Conor Bateman's Blog, page 11

Stand By for Tape Back-Up

For a film that spends nearly half of its runtime focusing on a clip fromGhostbusters andThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air‘s opening credits, Ross Sutherland’sStand by for Tape Back-Up isn’t exactly a light-hearted comedy. It’s amusing at times, but the underlying emotion is one of self-delusion as coping mechanism, a bittersweet and melancholy walk through Sutherland’s wrestling with grief and depression as relayed through a creative reading of seemingly unrelated texts.

The film is an adaptation...

Ex Machina

Alex Garland has made a name for himself as a screenwriter who takes an intelligent approach togenre concepts. Often only billed as “the writer of28 Days Later“, Garland has done some fantastic work in actually subverting genre elements or suddenly lurching into a different genre entirely, as in his novelThe Beach, the screenplay forSunshine, and arguably even the last half-hour of28 Days Later. His directorial debut, though, the artificial intelligence-focusedEx Machina, is something of a m...

Sydney Film Festival Announces 2015 Program

This morning at Customs House in Circular Quay, Sydney Film Festival director Nashen Moodley revealed the 2015 festival programme, an impressive and varied collection of films selected from a wide range of international festivals, the centerpiece of which was, as always, the Official Competition, featuring the latest films from the likes of Roy Andersson, Jafar Panahi and Miguel Gomes.

Gomes’Arabian Nights is the biggest competition drawcard, less for its festival prestige (it plays at the Ca...

In Transit

Legendary documentarian and Direct Cinema luminary Albert Maysles passed away in March this year, leaving two films finished but as-yet unreleased.Iris, his profile of fashion iconIris Apfel (and a film seeminglyakin to his iconicGrey Gardens), has recently been released in cinemas in the United States, whilst his final film,In Transit, has gone the festival route, premiering at Tribeca, where it received a Special Jury Mention in the World Documentary section of the festival’s program.In Tr...

Uniform (dir. Diao Yinan, 2003)

In our regular column, Less Than (Five) Zero, we take a look at films that have received less than 50 logged watches on Letterboxd, aiming to discover hidden gems in independent and world cinema. This week Conor Bateman looks at the debut feature film of acclaimed Chinese director Diao Yinan, Uniform.

Date Watched: 6th April, 2015
Letterboxd Views (at the time of viewing): 22

Diao Yinan‘s third feature, the gorgeously lensed noir Black Coal, Thin Ice, left me somewhat cold at its screening...

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter

The Zellner Brothers' latest feature is an impressive and bittersweet look at loneliness and creative obsession, anchored by a moving performance from Rinko Kikuchi.

Marshland

Missing girls in a swampland and two very different detectives tasked with sifting through the locals’ alibis is a narrative conceitnow very familiar to selectaudiences. Marshland (La isla mínima),written and directed byAlberto Rodríguez, seems to be promoted abroadas Spain’s answer to HBO’sTrue Detective.The comparisons to the Cary Fukanaga-helmed seriesare clear, both murder mysteries in isolated, rural communities with a focus on the undercurrents of power within the policecoupled with di...

Anthology Series 003: The Animatrix (2003)

The Anthology Series is a new recurring roundtable column here at 4:3 where we look at the oft-overlooked genre of anthology films. Also known as portmanteaus, the anthology film is composed of a series of short films grouped together by theme or some awkward overarching premise. Some of the more popular portmanteaus in recent memory include Paris, je t’aime and horror anthology series V/H/S. There are also anthology films done by the same director, think Love Actually, Argentian Oscar-nomine...

Wild Tales

When the nominees for the hotly-contested Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards include a comedy, eyebrows are raised. In the last decade none of them have beennominated for the award;thehandful of partially comedic films in recent memory run the gamut from Pablo Larrain’s Pinochet-era ad film No (in 2012) to Aki Kaurismäki’sThe Man Without a Past (in 2002) toBelgian comedy Everybody’s Famous!(in 2000). In the lead-up to the most recent Oscars ceremony, though, two clearl...

While We’re Young

Throughout his filmography, Noah Baumbach has tended to focus on relationships— whether the friendships that bind or restrict in Frances Ha and Kicking and Screaming or the floundering romances of The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg. His latest feature, While We’re Young, tends to straddle both, albeit minus the biting wit we’ve come to expect from his work. There’s a generational divide in his sights, the film ostensibily making a mockery of young hipsters who pine...