May 2013
13 posts
4 tags
1 tag
The Post Movie Bar →
Films that have been the focus of episodes of The Post Movie Bar podcast, hosted by Conor Bateman, James Hennessy and Melanie Jayne. iTunes: bit.ly/R1LfYg | RSS: bit.ly/OJtHhT Pi In our very first episode, Conor, James and Mel discuss whether The Dark Knight Rises and the Spiderman reboot held a candle to their predecessors, the importance (or lack thereof) of the 2012 Sight and Sound Greatest...
1 tag
Page One: Inside the New York Times, 2011 - ★★★★ →
Not only is the subject matter of the film, an insight into the NYT, interesting on face value, the film ends up grappling with the changing media landscape through talking heads, all of whom provide interesting and often conflicting perspectives, and through following the actions of David Carr, a former crack addict and now media reporter for the Times. Carr shines in the film, I got so much...
1 tag
1 tag
45parkst replied to your photoset:
The latest issue of EMPIRE Magazine Australia…
Congrats Conor - that’s so exciting! Well done :) Thanks Chrissy!
5 tags
1 tag
Spring Breakers, 2013 - ★★½ →
This was a very confusing film to enjoy. On the one hand, it’s completely idiotic and void of meaning (any attempt to find a point to the film is giving it more credit than it’s worth) and on the other hand, in certain moments the cinematography is fantastic, it is really funny at times and is anchored by a very good James Franco performance. I know it’s bad, that much I can...
1 tag
The Place Beyond the Pines, 2013 - ★★★½ →
This film is much more than the marketing makes it out to be, a thematic cycle through 3-4 protagonists and chronicles the flow-on effects of reckless decision-making. Thematically the film concerns the relationships between father and son, though the plot itself is founded on a bedrock of cliched stories which deviate only though some spectacular scenes of direction and a moving score (by Mike...
April 2013
18 posts
1 tag
Favourite 50 Films →
An ever-changing list. Punch-Drunk Love Mulholland Drive Vertigo Kicking and Screaming The Social Network The Truman Show Annie Hall Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Synecdoche, New York The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari …plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd. Logged on Letterboxd
The Believer Logger: Wesley Morris, boston globe... →
believermag:
A film review by Wesley Morris can take a number of different angles: a star’s power over the production, the quality and chemistry of the performances, a film’s place in a genre or the arc of a career. He writes in lively, smart prose sprinkled with memorable turns of phrase. Of Michael…
5 tags
1 tag
The Taking, 2013 - ★ →
For what was supposed to be a horror film in the vein of David Lynch, The Taking was neither scary or emotionally engaging. More than anything, the film committed the cardinal sin of the horror genre: it was frightfully dull. This film was so boring that I found myself internally begging the film to end. For a film roughly 80min in length, it seemed at times an eternity. Meaningless repetition of...
3 tags
1 tag
FilmSoc - Semester One, 2013 →
The screening schedule for FilmSoc, the University of Sydney Film Society. fb.com/FilmSoc.USyd The Shining Conor Bateman - “Not only a classic of the horror genre, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel is a cinematic masterpiece. From the tension-mounting Steadicam shots to the slow burning narrative itself, the film creates a sense of unease rarely matched in cinema, or...
Australians in Film: Sydney Film Festival launches... →
australiansinfilm:
This ground-breaking initiative is a world-first, designed as a free digital-only publication with thousands of pages of content and images, creating something so large it could never have been printed. You can view it here http://online.sffarchive.org.au/ Sydney Film Festival 1954 to Now: A Living Archive features; • 37 essays or over 35,000 words of original writing,...
1 tag
Chungking Express, 1994 →
…I don’t know how to feel about this movie. It left me emotionaly perplexed. Whilst cinematically gorgeous, I don’t quite think the two stories converged clearly enough on a thematic level, nor do I feel the second story deserved as much time onscreen as it got. Logged on Letterboxd
1 tag
Sydney Film Festival 2013: Teaser Films →
Also: - Miss Nikki & The Tiger Girls - Wrong Side of the Road (NSFA Restoration) - William Yang My Generation A Few Hours Of Spring The Act of Killing Blackfish Comrade Kim Goes Flying Exposed Fallen City Frances Ha Frankenstein’s Army La maison de la radio Midnight’s Children …plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd. Logged on Letterboxd
1 tag
chewablevitamins:
The Shouting Matches - I Had A...
1 tag
Sleepwalk With Me, 2012 - ★★★½ →
Dendy Newtown Q&A Screening with Mike Birbiglia. Look, Sleepwalk with Me (the album) is one of my favourite things ever - it is so perfectly constructed and delivered and has this sublime balance between comedy and tragedy. The film, on the other had, doesn’t really resonate to the same extent emotionally as his original show. Naturally, things needed to be cut for a feature film...
1 tag
Schindler's List, 1993 - ★★★ →
Popcorn Taxi Screening - Digitally Remastered version on the big screen My first viewing of what has been relayed to me as an ‘essential’ film was met with an odd mix of emotional response. On the one hand, this was Spielberg at his least Spielbergian (a fantastic shift) and filmicly it was incredible - well shot, the black and white was stunning in the blu-ray remaster, the score was...
1 tag
March 2013
15 posts
1 tag
Badlands, 1973 - ★★★★½ →
35mm print at the Art Gallery of NSW. Pretty much a ‘complete’ film in that it seems to nail such a perfect arc with such a simple story. Beautiful and brilliant filmmaking. Logged on Letterboxd
I had a relatively lukewarm reaction to Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats when I saw it two nights ago but now I cannot stop thinking about it. Which is exactly what happened the first time I watched Punch-Drunk Love and Kicking & Screaming, now two of my all-time favourites. Methinks I’ll have to give Heartbeats a rewatch pretty soon.
1 tag
Heartbeats, 2011 - ★★★ →
An often amusing, oddly made-and-structured film that is enjoyable to watch but rarely transcendent. It’s attempts at breaking out of the contemporary romantic genre don’t always succeed but it does show a clear directorial style, which bodes well for the future. Logged on Letterboxd
1 tag
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, 2010... →
The second collaboration between Gibney and Peter Elkind, following the superb ‘ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room’, sees them look at political ramifications of betrayal and the moral crusade through the resignation of New York governor Eliot Spitzer. I didn;t really know much about Spitzer going into the film, so it was good to get a sense of his background and political aims. By...
4 tags
1 tag
9 tags
1 tag
Cloud Atlas, 2012 - ★★★★½ →
A stunning feat of adaptation that trims the fat from David Mitchell’s gargantuan novel/novella collection. Whilst it often misses some of the narrative nuance of the book, the film successfully intertwines six different narratives by playing with genre, the recognisability of actors and intertextuality. There’s not much else out there like it and it is well worth its three-hour...
1 tag
This Is Not a Film, 2012 - ★★★½ →
A really interesting and suprising engaging exercize in documentary film-making that takes a fantastic turn in its final 20 or so minutes. Logged on Letterboxd
6 tags
1 tag
Heartbreaker, 2010 - ★★★★ →
A very funny romantic comedy that seems, for the most part, to undermine the romantic comedy genre. Despite some visual flaws and a tad over-the-top plotting, this was so enjoyable and amusing that the problems seemed to fade away. Logged on Letterboxd
February 2013
23 posts
1 tag
The Two Escobars, 2010 - ★★★★ →
Despite being stylistically dull, the incredible narrative of the film matched with an impressive access to footage renders this feature-length documentary one of the best of the 30 for 30 series. Logged on Letterboxd
1 tag
1 tag
MacGruber, 2010 - ★★★½ →
This was a lot funnier than I remembered. It is the runtime for an elongated sketch of a film and Will Forte is just so damn funny in the role. Logged on Letterboxd
