Reviewed by Leanne Weymans

Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks explores the taboo subject of sex offenders. Banks looks past the accusation, trial and conviction of the offenders to imagine the existence of predominantly male population who exist on the fringes of society as a result of their ‘depraved’ actions. Through characterisation, setting and a suspenseful plot Banks tells a morally challenging but intriguing tale of a friendship between a Professor and the Kid, a teenage sex offender. Banks also explores the blanket approach taken to the offenders by the law and the limited existence available to them. While readers may not be able to garner any sympathy for the questionable cast of characters which hide out under the Causeway, Banks is able to evoke empathy for the worthless position assigned to them by society, once they are convicted sex offenders.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

He must dream of sushi. All the waking hours of this chef's life are consumed by it. In David Gelb’s documentary, Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, we meet Jiro Ono and his two sons, Yoshikazu, who has worked by his father’s side for years, and Takashi, who opened his own restaurant with his father’s blessing, and their obsessive pursuit of perfection is the platform. It’s a small film, and that may well be in keeping with the delicacy. It’s petite and compact, and delivered with the same focus the subject is possessed by.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

Iron Sky is going to enjoy a vigilant support group. Partly funded by Internet donations, this overblown $10 million extravaganza filmed in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Finland and Germany, is fuelled by one of the most insane ideas to blow across our screens in many a year. The story of Nazis who have been hiding on the dark side of the moon since 1945 seems made for cult lovers who can't get enough of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Phantom Of The Paradise. Those films were ordained as bonafide cult classics (the greatest cult films have always been happy accidents) and while Iron Sky could be filed nearby and its desire to be considered off-the-wall equals those, it doesn't have quite the same edge.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

I didn’t need to visit the trivia page for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows on imdb.com to discover the cast had no time for rehearsal. What a beautifully designed, visual feast this mess of a movie is. Is it a pledge of adoration to the campy, 1970s soap opera it looks to be an adaptation of or is it meant be a reimagining? There are certain elements here that are a direct nod yet there are others that couldn’t have moved it further afield. Perhaps the question should be: Whatever Happened To Tim Burton? As I say, it’s a mess (some might consider it gloriously so). While the stylization remains consistent, the direction keeps changing, the narrative (can we even call it that?) seems held together by cotton, and the leading man, such as he is, looks like a cross between Michael Jackson and a doorstop at Madam Tussaud’s.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

One shouldn’t walk into a Jason Statham film expecting much. They’ve become much of a muchness although with confidence I can say Safe, his latest, is a superior model to his previous adventure Killer Elite which was too convoluted for its own good and limped through cinemas with a whimper. Safe, directed by Boaz Yakin, is a different animal. It’s compact and moves like lightning as Statham wages war with Chinese triads and the Russian mafia. The bullets fly of course yet there’s more intensity and despite the setting being Manhattan, there’s a fine sensation of that old “no escape” conceit.

Reviewed by Sue Bond

Lines for Birds by Barry Hill and John Wolseley is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen. It is poetry and paintings: the poetry is rich with metaphor and imagery, the paintings extraordinary evocations of birds in their landscapes. The high standard of production by UWA Publishing does justice to the fine quality of the content.

Reviewed by Ian Lipke

This is more than a tale of two brothers. It tells of relationships, what they gain and lose when they’re searching for the meaning of the life that drives them. Life is seen through the keenly observant eyes of the younger brother, the sculptor Sebastian. His brother, the outgoing,  driven Jack, has disappeared in Saharan Africa, and ‘Bas’ is forced to seek his whereabouts. He travels to Algeria and begins his search through the Northern Sahara, helped along at various levels by unsavoury characters and a young American girl who has more than a hint of romance with the missing brother, Jack. The elder brother’s appearance reveals a deep change in Jack. The underlying stability of stone reflects how far toward mental instability that Jack has journeyed.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

“The greatest commodity you can have is a screenplay. It doesn’t really matter how much time you put in behind the camera, it’s really about the story. I just rolled the dice on that.” Kieran Darcy-Smith.

Nightmares while abroad are nothing new in cinema. Strangers in strange lands meeting all types of villains are the stuff of great thrillers and this oft-used premise works to stunning effect in the new Australian film Wish You Were Here. It reminded me of Turistas, a nasty little film from 2006 about a group of fun-seekers who come up against an organ harvester in Brazil (it remains a classic for those who could stomach the goo). You can forget the thunder and lightning and gloomy castles and in-bred yokels. This sub-genre finds its scares in sticky locales in sweaty Asian countries where the innocents are way out of their depth with the language and custom. Yes the horror is in the hopelessness as their vulnerability takes hold.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

It’s often a puzzlement to me why filmmakers consider stories about prison life as a welcome subject. In most cases (I actually can’t think of any film that hasn’t), we witness brutality and humiliation, rape, violence, and aggressive cruelty. I remember the first time I saw Papillon, I was stunned by the claustrophobia of the island. Now we have The King of Devil’s Island, a triumph of the will-type tale set in a juvenile prison on Bastoy Island near Oslo. No one has ever escaped and upon arrival, the boys lose their names and are then referred to as numbers. As in Papillon and Midnight Express, we witness a dehumanizing process. The conditions are mediocre, the food resembles mush, and punishments see the boys labour in extreme conditions.

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

It’s easy to see why audiences swoon to Audrey Tatou. She’s a beautiful young woman, there’s a sense of the unknown in her sensuality, and she can reveal a subtle edge to her characters. In fact, those edges are so subtle they can slip by unnoticed. Oh but those dark, haunted eyes of hers. She could easily play an interesting murder suspect with a revelation in the final act that she can wield an axe with her painfully lean limbs as well as anyone. But for now, she’s treading the boards in meagre romantic comedies. I can imagine her mischievous Amelie privately giggling at her foolish choices. Last year’s intolerable Beautiful Lies saw her compete with her mother for a handsome handyman’s affections and now in the verbose Delicacy, she falls in love with a co-worker.