99 Homes is not a doco but based on true events around the US housing crisis. I don't really agree with the common description of "thriller" but boy this is a great film.
Starring Andrew Garfield (Dennis Nash), Laura Dern (Dennis' mother Lynn) and Michael Shannon (Rick Carver), we follow Dennis' transformation from man having his home possessed to man doing the possessing, with dodgy wheeler and dealer Rick as his boss.
It appeared at the Melbourne International Film Festival earlier and the year and has been widely well reviewed.
For more on the film, check out this four star review in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Trailer here.
Based on a best-selling novel, this is an Australian comedy drama set in the outback in the 1950s.
It stars Kate Winslet (Tilly) with a near flawless Australian accent, as well many famous Australian faces. Liam Hemsworth (#hubbahubba), Hugo Weaving, Sarah Snook, Shane Borne, Judy Davis, Rebecca Gibney and Alison Whyte are all wonderful in significant support roles.
Tilly, a talented dressmaker, returns to her rural hometown to right some wrongs of her past. Those 'wrongs' mean that the eclectic bunch of characters in the town don't exactly welcome her return. This manifests in disturbing, menacing and amusing ways.
I loved this film and would happily recommend it to anyone, though it probably does skew a little toward women and a little older, if the session I was in was anything to go by.
Check out this four star review by Fairfax's Jake Wilson if you want to know more.
Trailer here.
Based on a true story, this is about New Jersey cop Laurel's (Julianne Moore) fight for her police pension to be transferred to her partner Stacie (Ellen Page) when she dies, in line with what is allowed when a partner in a heterosexual marriage dies. This fight begins when Laurel is diagnosed with cancer and her situation becomes increasingly grim. She's actually not all than enthusiastic in what becomes a battle for marriage equality (with a small role for Steve Carell as a marriage equality activist) but her love of Stacie drives the campaign.
It's a powerful love story and paints Laurel and Stacie as the compelling but unassuming advocates they seem to be in real life.
That said, this somehow comes across a more of a midday movie for TV than a hit motion picture for the big screen. It's good but not great, in that it never really swept me up into their fight. The ending seemed obvious which isn't necessarily a crime, but it just meant I was never hooked in, wondering how it would unfold.
Side note - the age difference between the women is acknowledged in the film and a reflection of the age difference of the real women on whose story this is based, but it was hard to not see them as a mum & daughter pairing rather than as an intimate relationship pairing. Probably a poor refection on me but hey, you can't help how your brain interprets things. Well, maybe you can. OK, you get it, enough babbling now.
Shout out to Julianne Moore, who is excellent in this.
More in this 3 star review from News Ltd's Leigh Paatsch if you want additional reading.
Trailer here.
