Review: Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly

Dir. Andrew Dominik

Country: USA

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 97mins

Killing Them Softly is one of the best films of the year. It bristles with palpable energy as it dissects its targets with such focused precision and skill. You wouldn’t guess it from appearances, but Andrew Dominik’s third feature in twelve years is an adaptation of a 1974 novel by George V Higgins named Cogan’s Trade. Swapping the book’s take on 1970s savagery for a modern day look at America through the eyes of criminals, Dominik’s film, which he also wrote the screenplay for, is an exhilarating experience that had me giddy. Playing like the anti-Drive (the Nicolas Winding Refn-directed crime thriller that I labelled the best film of 2011) as if set within the same miserable world as another Brad Pitt-starrer, Se7en, Killing Them Softly will surely raise the ire of many viewers expecting a kick-ass Brad Pitt heist movie. What it is, instead, is a lean, mean take on the modern world as seen through the eyes of those who live outside the law, but must face the realities of the world they inhabit.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

If we're going by American release dates (and I tend to do so in general discussion because I kinda forget what films we had to wait for and what we didn't, which causes a chasm in the public discussion) then Killing Them Softly is the best film of the year and I genuinely believe Scoot McNairy - of whom I was already a huuuge fan - gives one of the best performances by anybody this year. Is he gonna explode soon or is he too weaselly for the big crowds?

Review: Moneyball

Moneyball

Dir. Bennett Miller

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 133mins

Baseball and boxing have, for whatever reasons, become the most cinematic of sports, with filmmakers routinely fixated by the two. We recently had Warrior, and now we’ve got Moneyball. Australia may not exactly be mad for the game, but I suspect – I hope – that the latest film from Bennett Miller will inspire a few more people to become immersed in it.


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Review: The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life
Dir. Terrence Malick
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M15+
Running Time: 140mins

The Tree of Life begins with a dance, as ribbons of colour and light flirt amidst the empty nothingness of space. This is the dawn of time as seen through the eyes of writer/director Terrence Malick in his sprawling 140-minute look at the meaning of existence. In between the dancing space clouds and dinosaurs (yes, there are glorious dinosaurs) is a story of the trauma inflicted by a father onto his sons and the painful emotional scarring that continues to root deep into the psyche long into adulthood. It’s an ambitious film and an important one; but Malick’s soliloquy to the long-gone period of American life that he grew up in, occasionally gets lost amidst its formless structure and picturesque images.

Read the rest at The Tree of Life
For sure, The Tree of Life is a difficult film to discuss in only < 450 words, but I think I managed to get my main points across. Also: I would've liked more dinosaurs. Then again, every movie could use more dinosaurs.

Hit Me With Your Best Se7en

I'm feeling a bit too crook to really delve in David Fincher's Se7en as a part of Nathaniel Rogers' Hit Me With Your Best Shot series, but thankfully I revisited the film back in May so you can read that if you would like.

Naturally, I had trouble choosing just one, but choose just one I did... after choosing six others. Here are my seven favourite shots from Seven ranked from 7 to 1. I'm not going to go into the hows and whys or these very much, they are are. Enjoy.


I like the slight introduction of colour into this very bleak, very gray world.


Startling!


He is his gun. He is violence.


The first sight of the van and the unease of "what the hell is gonna happen next?" increases tenfold.


From the opening credits. It's just striking is all.


Love the composition and the way that actual beauty in this world is hard to find, but it can be found in, of all places, the symmetry of study lamps.


My favourite shot is one of the only in the entire film that radiates. Innocence, which is hard to come by, emits from her face and brings a slight ray of hope into the film. Probably why I latch onto this shot most of all.