The Hunt is more politically charged than expected. It’s also more cartoony than expected. It’s a sardonically funny thriller that points out hypocrisies of right-wing and left-wing beliefs, and favours extravagantly violent finales over mutual understandings. Cynical, yes; but The Hunt is a really ballsy movie for strapping on a blast suit and barrelling through such edgy, non-partisan material.
Jesse O’Brien’s horror/comedy Two Heads Creek aims to tackle the swelling issue of racism and nationalism in Australia and the United Kingdom through the most unusual of means: cannibalism. Though it’s hard not to appreciate the attempt, Two Heads Creek’s absurd premise often overtakes the seriousness of the threat posed by racism and nationalism.
If you like filmmaker Elia Suleiman, you will like It Must Be Heaven. This may well be an unusual start to a review, but this is not meant for the fans, because they already know what they are getting into. For the rest of you, how would one go about describing a Suleiman film? Well, Suleiman is a rare filmmaker: he is a Palestinian who is less concerned with doom and gloom, preferring to speak…
Punch and Judy are a couple of characters in a traditional British puppet show who are not exactly known for their subtlety. Punch is placed in charge of taking care of their kids. He hits the kid, his wife gets mad, he hits his wife, a cop shows up, he hits the cop, and so on and so forth. As such, it is a bit unusual that someone decided that this story, or rather the…
Pontypool is one of my favourite movies, even though I really dislike its post-credit sequence. It’s a random bit that looks like a deleted scene from Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City series, featuring obscure characters that we haven’t seen before exchanging hard-boiled dialogue – it’s moody nonsense. It makes as much sense as the entirety of Dreamland, a pseudo-fantasy-noir that has the gall to ride the coattails of Pontypool; squandering the reunion of its filmmakers and…
Military Wives has been tailor-made to be a crowd-pleaser. The ingredients are there: the leading characters have an entertaining dynamic that plays on their opposite personalities, they lead a team of underdogs, nostalgic pop tunes are worshipped amongst the film’s kind-hearted humour, a strong patriotic backbone holds up a story that’s been loosely based on real events. As much as it bugs me that the filmmakers believe they’ve cracked the code to pleasing general audiences…
Audiences have been spoiled with unique period films – Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar winner The Favourite, and Greta Gerwig’s take on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. We’ve been shown that these rustic movies can exist outside of a formula, which makes Autumn de Wilde’s Emma a bit of a retrograded step. But, the conventional choices can be explained.
Extra Ordinary, a horror-comedy from Irish filmmakers Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman, is loaded with ideas, concepts, and gags. But while these bits are funny individually, they don’t collectively contribute to an overarching story.
Guns Akimbo is a great example of how talented people can turn guilty pleasure entertainment on its ear.
