Viewing posts written by: Maggie Scott
Norma Pearse’s experimental films express ideas about the tensions and mysteries between the spirit and the body.
If nothing else, this year’s list confirms that we at Screen Machine are big Jesse Eisenberg fans (but then who isn’t?). It perhaps shows other continuities from our 2009 list, indicating some of the approaches and prejudices we have as film critics and spectators. We hope that the pieces we’ve written on each of the twenty films that appear here are of greater use and interest to readers than the mock-suspense of learning what finishes in which position. Returning to these films now allows us to say things about them that we couldn’t when they first appeared, and we think that these reflective pieces on the films of 2010 will offer plenty to discuss as we begin the new year.
Maggie finds this Australian blockbuster unwilling to confront the racism underlying its premise.
Conall Cash reviews two of the major films of the festival, by veteran auteurs Manoel de Oliveira and Koji Wakamatsu, while Maggie Scott looks at MIFF’s closing night film and Ali Brown investigates Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia For The Light.
Ridley Scott’s claims of historical authenticity in this latest iteration of the Robin Hood myth is not as interesting as it is a marketing ploy or ego-maniacal delusion.
Despite Australia’s ongoing fascination with the crime genre, this film is not just another installment of ‘bogans with guns’. Michôd’s film is a profound portrayal of extreme family dysfunction and its role in the making of a criminal.
The art direction of this debut film from the director of The Mighty Boosh is a joy to behold. Unfortunately, the visual style serves no purpose other than to make the film quirky and beautiful looking.
Unlike other comedian cum documentarians like Michael Moore or Bill Maher, Chris Rock doesn’t take a hard-nosed political stance, or use the format to ‘out’ and humiliate in order to prove his point. His latest film Good Hair, about African-American culture’s obsession with straight hair, is all the more enjoyable because it takes the subjective experiences of real people so much into account in its narrative.
As a child, the idea of a pair of shoes that force a girl to dance to her early grave was frightening on a primal level, as fairytales can be. Now, as a feminist who tends to intellectualise fairytales, I am more inclined to see the red ballet shoes as symbols of patriarchal binding and control of female talent and creativity.
This tale of incest and abuse suffers from inconsistent filmmaking but is saved by a monumental performance by Gabourey Sidibe.
There seems to be a debate as to what kind of film Tommy Wiseau originally intended The Room to be. In my mind, there is no doubt that in 2003 he released a melodrama that he hoped would hit the big time. Instead, the film found more success in recent years after being discovered by a cult audience, and is now viewed as both a riotous comedy and the worst movie ever made. Kudos to Wiseau – who funded, produced, wrote, directed and starred in the film – for cheerfully running with this drastic change in marketing.
I went to see a late-night session of The Room at the Nova a few weekends ago. Plastic spoons were distributed outside and the atmosphere was bustling. But nothing quite prepared me for the phenomenon of cinematic hysteria that followed. The host of the evening said the Nova hadn’t ever experienced anything as loud as The Room audiences in their hallowed halls. It was an infectious night of whooping, spoon throwing, ball tossing and booing. Maybe I’m out of the loop, but I haven’t seen a cult film audience interact so rabidly with a movie since the mid-90s.
When I saw that Suroosh Alvi, co-founder of Vice Magazine, co-directed Heavy metal in Baghdad, I admit I cringed. He squanders as little emotion as possible as he secures his bullet-proof vest and talks to the camera wearing aviator shades, telling us the enormity of the mission that he and fellow Vice media magnate, Eddy Moretti, are about to undertake when they enter Baghdad to track down one of the only heavy metal bands in Iraq:
This is risky, it’s dangerous,…
