny’s kill job. Henry Rollins attempts to chew the scenery as gangster Hercules, who enlists Johnny’s services, whilst Juliette Lewis (where has she been hiding??) hams it up as a Countess, and as it’s an American-Canadian co-production with Luxembourg and Belgium, there’s a slew of Euro actors in support roles. 

Dreamland’s a rich and gamey affair with striking imagery and a dark sense of humour, fitting snugly into MacDonald’s oeuvre of idiosyncratic genre outings. 

Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story

Saturday, September 15th, 10pm (Cinema 2)

If you haven’t heard of German director Uwe (pronounced Oover) Boll, then you probably need to see this documentary. If you know who Uwe Boll is you definitely need to see this doco. It’s an absolute hoot. A fascinating portrait of a filmmaker who has “enjoyed” being labeled the worst director in the world for quite some time. Of course that label is highly contentious. There are far worse movies out there. But Boll has made a whole bunch of ‘em and he has a habit of speaking out against the haters. 

The title is apt. Boll is completely open, he has no filter, as everyone who has worked with him agrees. He speaks his mind, he’s not afraid to call a spade a spade, and, of course, he’s the pot calling the kettle black. There’s only so much incompetence and belligerency you can deliver before the whole world turns against you. But Boll has managed a directing career for twenty-five years, making some thirty-three movies. But his real skill is not directing, it’s producing. He has managed to squeeze funds from his homeland for feature after feature after feature. Quite the feat. But post 2010, the film industry landscape changed irrevocably with the demise of DVD sales. Boll had to re-consider his career. 

Documentary filmmaker Sean Patrick Shaul has made a thoroughly entertaining piece. All those that are interviewed have enjoyed working with Boll, despite his shortcomings. So he makes absolute rubbish, but for most of his career he’s released movies (mostly straight-to-DVD) that have turned a profit. It enabled him to open a flashy, fine dining Bavarian restaurant in Vancouver. But let’s not forget this is also the man who organised a boxing match challenge with all the critics game enough to step into the ring. The stunt did him no favours, even though his amateur boxing skills meant he pummelled all those stupid enough to oppose him. It’s all part of the trials and tribulations of this renegade trashmeister. 

For more details and tickets for the Sydney Underground Film Festival please here.

Rest In Peace, Roy Batty

The climax of the classic Sci-fi film "Blade Runner". Taken from the "Final Cut" version. Roy Batty: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. [laughs] Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

Rutger Hauer

23 January 1944 - 19 July 2019.

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

Revelation - Perth International Film Festival 2019 - Reviews in brief

Locusts

Saturday July 6th, 6.30pm, Sunday July 14th, 6pm, & Tuesday July 16th, 8.40pm (Luna)

All noir tales paint a picture of greed and deceit, and pepper it with vengeance and violence. The protagonist always has skeletons in the closet, and the help might not always be good for them. In Heath Davis’ third feature he tackles well-worn territory, but does so with a tight script, penned by Angus Watts (on his first feature as screenwriter, with another two genre pics already in development), and the movie sports a terrific cast. 

City slicker Ryan Black (Ben Guerens) has returned to the Aussie outback, ex-mining town, Serenity Crossing (shot in Broken Hill, on some of the same roads used in Mad Max 2), to attend his father’s funeral, make amends with his loose canon brother Tyson (Nathaniel Dean), and sort out his dad’s affairs (played by Stan Black in flashbacks). There’ll be plenty of baggage. This includes the goons who’ve got an extortion score to implement, Cain (Steve Le Marquand), Davo (Damian Hill), and young Caleb (Ryan Morgan), but also Izzy (Jess McNamee), who wants a piece of Ryan too, since he walked on her, all those years ago. And there’s Jake (Andy McPhee), in the background, the farmer with a dark secret. 

Locusts - the title referring to the insect that ravages the landscape with its insatiable hunger - sweats and grunts with good pace and plenty of character. The performances are strong, especially Guerens, McNamee, and McPhee, with Marquand adding yet another authentically menacing crook to his well-notched belt. Chris Bland captures the dust and grime and harsh sunshine with terrific cinematography, whilst Burkhard von Dullwitz (yup, that’s his real name) provides a solid score. Heath Davis balances a subtle sense of humour with the dark drama, and he’s a director to watch. 

Savage Youth

Saturday July 6th, 4.15pm Monday July 8th, 3.45pm, Wednesday July 10th, 8.15pm, & Sunday July 14th, 3.45pm (Luna)

A teenage girl scrawls “True Story” on a piece of paper, and then scribbles it out. Cut to a young, ripped man in menacing clown-like makeup, itching to do a piece to camera, as a clapperboard reveals the name and director of the movie we’re about to watch. These two moments inject the film with a kind of meta-data, one seemingly contradicting the other. The story itself is about contrast and hypocrisy, about desire and hatred, about friendships under pressure, about racial tension and fractured identity. 

Jason (Will Brittain), Lucas (Sasha Feldman), and Hyde (J. Michael Trautmann) are wannabe rappers, honkies desperate for recognition, for fame, stuck in a deadbeat small US town. Elena (Grace Victoria Cox) and her girlfriend, Stephanie (Chloë Levine), who is already a teenage mother, are itching for something, anything. Afro-Americans Gabe (Tequan Richmond) and Mike (Mitchell Edwards) have obligations, but making fash cash selling weed is a good distraction. Soon enough the lives of these six disenfranchised souls will collide, with tragic results. 

Writer/director Michael Curtis Johnson has fashioned a mostly solid drama, plucked from the true statistics of Somewhere, Anywhere, USA. He injects a palpable tension through the narrative, an air of genuine unease floats around these young and restless teens, as they make bad decision after bad decision, like a domino effect. You can sense violence is going to erupt, you know it’s not going to end well. The climax isn’t as shocking or savage as it demands to be, and the ending is abrupt and curiously unsatisfying, but the mise-en-scene, cinematography, and performances are all top notch, with the leads all actors to watch, as I’m sure they’ll be big stars soon enough, and sometimes that’s punch enough. 

Monos

Sunday July 7th, 4pm, Tuesday July 9th, 6.20pm, & Sunday July 14th, 9pm (Luna)

Monos (which translates as “monkeys”) is a very loose adaptation of William Golding’s classic tale of order and anarchy, The Lord of the Flies, but set high up on a remote Latin American alpine tundra, in and around an abandoned arcane concrete outpost, and later down in the thick of the jungle. Instead of school lads, it’s a ragtag group of adolescent guerilla soldiers, boys and girls, with an adult hostage, and the responsibility of a milk cow. These rebels, with nicknames such as Rambo, Smurf, Bigfoot, Wolf, Dog, and Boom-Boom, receive sporadic adult command from The Organisation (who are heard over radio, but never seen), but their immediate reality is much more juvenile and impulsive, their mission inevitably under threat from within. 

Director Alejandro Landes constructed the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Alexis Dos Santos. It’s a co-production between Colombia, Argentina, and Uruguay, with Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The beautiful cinematography is courtesy of Jasper Wolf, with powerful music by Mica Levi. The performances are uniformly excellent, with the cast a mix of experienced actors and non-professionals, but a special nod to Anglo-Saxon Julianne Nicholson as the long-suffering prisoner they call Doctora. 

Through the mountain mist probes the fog of war. Loyalty and stability are only as strong as the night is long. Language is a virus, a weapon, and trust as tenuous as the spoken word. Monos rambles and drifts, shouts and screams, scratches and punches, a powerful, surging, atmospheric study of power and hostility, and demands to be seen on a big screen. 

All the Gods in the Sky

Thursday July 11th, 7.45pm, Sunday July 14th, 8.45pm, & Tuesday July 16th, 6.15pm (Luna)

Simon (Jean-Luc Couchard) is a weary man, who looks much older than his thirty years. But you would too, if you lived alone with your paranoid thoughts, in a massive, crumbling stone farmhouse, harbouring demons, and had resigned yourself to caring for your severely disabled younger sister (Melanie Gaydos), whilst convinced the guilt that has governed your life was for a higher cosmic purpose, a kind of darkness calling from the stars. 

French writer/director Quarxx (!) has expanded his 2016 thirty-minute short, A Perfect Blue Sky, into a feature length study of madness and abuse, of morality and mortality. The feature is no less confronting and cryptic than the short, as equally fascinating and disturbing. A powerful drama, in moments nightmarish (with a Lovecraftian edge), and at times tender, then perverse. It’s a truly original hybrid that feels pulled from the pages of a weird science fiction horror novel. 

The high production values Quarxx employed on the short carry over onto the feature, with many identical scenes, and the two main actors reprise their roles. It’s a difficult movie in terms of empathy for the protagonist, yet one can’t help being drawn into his complex and increasingly frightening reality. All the Gods in the Sky is a hugely assured and captivating movie, despite a level of impenetrability. Stunning on the big screen, with rich widescreen cinematography from Antoine Carpentier. You won’t have seen a movie quite like this. 

For the full Revelation program and further festival information please click here.

66th Sydney Film Festival - Six picks!

Animals

Sat 8 June, 8.30pm (Ritz), The 13 June, 8.30pm (HOC) & Sat 15 June, 9pm (EV4)

For her second feature Aussie director Sophie Hyde has adapted the novel by Emma Jane Unsworth about two Dublin women hitting the dirty 30s and all the emotional baggage and excess luggage that comes from shared accommodation with your BFF. It’s been ten years in a booze-soaked and recreational drug haze. Laura (Holliday Grainger) is a wannabe author. She’s been working on her first novel since the beginning of time. She has a journal full of scrawled observations on her chum, Tyler (Alia Shawkat), who lies in the gutter staring wistfully at the stars. There’s no immediate rush to give up their hedonistic lifestyle. Or is there? 

Whilst bohemian ex-pat American Tyler takes a one-night stand where she can, which is probably far more occasionally than frequently, it is ginger-haired, cherub-faced Laura who gets the more regular attention, and seems to be the one who quietly hopes to be swept off her feet. Enter classically-trained ruggedly handsome Jim (Fra Free), who tickles her ivories something wicked. Before the girls can quote anything remotely witty Laura is hitched and shacking up on the other side of town. “The night is a zoo and the next day is its museum”.

“Just what are an animal’s primary needs?” slurs Laura after a botched poetry session. Food, sex, and safety. But not necessarily in that order. Animals is a beautiful slice of life. The resemblance to Withnail and I can’t be ignored, but from a female perspective. The central performance from Grainger is terrific, and one of my faves for the year, but all the acting is top notch, and the dialogue bristles with loose precision. A movie that captures those delicate moments between the moments, that reckless confidence and awkward naivety that follows some of us well into adulthood. 

This Is Not Berlin

Mon 10 Jun, 3.45pm (EV4)

No, it’s Mexico City, 1986, and teenage Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de León) is in limbo. Most of his school mates spend their extracurricular activity involved in fights with rival school kids. But Carlos is more interested in electronics. He finds inspiration from his uncle (played by director Hari Sama), and with his best friend Gera (José Antonio Toledano) the two lads discover a hedonistic escape in an underground nightclub and the pan-sexual counter-culture that inhabits it. Carlos is attracted to Gera’s older sister Rita (Ximena Romo), but the attention of Nico (Mauro Sanchez Navarro) sways his behaviour. 

Essentially a coming-of-age drama This Is Not Berlin exhibits a fearless approach to the fickle nature of adolescence, to the troublesome issue of peer pressure, and the social politics of sexual libration and individuality. Apparently based on the director’s own experiences, as is often the case with resonant drama like this. The movie is gifted with a great soundtrack of pulsating new wave music. Rita is the singer and front person to a progressive rock band, trying to cut a swathe through the punk rock. Rita spouts socio-political diatribes, and Carlos, who fixed the keyboardist’s synth, and Gera tag along. 

Sama elicits powerful performances from his young cast, especially León and Romo. The camera roves in and around the action like a restless panther. It’s a heady mix of elements, from the mostly implicit violence that seethes, to the sexual tension and release (there’s a genuinely charged encounter near movie’s end). This Is Not Berlin is as much about the apathy and disenfranchised of yesteryear as it is of the here and now. 

The Wedding Guest

Fri 7 June, 6.30pm (Ritz)

From Michael Winterbottom, probably Britain’s most prolific director, comes a thriller, and a damn fine one too. It has a romantic undercurrent, but calling it a romance would be misleading. It’s primarily a story of love unsatisfied, desire at a close distance. Someone once said, there’s no such thing as love and romance, only trouble and desire. The Wedding Guest is exactly that. Dev Patel (the ethnic Ryan Reynolds) plays Jay, a man on a mission. It’s easy to work out that his job is not above board. Radhika Apte plays Samira, the woman he must safely collect and deliver. But, there are other players involved, and nothing ever goes to plan. 

A kind of Indian-Pakistan travelogue fused into the mechanics of a thriller, The Wedding Guest is essentially a two-hander, with Jim Sarbh as the third wheel. Soon enough it becomes difficult to work out who is leading who. The heart is a lonely hunter. Jay and Samira are forced to cohabit as they make their passage out of harm’s way, and as sure as the sun sets in the west, they will find each other’s pretence as a couple something more than a guise for safety. 

Winterbottom never fails to get great naturalistic performances. Most of his best work is imbued with an immediacy and cinema verité attention to detail. It’s a drama, but it feels raw and real. The production values are never over-stated, but assist the movie in the most genuine, authentic way. The movie is a UK production, but feels like a co-pro. Winterbottom is excellent at entrenching his directorial style into the lay of the land. The Wedding Guest might not offer anything entirely new in the traditional style of the twisty pursuit thriller, but it’s done with such a strong, solid hand, and Patel and Apte are not only very easy on the eye, but they deliver compellingly. 

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead

Fri 7 June, 8.50pm (HOC), Sat 8 June, 7.45pm (DNEW), & Sat 15 June, 9pm (DOQ2)

Ben Wheatley is one of my favourite contemporary British directors. His hit list (pardon the pun) is terrific (Kill List, Sightseers, and Free Fire, for example). He is adept at both intense drama and action and the blackest of comedy. With his latest he employs the humorous hand to great effect, taking a fantastic ensemble cast and letting them have a right old go at each other. You could refer to this as Festen In England (referencing one of my favourite familial disaster movies), as it takes place on the year’s most anticipated let’s get plastered day and night, almost entirely in one location, and features the extended relations in full attack and defence mode. 

Neil Maskel is the titular Colin. He’s hired a huge country manor to host a NYE bash for his entire family and their immediate loved ones. This happens to include the estranged brother David (Sam Riley), who has been haphazardly invited by sister Gini (Hayley Squires). It becomes quickly apparent that everyone is reluctant to entertain David, let alone humour him. There is a lot of bad blood under the bridge, shall we say. So, without further adieu, let the festivities start, let the shit hit the fan! Pop the bubbly, pour the gin, slosh the Scotch, and scull the beer. 

Wheatley wrote the script, and also edited the movie, and the editing is very much a central player, as the narrative frequently cuts between the various conversations and confrontations, including the sheepish Lord of the Manor (Richard Glover) and the anxious caterer Lainey (Sinead Matthews). Special nod to Charles Dance who is a delightful surprise in the guise of Uncle Bertie, and to classy fraulein Hanna (Alexandra Maria Lara), David’s girlfriend, who observes the entire calamity with bemusement, then delivers a little Marlene. Wheatley indulges himself at movie’s end, during the credits, pushing the Brechtian envelope. It’s a nice touch. 

Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool

Sat 8 June, 6.35pm (EV3)

It’s about time someone made a definitive documentary about the legendary musician who irrevocably changed the face and feel of jazz more than once. Director Stanley Nelson has amassed a stunning collection of photographs that he uses to tell one part of the life and career of Miles Davis. He also utilises the voice of Carl Lumbly to read passages from Davis’ autobiography (which was published in 1989 - Davis passing away only a couple of years later). Together, with the music of the maestro, and occasionally a tune from someone else as context, they form the amazing story of this extraordinary game changer, a musical maverick who has provided the world with some of the most gorgeous jazz, both modern and classic. 

Relaxin’, workin’, cookin’, and steamin’, Miles laid down the blueprint. And he didn’t suffer fools gladly. He wasn’t an easy man to be with either, as many will verify, especially the women in his life. As is often the case, those that are truly gifted, are often chased by demons, and lash out at those they supposedly cherish. Davis had his fair share of demons. He was a smack addict in the 40s, and a coke addict through the 60s and 70s. Booze also hounded him. But he managed to still make countless albums of rare beauty, and nearly always inspired his fellow musicians and collaborators to greatness. 

Birth Of The Cool (a reference to the compilation album he released in 1957, but just as pertinent a description of his own legacy) is essential viewing for anyone remotely interested in modern music. The impact Davis had on modern jazz in the 50s and 60s, especially improvisation, and the influence on funk and hip-hop, again through improv in the early 70s, cannot be overstated, especially on the albums “Bitches Brew” and “On The Corner”. With close friends, ex-lovers, and collaborators waxing lyrical (shame Betty Davis didn’t chime in), a deeply etched, warts and all portrait of the artist is formed and framed, and it’s one for the ages, one to be cherished.

Martha: A Picture Story

Sat 8 June, 6.30pm (EV5) & Mon 10 June, 6pm (DNEW)

Martha “Marty” Cooper had her first camera at eight, and dreamed of being a photographer for National Geographic. But instead of composing elegant photographs of wild beasts on the savannahs she ended up capturing the streetwise animals in the urban jungle of New York, and in the process she discovered her passion and vocation. After a stint as the first female staff photographer for the New York Post in the late 70s, being told to cover Olympic athletes and look for cleavage, she found solace in doing the “weather shots” (filler using ordinary folk), often in the Bronx, where she discovered the illegal graffiti artists bombing and tagging trains. 

It was her obsession with photographing this burgeoning subculture that would become her legacy. Although she wasn’t accepted into the photography community for her “snapshots”, and her work was criticised by the media for encouraging vandalism, she eventually had her photography - along with fellow street art eye Henry Chalfant - immortalised by a small German publisher in a book called Subway Art in 1984. Only 3000 copies printed, it would become a bible amongst street artists and the hiphop community, to this day. 

Director Selina Miles, who focuses her docos in the street art world, has made a thoroughly captivating and inspiring portrait, not just of Marty, the gung-ho traveler and adventurer with a sly sense of humour, but also the wilderness of Brooklyn and the Bronx in the late 70s and 80s, and the gentrification that followed. Baltimore also features, as Marty spent a lot of time photographing its locals. Now at 75, with numerous books under her belt, Marty, still the loner, challenges herself by running with the hoods, tackling the modern world of street art, transmogrified by social media, and she still struggles with acceptance. But, as this wonderful documentary illustrates, if you follow your passion, however big or small or improper, happiness will find a way to follow. 

For complete Sydney Film Festival program please click here.

Luz

Germany | 2018 | Directed by Tilman Singer

Logline: A young woman enters a police station, while a doctor is chatted up by a woman at a bar. A demonic entity loiters, determined to finally be close to the woman it loves.

In arguably the most genuinely retro-vibed unclassifiable movie in years this German tale of supernatural possession and yearning operates perfectly like a bad dream, with oneiric logic, mood and tone. Drenched in atmosphere with a cool synth score from Simon Waskow, icy, muted 16mm cinematography from Paul Faltz, and a mesmerising performance from Chilean Luana Velia in the titular role, Luz is writer/director Tilman Singer’s paean to the existential horror of the late 70s - think Fulci meets Lynch - as theatrical as it is cinematic, as weird as it is entrancing. 

Several characters, including tomboyish cab driver Luz (Luana Velis), a psychiatrist, Dr. Rossini (Jan Blurhardt), and Luz’s old roommate Nora (Julia Riedler), become embroiled in dark shenanigans at a desolate bar, and a run-down, lonely police station. There is black magic at play, there is much manipulation, but it’s not entirely clear who is doing what to whom, as flashbacks merge with the present, as fantasy binds with reality, as a demon god seizes humanity. All will be revealed … or, suggested, in good, short time (the movie is just 70 minutes long).

Indeed, much of Luz feels like improvised, like some kind of organic Brechtian experiment in narrative. Singer’s controlled nightmare - apparently his film studies thesis - is a study in mood and tone, as rich in subtlety as it is restrained in special effects, yet still manages to provide a deeply satisfying and pervading sense of the creep factor. This is definitely an acquired taste, as it doesn’t offer much in terms of narrative coherency, instead layering ambiguity upon ambiguity. Like David Lynch’s Eraserhead, it is a dream of dark and troubling things, with smoky, lush imagery that burns onto the back of the retina. 

Luz is the confident and striking work of an exciting new filmmaker with loads of potential, and I can’t wait to see what he does next, as well as irresistible Luana Velis.

Luz screens Friday 30th November, 6.30pm, Sunday 2nd December, 8.30pm, Wednesday 5th December, 8.45pm (Lido), Saturday 1st December, 6.30pm (Classic) & Saturday 1st December 8.30pm (Cameo), as part of Melbourne’s Paracinema Fest. For full program please visit here.

Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana

US | 2018 | directed by Frank Henenlotter

 Logline: A documentary tracing the history of American underground comic artist Mike Diana and his arrest and conviction for obscenity. 

 Mike Diana remains the only artist in US history to have been found guilty and convicted of obscenity. This was back in 1994. In Florida. These days Diana is a celebrated artist who has exhibitions around the world and whose controversial work is featured in hardcover coffee table books. But back in the late 80s he was a talented, but angry teenager who illustrated his contempt at aspects of humanity with graphic abandon. 

Frank Henenlotter is a director well-versed in controversy and censorship, as he delivered such cult midnight fare as Basket Case, Brain Damage, Frankenhooker, and Bad Biology. He’s made docos before, one on sexploitation and one on the Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, so it seems fitting that he tackle the untold story of Mike Diana and his “crimes”. As Neil Gaiman points out, what happened to Mike Diana is an appalling injustice, and it exposed the “noxious froth on the top of evil sewerage”. It was a volatile period, and Diana, being young and without the aid of money, was made an example of. 

Beginning with EC Comics and the Code of Authority, moving through Underground Comix, and Heavy Metal magazine, Henenlotter’s compelling portrait of Diana’s world and the bigger picture, infused with much satire, and visual flair, paints a truly damning frame of small town attitude let loose. But Diana wasn’t small-minded. He may have been carrying issues, though he claims to have had a happy childhood (though his sister spills a few crazy stories!), but the most unfortunate factor was that the Gainesville serial killer was on the loose, and Diana’s sadistic, sexually violent cartoons looked very similar, leading many to condemn the young man as a psychopath. Talk about a long bow being drawn. 

It’s fascinating history, with a macabre sense of humour (and added George C. Romero sage). At one point Diana is being interviewed and a black car drives past in the background, and Diana immediately notes that it’s detectives. Still on his case, twenty-five years down the track. Boiled Angels (the title refers to Diana’s damning ‘zine) is essential viewing for anyone interested in subversive pop culture. 

Boiled Angels screens Saturday 1st December, 3.45pm (Lido) & Tuesday 4th December, 6.30pm (Classic), as part of Melbourne’s Paracinema Fest. For full program please visit here.

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2018 - highlights

TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID

Mexican director Issa López’s horror-fantasy hybrid (the original title, Siempre Vuelven, translates as “they always come back”) has already won a slew of awards, and had Guillermo Del Toro and Stephen King both waxing lyrical on Twitter, and it’s easy to see why. Her tale of several orphaned children banding together to fend off the brutal gangland tactics of the ever-present drug cartel and the ghosts of the murdered lingering close is the kind of narrative premise that appeals to the sensibilities of Toro and King, as they have both tackled their own tales of horror and adolescence. 

López has delivered a powerfully nuanced film, with superb performances from her young cast, especially Paola Lola as brave Estrella, trying to find out what happened to her mother, convinced of three wishes, searching desperately for closure. She befriends a ragtag group of boys, proves her mettle, and has them aid her on her dangerous quest, being pursued by vengeful gangsters. 

The production values are excellent, especially the cinematography, which captures the grit and grime, the inescapable sense of desolation within the ghetto. Yet there’s a kind of ruinous beauty to it all. And López doesn’t pull any punches with the inherent violence either, it’s a truly cruel world. The melding of the fantasy element is interwoven beautifully, as the young imagination conjures the fantastical in order to comprehend the horror of the adult world. 

The statistics of how many people, especially children, go missing each year as a direct result of the drug wars is truly harsh. It’s a reality where street kids are forced to become adults at a very tender age, weapons thrust into their hands, often out of the necessity for survival. Right from the start Tigers Are Not Afraid is a tense and compelling journey, moving inexorably deeper toward the dark truth, and almost certain to pull hard on your heart strings. 

YOU MIGHT BE THE KILLER

Usually I’m not one for smart-arse horror comedies that try and be oh-so-self-aware-clever and end up compromising everything they’ve set out to encapsulate. However, there are always exceptions to the rule, and this little slasher spoof hits the meta nail right on the head. Directed by Brett Simmons, who made a forgettable scarecrow horror movie called Husk, comes out with both guns blazing. A wickedly original premise that holds up to the very end. And then demands some more. 

The movie opens with Sam (Fran Kranz), a kids camp counsellor covered in blood and holed up in a shed. He’s called his best friend Chuck (Alyson Hannigan), a horror movie geek, for help, as he’s sure he’s being hunted by a maniac killer, who has already butchered most of the other counsellors. He doesn’t remember large sections due to blacking out. Chuck asks a few pertinent questions, and it quickly dawns on the them that Sam might very well be the killer. Sam describes in detail the events that have lead to this moment of realisation. 

It might sound hokey, but this very entertaining movie ticks a lot of boxes. Firstly, the performances of the good-looking, mostly unknown cast, are terrific, with special note to Kranz in the utterly confused and desperate lead role. He has a kind of Steve Carroll dork factor, but is endearing, which is crucial, considering the predicament. Hannigan is Hannigan, and she delivers the perfect counterpart, over the phone, that is. Also of note is Brittany S. Hall as Sam’s ex-camp fling, Imani. 

The lush, retro-hued cinematography fits hand in glove, plus there are some choice kills, which is de rigour for a slasher flick. The movie is short, hilarious, and finishes with the perfect ending. Not surprisingly, it won awards for “Best Film To Watch With A Crowd” & “Film Most Want To See A Sequel To” at Toronto After Dark. Indeed, it’s the perfect popcorn and mates movie. And beers and blunts too, if you can. 

THE INHABITANT

Another Latin-American entry, this one from Guillermo Amoedo, one of Eli Roth’s friends, who collaborated with him on Aftershock, The Green Inferno, and Knock Knock. This movie, however, is nothing like those three. The Inhabitant is a richly atmospheric shocker dealing with demonic possession, which unfolds in a classic mold, unlike Roth’s obnoxious, over-the-top style. Indeed The Inhabitant relies more on character and subtlety, and is all the more resonant and memorable for it. 

Maria (Maria Evoli), Camila (Vanesa Restrepo) and Ana (Carla Adell) are sisters, and have broken into a mansion, searching for a stash of money in a safe, from a tip-off to help Camila who is in a spot of trouble. But, their plans are scuttled by the discovery of the wealthy owners’ daughter Tamara (Nastash Cubria) strapped to a bed in the basement. The girl looks definitely worse for wear. The parents are desperate to be left alone. The sisters have their own demons, but those have been kept in the closest since they were teens. Until now. 

This is a movie of more than just diabolical invasion of the body. It is about the loss of faith, the theft of humanity, the sacking of sacred family trust. It is about the darkness within the darkness of the soul. Peer too closely into the shadows and they just might bite your face off. The Inhabitant has a tenebrous shroud that blankets everything. It’s an impressively nightmarish vibe, enhanced by the roving camerawork, down the hallways of the labyrinthine mansion, and strong performances from all the actors. 

Eschewing the usual viscera (though it is still violent) and arching histronics of other possession movies The Inhabitant still manages to create a genuinely chilling atmosphere, all icky dread and cold sweaty moments. It’s not a long movie, but it demands you pay attention, for the denouement is most satisfyingly apocalyptic, and coal black eyes have been staring intently in that direction. 

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2018 screened October 11-19, Scotiabank Theatre. For complete program and all award winners please visit their site Toronto After Dark.

Sydney Underground Film Festival 2018 - shakers, movers, killers, players

Barbara Rubin & the Exploding New York Underground

Friday, September 14th, 8.30pm

Referred to as the Joan of Ark of underground cinema, Barbara Rubin’s contribution to the hugely influential scene that emerged out of the Big Apple in the mid-60s cannot be understated. Though she’s not as recognizable as Andy Warhol, she was just as instrumental, and in many ways the pioneer that inspired Warhol to embark on his own underground ciné endeavours, certainly she introduced him to The Velvet Underground. She was just 18 (going on 30) when she made Christmas on Earth (which she originally titled Cocks and Cunts), which played with double projection (a smaller frame projected inside another larger frame) and depicted free love in a way that shocked and fascinated audiences - even those minds wide open Manhattanites!

Rubin was as passionate and dedicated as she was demanding and stubborn, quickly making friends with fellow shaker and movers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Smith, and making a name for herself at whatever function or event she attended, or crashed. She kept a long-standing correspondence with her early lover and lifelong friend Jonas Mekas, and it is the ageing Mekas who shares some of the letters she wrote him. Many others of the period share colourful stories of Rubin and her commitment to the avant-garde film scene. 

Rubin died tragically at the age of 35, following the birth of her fifth child. This concise documentary, made by Chuck Smith, traces Rubin’s career from maverick teenager through to her radical shift in ideology when she married a French painter and mystical religious teacher and moved to France. But it is the period between the mid and late 60s when Rubin was the “moving force and coordinator,” as Lou Reed describes her influence on the artists of that time and place, that is most fascinating. An incredibly furtive and unbridled period, where culture and art and social mores collided, and it’s wonderful for Chuck Smith’s doco to lift Rubin from the kaleidoscopic, carnal chaos and put her on the pedestal she rightly deserves.  

Wobble Palace

Saturday, September 15th, 5pm

I know what you’re likely to say, you’ve seen one mumblecore indie relationship comedy of sexual misadventures you’ve seen ‘em all. But no! There is always another one that manages to charm with its egocentricities, its visual flair, with terrific performances, and effervescent dialogue. Eugene Kotlyarenko’s curious take on a pathetic relationship that really needs to end is the ripe juicy fruit worth biting into. Co-written with his co-star Dasha Nekrasova, Eugene (as Eugene) is, well, quite frankly a cuck (to quote Paige Elkington’s photographer character), a dishevelled narcissist who dresses appallingly and sweeps his long hair into a flowing toupee. His partner Jane (Nekrasova) is also a vague narcissist, but less obnoxious in her millennial angst. 

These two mean well, but they’re in a serious rut. The movie takes place over a few nights leading up to the infamous US election that saw Donald Trump takeover the Oval Office. Essentially it’s a comedy of manners, or errors to be precise, but it’s shot through an endearing gauze of melancholy, much of which is enhanced by Sean William Price’s gorgeous cinematography (he shot the Safdie brothers' Good Time in a similar wash of vibrant colour and retro flare). 

So we follow Eugene attempting to get laid via Tinder hookups, and his reckless treatment of bills and general lack of household hygiene. Then we follow Jane as she muses with her bestie (played by Elisha Drons), tries her luck with a skater boi, and indulges her needs with a douchebag named Ravi (Vishwam Velandy). But eventually - at a Halloween party where Eugene is dressed hilariously as Nosferatu - the two unlovers decide its time to talk turkey. Though its characters might likely irritate the pants off of some, Wobble Palace is poignant, engaging and frequently amusing, with genuinely memorable performances, especially Nekrosova, she’s one to watch for sure. Y'know, I think its one of my faves for the year. 

King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen

Saturday, September 15th, 9pm

You may not recognise the director’s name, but you’ll no doubt have heard of some of his cult classic movies, especially It’s Alive, Q - The Winged Serpent, The Stuff, or Hell Up in Harlem. Larry Cohen is a living legend, a prolific screenwriter for both television and the movies, and as a director, Cohen is the other side of the DIY coin, with Roger Corman on the flip. Cohen is a true filmmaker, a renegade spirit, a man on a mission, and Steven Mitchell’s documentary is a loving tribute to the tenacity of Larry and his approach to filmmaking. 

Featuring a huge array of talent spilling forth the often amusing tales of working on a Larry Cohen picture, or having had some involvement with the man, including Joe Dante, John Landis, Martin Scorsese, Mick Garris, Eric Roberts, Fred Williamson, Michael Moriarty, and many more. But Larry himself isn’t shy at waxing lyrical about his own work, describing Q as “the best big monster movie after Kong”. 

Just as entertaining as Corman’s World, the Roger Corman documentary from a few year’s back, King Cohen’s career in low-budget feature filmmaking, where he’d often shoot on the streets of Manhattan without a permit, taking advantage of a street parade in order to get high production value at minimal cost, or using restoration workers high up on the Chrysler building doubling as gunmen trying to shoot down the giant winged serpent. Where there was a way, Larry had the will. He was the guerrilla filmmaker that could teach Robert Rodriguez a few lessons! Although much of Cohen’s technique would give Health & Safety a headache, and certainly there is much that Cohen got away with that would be impossible with today’s strict filmmaking practices. Oh, and take note budding screenwriters for a link to ten of Larry's unproduced screenplays at the end of the credits. 

Christmas Blood

Saturday, September 15th, 11pm

A Norwegian slasher flick, known as Juleblod in Scandinavia, directed by the suitably named Reinert Kill, who has been making movies since he was 9. A bunch of pretty young women rendezvous in the small snow laden township of Honningsvåg for a booze-laden yuletide reunion. Sanne (Helene Eidsvåg), Elizabeth (Karoline Stemre), Ritika (Haddy Jallow), and Annika (Kylie Stephenson) arrive at the snug pad of Julia (Marte Sætren) to celebrate Xmas. Soon after Katja (Yassmine Johansen) and her boyfriend Christian (Andreas Nonaas) join them. But, Julia’s recently deceased mother was one of the many victims on the long list of a demented serial killer (Jorgen Langhelle), who savagely murdered dozens of folk many years earlier, was shot by police and incarcerated. But, of course, he’s just escaped, and donned his favourite Santa suit, armed himself with a sharp trusty axe, and has also arrived in the sleepy village of the midnight sun, with one thing on his psycho mind. 

Forget plot, as there is precious little in that department, for Kill is much more interested in the shenanigans of his soon-to-be offed protagonists. Who will die first, and how violently will they die? Kill certainly knows how to swing a camera, and he lays on the atmosphere with aplomb. The performances are solid, if a little distracting - whilst almost everyone takes in Norwegian (Elizabeth is a mute), Annika delivers her lines in Aussie English. But who pray tell is the killer Santa? And will police detective Rasch (Stig Henrik Hoff) save all the girls before another silent night, deadly night is done and dusted? 

Christmas Blood is one of those stalk and slash (or should I say stalk and split) flicks that demands to be seen with a keen cinema audience after several pilsners or maybe some mulled profondo rosso. It’s the kind of movie you hurl comments at the characters on screen; “Run faster you idiot!” and “Look out behind you!” But too late, the axe comes crashing down, and blood is splattered all over virgin snow. Or in this case, slutty snow. While there is no real rhyme or reason to this slay ride, it’s a fun frolic, easy on the eye, with some decent kills (although I wanted it to be gorier!), and it’s lean, mean style will be appreciated by the purist horror hounds.

The 12th Sydney Underground Film Festival screens 13th - 16th September at Factory Theatre, Marrickville. For more information, ticketing, and the complete SUFF program visit http://suff.com.au

Decks And The City

Glen J. Scrymgour’s portrait of Adelaide’s DJ scene is both a love letter to the art and passion (and frustration) of the modern disc jockey, and an open letter of dismay and despair at the seemingly irreparable damage done by the lock out laws which have wrecked havoc in Adelaide (and in Sydney). Melbourne has come out unscathed, having been the guinea pigs, but, for a only a few months before they were scrapped. But enough about Melbourne.

Adelaide once proudly proclaimed itself the Dance Capital of Australia. It is the home of Cam Banchetti, the legend known as DJ HMC, and even more famously so as Late Nite Tuff Guy, Australia’s “Godfather of techno”, a champion of the proper DJ, who respects the music and understands the dance floor, “It’s all about dancing, yeah? Right.” He is one of numerous Adelaidian DJs and industry figures who wax lyrical about the state of the art, and offer their opinions on the ever-changing, evolving landscape of electronic dance music. 

While much of the first half of the doco - with it’s oh-so-cute title - feels like its preaching to the converted, skimming the breadth of genres and sub-genres of electronic dance, each interviewee offering their take on their beloved style. It’s certainly an overview, and to the nightclub greenie or newbie, the doco offers a superficial look at what makes these musical styles tick and tock, but it feels very locked into the four-to-the-floor sensibility, with the exception of drum and bass and dubstep, and it’s a shame it doesn’t offer anything about the DJ roots of electronic dance music; funk, disco, soul, rare groove, new wave. Still, the predominately house music soundtrack, using a lot of local producers, is excellent. 

Fresh 92.7FM is regarded as Adelaide’s bastion of overground and underground dance music. Many of the DJs who feature in Decks also have shows on the station. While they acknowledge the importance of radio and community, many of the older DJs bemoan the current club scene as increasingly full of wannabes and rising DJs who have little respect for laying the foundations. The contemporary scene within the industry means that online stores, such as Beatport and Traxsource, feature a plethora of producers and a glut of music. Gone are the halcyon days of the physical record store where DJs would gather on shipment day to listen to a crate’s worth of new vinyl. Sure, there are a few boutique stores scattered here and there, but that era has passed. Instead DJs are now expected to be high calibre bedroom producers, and with technology being so advanced and relatively cheap, on one hand it makes it much easier for up-and-coming producers to deliver stuff, but the vast ocean of content actually makes it increasingly harder to be heard, or singled out. There is irony in that there groove. 

The digital vs. analogue argument rears its head, as it has been doing for the past ten years, and rightly so, LNTG says it shouldn’t be about the technology or format, the heart of the matter is the quality of the music. Fresh FM station manager Troy Been chimes in on programming local acts that have raised the bar, enough so that their stuff can play effortlessly back-to-back with the big international names. But the crux of Decks and the City appears to be the issue of the lock-out laws, its inevitable damage to Adelaide’s underground club scene, and the insidious effect the exempt casinos have had. This section of the doco occupies the last thirty minutes, and one can’t escape the feeling this was the impetus of making the documentary in the first place. 

Decks and the City is essentially an archival piece, capturing mostly the veteran X-Gens, with a clutch of dedicated Millennials, but hopefully it will end up as a date stamp, so when the lock-out laws are reversed we can look back on the dark period and say, thank God that misguided attempt at dealing with alcohol-related violence is over with. At the least, Decks is a solid tribute piece to the city’s diverse DJ personalities, and to the aesthetics of the profession. It’s made by someone with a genuine love of the DJ and its realm, and is aimed squarely at those who love nightclubbing, who love the healing power of electronic dance music.  

Decks and the City screens as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Monday July 8th, 7pm (Howler). The doco screens with two other “EDM” docs, French Waves and Italo Disco Legacy.