Film

Besides the fact that I doubt we'll see a more deft, thrilling genre film this year, I'm very pleased that Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin addresses a number of issues that revenge films have been overlooking for decades. For example, after you've been irrevocably wronged and made it your mission to set that right, what if you can't afford a gun? Guns are expensive. If you get a gun, which one do you get and how long do you need to spend learning to shoot it? Okay, screw the gun, let's go with a knife... but if you kill one person with a knife, won't there likely be others who want to kill you back? I'd like to go on about the ways that Charles Bronson... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

With the new trailer for Mark Hartley's remake of Australian cult classic Patrick only launching yesterday, it's time for more news of the highly-specialised 'remake of Aussie exploitation movie that everyone remembers thanks to Not Quite Hollywood' variety. Today's news concerns Turkey Shoot, which apparently was also called Escape 2000 and - my favourite - Blood Camp Thatcher when released outside Australia.Tony Ginnane who produced the original 1982 cult classic Turkey Shoot (and who produced both the original Patrick and the recent remake) has got together with director Jon Hewitt, who made the fantastic Acolytes and X, to bring this remake back to big screens. With The Hunger Games being a monster success there's no better time to revisit the terrifying year 1995! Where hunting is the... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

Looks like casting famous Brits in big Aussie movies is the new black. Or rather it was the old black, but once again has become so pronounced as to be worth commenting on. In the past 12 months we've had Rob Pattinson out for The Rover, Ewan McGregor for Son of a Gun, Tom Hardy was in Mad Max (although is that even really Australian anymore?), Colin Firth came out for The Railway Man and even Patrick managed to import its own British luminary of sorts, Charles Dance.Now comes news that Kriv Stenders has cast Simon Pegg in his new noir thriller Kill Me Three Times, a directing gig he inherited when original helmer Greg Mclean went off to make Wolf Creek 2. Whether or... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

I truly believe Jimmy P. could have been great had it lost its clinical approach to telling its story and opened itself up a little and let us further into Jimmy's life as something lived rather than something remembered.

Ari Folman has been working on The Congress for about five years now and it seems the delay in bringing his adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's short story to the big screen is a result of not being able to bring it all together in a cohesive package.

Yasujiro Ozu's playful family drama, the best Cannes film so far, has Robbie Collin squeaking with joy.

Silent film fans, this one included, have a great affection for Lonesome. It’s as sweet a movie as they come. I remember the first time I saw it, three years ago, in Syracuse, New York. I left the theatre feeling startled by how genuine and fresh it was. I was confident I could show to anyone.Of course, that would have been hard to do at the time. Until recently, Lonesome was festival film, difficult to see. And when you did see it, what you got was a rather rough-looking print. That has now changed, thanks to the gods at Criterion, who’ve seen fit to bless us with a Blu-ray release of the film. Now, finally, I’ve been able to give Lonesome a second look. But that second look is causing me to question its appeal. The story couldn’t be simpler. Lonesome concerns a pair of young, single New Yorkers, Mary (Barbara Kent) and Jim (Glenn Tryon) who have never met. Both work hard—he runs a punch-press in a factory; she’s a telephone operator. With the work-week done, and a long-weekend ahead of them, both decide to visit Coney Island. There they meet and fall in love. And then, through a mishap, they are separated. Will these two decent, desperate, lonely people find one another again? That is their concern, and ours, in Lonesome.I know why the film works. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, let’s consider what doesn’t work very well—what this story must overcome to win our hearts.Lonesome drags. Though it runs only 70 minutes, the first fifty are an extended first act; in which the director, Paul Fejos, indulges his desire to film a pretty couple in a remarkable carnival environment, dancing from one happy moment to the next. A good deal of this is necessary—enough that we can view their (possibly) permanent separation as something catastrophic. But we didn’t need as much as we got. Particularly when we’re told so little else about them.The performances of the leads, though endearing, aren’t exactly good. We know when they’re happy, sad and afraid, but the myriad, subtle in-betweens of emotion—the ones that distinguish us, in the moment, as individuals—are missing. Who are Mary and Jim, besides two people feeling typical feelings?Lonesome is also a bit of a dog’s breakfast, aesthetically. Made close to the end of the Silent Era in the West, it contains elements intended to appeal to an audience with changing tastes, and they don’t always work. The tinting, for example, can be gaudy—and there is too little of it for it to feel integrated into the film. The soundtrack (mostly music, with the occasional sound effect) is tinny and shrill, as you’d expect it to be. Fejos’ liberal use of double-exposure makes for some impressive scenes, but it’s nothing Murnau and Lang hadn’t already explored and made commonplace in their own films about urban life. While I believe Lonesome belongs in the company of Sunrise, City Girl, The Crowd, and Man With A Movie Camera, I can’t say it’s better than any of them.The famed talking sequences are also problematic. Lonesome “breaks” its silence three times, the first two being drippy pre-pillow talk moments between Mary and Jim. Scenes like these, occurring in films that are otherwise traditionally silent, are always a little weird—they can feel forced, and they take you out of the moment. Kent and Tryon’s mannered delivery doesn’t help.But I said I liked Lonesome, didn’t I? And I do, for the same reasons you probably will.Lonesome taps into the fears we all have about being lost and abandoned. For lonely urban dwellers, this feeling is acute. We are surrounded by people; we assume, understandably, that a relationship, or at least a hookup, is always likely, even imminent. How can we not meet people in a space filled with them? Yet many of us remain single. So what’s wrong with us?Fejos understood how nice, young, attractive people like Mary and Jim could find themselves in a position like this. Both work long hours at solitary, mechanical jobs that provide them few opportunities for social interactio

The Weinstein Co. has debuted the first poster for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom starring Idris Elba as the South African leader and President.

Much has already been written, both on these pages and many others, about the landmark Hollywood-China co-production that is Marvel and DMG Entertainment's Iron Man 3. The film, directed by Shane Black, is the third solo outing for Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark, and has proved a phenomenal success around the world. As it closes in on $1 billion at the global box office, the film is on the cusp of breaking $100 million in China, despite the fact that the film withdrew its application for official co-production status at the eleventh hour. We knew ahead of time that the mainland release of Iron Man 3 would feature exclusive footage, filmed in China with homegrown stars Wang Quexi and Fan Bingbing, But what exactly would these... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

There’s a Trekkie theory that the even numbered films in the Star Trek franchise are the good ones. With the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, myself and fellow Movie-Moron contributors Adam Mason and Dalmatian Jaws have been discussing those …