Newsletter

Arts & Letters: Film

SOCIETY

Bright Stars: John Keats and Fanny Brawne Revisited

Sophie Gee

John Keats’s last letter is just about his most powerful piece of writing. He was in Rome, dying of tuberculosis. He’d gone there in a...

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EDITOR'S CHOICE

Broken Communities: Helen Garner on Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown and Brendan Fletcher’s Mad Bastards

Helen Garner

In 1999, in the small South Australian township of Snowtown, police entered the vault of a disused bank and found a serial killer’s stash:...

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CULTURE

Taking to the Woods: Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter and Anh Hung Tran’s Norwegian Wood

John Collee

Shot in some of Tasmania’s most breathtaking wilderness, The Hunter (in national release) tells the story of an American mercenary (Willem...

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SOCIETY

Shakespeare in Australia: Fred Schepisi’s 'The Eye of the Storm'

Peter Conrad

It’s fortunate that Australia’s new capital was called Canberra not Shakespeare, as a few Empire loyalists proposed at the time of...

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WORLD

Triumph of the Kill: Susanne Bier’s 'In a Better World' and Denis Villeneuve’s 'Incendies'

Luke Davies

In Susanne Bier’s In a Better World (in national release on 21 April) – this year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film – there’s a...

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CULTURE

Economies of Scale: Peter Weir’s 'The Way Back' and Leon Ford’s 'Griff the Invisible'

Helen Garner

Epic is one word people resort to when confronted by a tale like the one Peter Weir tackles in his new movie, The Way Back. Seven prisoners...

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Paths of Glory: Olivier Assayas’ 'Carlos' and Terrorists in Film

Kate Jennings

Every road leads to a reckoning. In Olivier Assayas’ movie Carlos, the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – AKA Carlos the Jackal...

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SOCIETY

Failure to Communicate: Tom Hooper’s 'The King’s Speech' and Derek Cianfrance’s 'Blue Valentine'

Luke Davies

“Do you know any jokes?” asks a speech pathologist of his newest patient, a stammerer. “Timing is not my strong suit,” the uptight patient...

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SOCIETY

Tools of the Trade: Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis' 'Machete' and Sean Byrne’s 'The Loved Ones'

Luke Davies

“Every time an illegal dances across our border,” says Senator John McLaughlin (Robert de Niro) at a rally, “it is an act of aggression...

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SOCIETY

Roots: 'The Kids Are All Right' and 'The Tree'

Luke Davies

There’s a well-travelled archetype of the American ‘family drama’: we begin with a generic family living in relative harmony, then the...

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Father Knows Worst: Taika Waititi's 'Boy' and Mia Hansen-Love's 'Father of My Children'

Luke Davies

A man perches awkwardly on the edge of a single bed talking to his two sons, Boy (James Rolleston) and Rocky (Te Aho Eketone-Whitu). He has...

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SOCIETY

Theatre of Operations: Richard Linklater's 'Me and Orson Welles' and Nadia Tass's 'Matching Jack'

Luke Davies

If you are looking for signs of the apocalypse, you need look no further than High School Musical, the film franchise that began life as a...

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SOCIETY

Births, Deaths and Marriages: Claire McCarthy’s 'The Waiting City' and Mona Achache’s 'The Hedgehog'

Luke Davies

In 2004, the UNICEF report Children on the Brink estimated that there were 35 million orphans in India and that nearly 4 million children...

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SOCIETY

My Three Sons: David Michôd’s 'Animal Kingdom' and Banksy’s 'Exit Through the Gift Shop'

Luke Davies

First-time director David Michôd, whose Animal Kingdom is one of the best Australian films in years, served notice in 2007 that something...

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SOCIETY

The Music of Time: Gillian Armstrong’s 'Love, Lust & Lies' and Radu Mihaileanu’s 'The Concert'

Luke Davies

In 1975 Gillian Armstrong made the short film Smokes and Lollies, which followed the lives of three 14-year-old girls Armstrong had found...

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SOCIETY

As Long As It’s Black : Michael Haneke's 'The White Ribbon' and Jan Kounen's 'Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky'

Luke Davies

Michael Haneke is an unforgiving film-maker who explores suspense in various permutations without ever quite creating a thriller. Yet...

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SOCIETY

Through a Glass Brightly: Andrea Arnold’s 'Fish Tank' and Tom Ford’s 'A Single Man'

Luke Davies

“Life’s a bitch ’n’ then you die,” sings the rapper Nas on the soundtrack of Fish Tank (released nationally on 11 March), Andrea Arnold’s...

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SOCIETY

Lost Boys: Jacques Audiard's 'A Prophet' and John Hillcoat's 'The Road'

Luke Davies

In A Prophet, a dazzling new film about innocence and power from Jacques Audiard (director of The Beat My Heart Skipped, 2005), 19-year-old...

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SOCIETY

Nowhere Near Hollywood: Australian Film

Louis Nowra

I set out to watch most of the Australian films released this year because I wanted to grasp the condition of our industry. On a practical...

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SOCIETY

Tooth and Claw: Lars Von Trier's 'Antichrist'

Luke Davies

The opening five minutes of Antichrist (released nationally on 26 November) are a compelling symphony of exquisite film-making. In hyper-...

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Tuesday, 7 February 2012 - 3:39pm
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