Screen Machine

Happy new year! Hope you spent a merry Kwanzaa eggnogging yourself into oblivion. 2010 marks Screen Machine’s second year in operation and what better way for a website to celebrate such an occasion than with a list! Here are the Top 20 Films of 2009 as chosen by the Screen Machine staff. Chosen from films that were released in Melbourne cinemas in 2009 or were given a festival screening here, we’ve tried to create a list that is more intriguing…

Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is a shock to the system even when you know beforehand that the film involves cliterectomies and bloody ejaculations and graphic sex involving Willem Dafoe. But, like his previous films, Antichrist is intellectually stimulating even as it repels you, shifting from cute Lynchian surrealism in the first half to Bataillesque perversions in the second.
The film opens with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple having wild animalistic sex while their child climbs out of his…

I like Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt a lot and Rainn Wilson is OK I guess but this ‘indie dramedy’ they’re starring in sounds horrible: In ‘Hesher’, Gordon-Levitt is a loser twenty-something (aren’t we all?) who invades the life of an awkward 13-year-old who lives with a pill-popping father (Wilson) and grandmother. The kid falls in love with a supermarket worker (Portman) who protects him from bullies. In the bin! [THR]
Rian Johnson (Brick) has announced his next film ‘Looper‘, a…

Fairly adorable director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) is video-blogging the making of his new film Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, a slacker/romantic comedy/action film/musical?, based on the comics. Featured: Michael Cera playfighting with a feisty asian chick. Does Charlyne Yi know about this?! The soundtrack sounds potentially interesting: Nigel Godrich, Sloan, Metric, Broken Social Scene.
Contemporary horror films are generally boring and moronic. But with Lars von Trier attached (he’s obviously not interested in that Dogme 95…