Courtesy of Kismet Films, SCREEN-SPACE has 6 in-season double passes to give away to see Paul Mescal in his Oscar-nominated performance in AFTERSUN, the universally acclaimed debut feature from writer/director Charlotte Wells.
TO WIN, simply tell us in 25 words or less about that special family holiday you remember from your childhood. Provide your answer in the comments section below.
Set in a fading vacation resort in the mid '90s, 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) treasures rare time together with her loving and idealistic father, Calum (Paul Mescal). As a world of adolescence creeps into view, beyond her eye Calum struggles under the weight of life outside of fatherhood. Twenty years later, Sophie's tender recollections of their last holiday become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship, as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't, in Wells' superb and searingly emotional debut film.
Critics have been unanimous in their praise...:
"A tremendous film. Something that looks at a hard topic like depression in a very beautiful and human way." - BBC.com
"Every moment, every snippet of dialogue, every detail down to the smallest role or the tiniest detail in the background feels like a vibrant slice of real life." - Chicago Sun-Times
AFTERSUN is in Australian cinemas from February 23.
T&Cs: Australian residents only, sorry; competition closes 11.59pm on Wednesday February 22, 2023. This is a game of skill and entries will be judged by Screen-Space contributors; the judge's decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into. Double-passes will be emailed to winners and may be used at all participating cinemas, at the venue's discretion. The prize is not transferable for cash or to be used with any other offer on any other film in general release.
Hollywood offered up its traditional sludge - a dire video-game adaptation (Uncharted), a terrible remake (Firestarter), a cash-grab franchise low (Jurassic World Dominion), and an MCU nadir (Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness). The ongoing descent of Mel Gibson into B-movie hell plummeted alarmingly with the unforgivably stupid On The Line.
Beyond Hollywood…same stink, different s**t. The Phantom of the Open proved that there’s a razor’s edge between ‘Mark Rylance Great Actor’ and ‘Mark Rylance Shameless Ham’ (the jury is split on his odd turn in Bones and All). All Jacked Up and Full of Worms, despite the year’s best title, was a putrid, shock-for-shock-sake cult wannabe that became the film that hipsters mentioned to seem cool. Australia had one of those films, too - the teen-trauma misery-porn of Blaze, art-directed with no eye for storytelling by gallery darling Del Kathryn Barton.
But it fell to the streaming platforms to find me the five that had me truly gagging on my movie-viewing in 2022:
5. THE MAN FROM TORONTO (Dir: Patrick Hughes | Stars: Kevin Hart, Woody Harrelson, Ellen Barkin | U.S. | 110 mins) Jason Statham dropped out over script issues (wait…WHAT?!) and Woody Harrelson was shoe-horned into the kind of overproduced, underdone buddy comedy/star vehicle that is crippling Netflix’s credibility with viewers. (Netflix)
4. PINOCCHIO (Dir: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Tom Hanks, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt (voice), Cynthia Erivo (voice) | U.S. | 105 mins) Has any filmmaker fallen so far in audience esteem as Robert Zemeckis? The latest bold, red line under his name was this treacherous Disney exploitation of one of their most beloved cartoon characters. (Disney+)
3. BIG BUG (Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet | Stars: Isabelle Nanty, Elsa Zylberstein, Claude Perron | France | 111 mins) Pitched as some kind of farcical social satire, this typically ‘European’ but atypically awful sci-fi vision of a dystopic near-future repped a lowpoint for the once great French visualist. (Netflix)
2. POKER FACE (Dir: Russell Crowe | Stars: Russell Crowe, Steve Bastoni, Liam Hemsworth | Australia | 94 mins) There’s ‘vanity project’ and then there’s Poker Face, in which Russell Crowe paints himself as a ‘secret angel’ benefactor for his already well-off mates and unfaithful family members. This guy has an Oscar, yet exhibits no discernable storytelling skill in a single frame of this streaming pile of s**t. (Stan)
1. THE BUBBLE (Dir: Judd Apatow | Stars: Karen Gillan, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key | U.S. | 126 mins) I actually admire that they tried to pull off a COVID lockdown comedy while in their own production ‘bubble’. But it feels like an improvised sketch run amok, with no one providing any ‘in-points’ for the group to react with; not a single scene offers a laugh - topical, nonsensical, satirical, whatever. It’s 126 minutes (!!) of talented people hoping someone else will do something funny. They don’t. (Netflix)
They are two of the fall award season’s most star-studded and discussed films. David O’Russell returns to directing for the first time since 2015 with Amsterdam, a massive production spanning two continents and set in a post-WW1 period of free-spirited decadence and simmering fascism. And Olivia Wilde’s tabloid-fodder retro-mystery Don’t Worry Darling, which pits Florence Pugh against The American Dream in a ‘50s milieu that demands a blind eye be turned to hideous misogyny.
Prior to release, they were both singled-out as Oscar frontrunners and in all likelihood will still factor, albeit in below-the-line categories like costume design, art direction, production design. Both are stunning films to look at, their imagined worlds rich with colours and camera tricks that provide some giddy visual moments. Pugh might jag a Best Actress nomination for her gutsy turn, too. But critics have been a bit down on them as a whole - Don’t Worry Darling has some passionate advocates, but is topping out at 40% on Rotten Tomatoes; Amsterdam, slightly worse off at 35%.
I’m in the Fresh Tomato crate on both, while also certainly acknowledging that both films are flawed in ways they shouldn’t be (especially Amsterdam, which is O’Russell at his most wildly self-indulgent). What I find particularly fascinating is that they are mainstream studio projects that give full-flight to entirely constructed realities constructed to address the most pertinent social issues of contemporary Western society. Yes, I wish they were better films, but I’m glad they are being made at all. (Pictured, right: from left, John David Washington, Margot Robbie, Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy in Amsterdam)
Don’t Worry Darling imagines a manicured suburban paradise built to serve the male employees of The Victory Project, a secret undertaking that starts to smell to Alice (Florence Pugh) like a global domination cult based on the principles of patriarchal superiority. She’s married to the upwardly mobile Jack (Harry Styles), one of the key offsiders to the Hank Scorpion-like Victory Project boss, Frank (Chris Pine), who demands the ladies of his utopian America just lay back and enjoy the spoils of their husband’s worklife, no questions asked. Wilde and scriptwriter Katie Silberman work in some fantasy elements to shade the film in cool scifi-ey, genre beats, but the message finds an urgent clarity - ladies, fight back, kicking and screaming, or lose your voice entirely.
Amsterdam bounces back and forth between 1930’s NYC, the European theatre of conflict in 1917 and the titular bohemia of 1919. Two wounded soldier buddies (Christian Bale, John David Washington) bond with a French/not-French nurse (Margot Robbie) in a friendship pact that carries them all the way to the soulless strengthening of corporate greed in a booming pre-WWII U.S. economy. From that dark seed, the ties that bind fascism and capitalism are sown. There are a multitude of eccentric sideways deviations in O’Russell’s ‘cuckoo’ farce, affording a whole lot of stars (Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Ed Begley Jr, Robert de Niro, Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Taylor Swift) some flavoursome bit parts. But mostly, Amsterdam is a nutty, noisy narrative about the birth of Trump’s America.
The end-goal impact that Wilde and O’Russell were working towards is to be found in two landmark films that remain relevant today. Don’t Worry Darling recalls The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes' 1975 original, and definitely not Frank Oz’s 2004 misdirection), which conjures a similar well-to-do American middle class designed to continually strengthen the patriarchy. And both films want to expose the horrors of modern life in the way that Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol did in 1998 with The Truman Show, the visionary takedown of the entertainment sector’s most shameless exploitation model, the then newly-minted world of reality TV. (Pictured, above: Katharine Ross in The Stepford Wives)
Neither Don’t Worry Darling nor Amsterdam nail it with precision, but they do indicate that smart, ambitious, high-end social commentary is still on the studio agenda. Audiences may need a little more convincing; at time of writing, O’Russell’s US$80million folly is bombing, while Wilde’s starry vision is waning after a strong first week. And there are factors out of the industry’s control that are in play, like the difficulty more adult-skewing pics are having in drawing audiences post-COVID. But both films suggest that at least some of the Hollywood hierarchy take their role as arbiters of the world’s most popular and influential artform seriously.
Screenwave International Film Festival (SWIFF) has unveiled its 2022 program, a mammoth undertaking that will bring over 130 sessions and exclusive events to the Coffs Harbour region over 16 jam-packed days, from Thursday 21st April to Friday 6th May, 2022.
Building on the success of its 2021 Festival, SWIFF has cemented itself on the Australian film festival circuit as the premiere regional film event. In addition to hosting over 80 different feature films in 2022, SWIFF is looking to break its attendance record with the addition of its new Storyland music festival, taking place on Saturday 23rd April at Park Beach Reserve, headlined by Courtney Barnett and Hiatus Kaiyote.
SWIFF Artistic Director, Kate Howat says, “People are ready to embrace shared arts experiences again. Seeing the enthusiasm for the festival has given us license to grow bolder though, both in the addition of Storyland, and in the comprehensive film line-up we’ve made for all the film tragics out there, just like us.”
SWIFF audiences will be among the first in Australia to witness The Northman (pictured, right), the latest epic cinematic masterpiece from the visionary director, Robert Eggers (The Witch, 2015; The Lighthouse, 2020), featuring an all-star line up of Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Claus Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe and, in an exciting return to the big screen after a 20-year absence, Icelandic superstar Björk.
Reinforcing its status as a truly international film event, works from 40 countries feature in this year’s World Cinema program, making it the most culturally rich line-up in SWIFF history. Highlights of the program include Kogonada’s trippy sci-fier After Yang, with Colin Farrell, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar frontrunner, Drive My Car, Sebastian Meise’s Venice Best Film winner, Great Freedom; Julia Ducornau's auto-erotica Palme d'Or winner Titane; and, the great Asghar Farhadi’s Cannes Grand Prix winner, A Hero.
Already established as a festival dedicated to local sector representation, SWIFF ‘22 will comprise a line-up of the very best in new Australian films. These include the AWGIE Award winner Ablaze, directed by Alec Morgan and Tiriki Onus, and Ithak, the story of John Shipton, father of imprisoned Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in his fight to save his son. John Shipton, Gabriel Shipton and director Ben Lawrence are guests of the Festival.
Honouring one of the most audacious filmmakers of all time, Paul Verhoeven’s catalogue of films will take centre stage in a seven film retrospective at SWIFF. Among them are the groundbreaking 1992 blockbuster Basic Instinct; the nihilistic classic, Robocop; the rarely-seen early works Spetters (1980) and Flesh+Blood (1985, and starring festival patron, Jack Thompson); and, his latest shocker, the religious satire/nunsploitation pic, Benedetta. The strand offers a unique insight into the work of a pure provocateur whose heady cinematic cocktails mix violence, sexuality, and ambiguity, with lashings of social commentary.
The program will also showcase an extensive line-up of documentaries including the Oscar-nominated Flee, a thrilling vision fusing animation and archival footage to tell the story of a gay Afghan refugee; the Australian Premiere of Sam & Mattie Make a Zombie Movie (pictured, right), the story of two New England teenagers with Down syndrome who write and shoot their first feature film; and, the self-reflexive I Get Knocked Down, from Chumbawamba founder and anarcho-punk rocker, Dunstan Bruce.
Closing SWIFF’22 will be Everything Everywhere All At Once, by visionary filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels (Swiss Army Man, 2016; The Death of Dick Long, 2020), a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure starring acclaimed actress Michelle Yeoh and the iconic Jamie Lee Curtis.
SWIFF Live returns with two film screenings accompanied by live music on stage. In Beautiful Dark: The Music of Twin Peaks, the iconic music of David Lynch’s masterpiece will be performed by Beautiful Dark, a 7-piece ensemble band, taking audiences on a journey through Lynch’s strange and mysterious world. And in an exclusive partnership with The Surf Film Archive, SWIFF ‘22 will present the World Premiere of That Was Then, This is Now, collaborating with Australian director Jolyon Hoff alongside live music composers Headland, to screen on Saturday 30th April at the CHEC Theatre.
SWIFF’22 is proudly presented by Ashton Designs, with Storyland made possible by the Australian Federal Government’s RISE Fund, and the NSW State Government through the Regional Event Acceleration Fund, Create NSW, and Regional Arts NSW.
Jane Campion’s creepy, complex western The Power of the Dog nestled into the laps of Academy members, leading the 2022 Oscar nominations pack with 12 nods. Other contenders fell in line with award season trajectory, with the space epic Dune landing 10 nominations and the retro-spectacles West Side Story and Belfast both nabbing seven. Those four frontrunners will be joined in the Best Picture race by CODA, Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, King Richard, Licorice Pizza and Nightmare Alley.
With her Best Director nomination, Campion (pictured, below) becomes the first woman in Oscar history to earn two directing nominations, her last being in 1993 for the The Piano. She won the Adapted Screenplay award that year, an honour she is in line for again in 2022.
Other milestones established with the 2022 nominee list include the second deaf nominee in Oscar history (CODA’s Troy Kotsur in the Supporting Actor category); Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast haul, making him the only person to earn seven Oscar nominations in seven different categories (in addition to Belfast, he’s been nominated previously for Hamlet, Henry V, live-action short film Swan Song, and My Week With Marilyn); and, Being the Ricardo’s Javier Bardem and Parallel Mother’s Penélope Cruz becoming the sixth married couple to be nominated for acting in the same year.
There were two “What the f*** just happened?!?” omissions from the nominee list. On the crest of an award season wave, Lady Gaga was bumped for Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, with Oscar favouring Kristen Stewart for Spencer (who had missed SAG and BAFTA consideration in recent weeks; pictured, below) and Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (considered a waning outsider by Oscar analysts). And Denis Villeneuve found himself being Beresford-ed by the Academy, with Dune’s ten nominations not including a Best Director mention (perhaps Part 2 of the saga will rectify that).
The Academy also chose not to pander to high-profile commercial success as a means by which to reverse sagging viewership. Blockbuster status did not bolster the nomination count for No Time to Die (three, including a Best Song nod for Billie Eilish plus Sound and Visual Effects) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (a sole Visual Effects mention).
In fact, studios will be hoping that nominations will re-energise the box office takings of several of the nominees. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story will head back into theatres nationally, hoping its cumulative box office of US$36million will surge on the back of its seven nominations. Other films looking for the ‘Oscar Bump’ include Guilleremo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley (4 noms with US$11million banked); Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard (6 noms with takings of $15million); Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (3 noms against US$13million so far) and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s arthouse hopeful Drive My Car (4 noms with US$950k from a very limited release).
The 94th annual Academy Awards will be held on March 27 at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, with the in-person ceremony to be televised on ABC in the US and Foxtel in Australia.
The full list of 2022 Academy Award nominees are:
BEST PICTURE Belfast (Laura Berwick, Kenneth Branagh, Becca Kovacik and Tamar Thomas, Producers) CODA (Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi and Patrick Wachsberger, Producers) Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay and Kevin Messick, Producers) Drive My Car (Teruhisa Yamamoto, Producer) Dune (Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve and Cale Boyter, Producers) King Richard (Tim White, Trevor White and Will Smith, Producers) Licorice Pizza (Sara Murphy, Adam Somner and Paul Thomas Anderson, Producers) Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale and Bradley Cooper, Producers) The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning and Roger Frappier, Producers) West Side Story (Steven Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger, Producers)
BEST DIRECTOR Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza); Kenneth Branagh (Belfast); Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog); Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car); Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)
BEST ACTRESS Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye); Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter); Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers); Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos); Kristen Stewart (Spencer)
BEST ACTOR Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos); Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog); Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick … Boom!); Will Smith (King Richard); Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter); Ariana DeBose (West Side Story); Judi Dench (Belfast); Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog); Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Ciarán Hinds (Belfast); Troy Kotsur (CODA); Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog); J.K. Simmons (Being the Ricardos); Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN Cruella (Jenny Beavan); Cyrano (Massimo Cantini Parrini and Jacqueline Durran); Dune (Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan); Nightmare Alley (Luis Sequeira); West Side Story (Paul Tazewell)
BEST SOUND Belfast (Denise Yarde, Simon Chase, James Mather and Niv Adiri); Dune (Mac Ruth, Mark Mangini, Theo Green, Doug Hemphill and Ron Bartlett); No Time to Die (Simon Hayes, Oliver Tarney, James Harrison, Paul Massey and Mark Taylor); The Power of the Dog (Richard Flynn, Robert Mackenzie and Tara Webb); West Side Story (Tod A. Maitland, Gary Rydstrom, Brian Chumney, Andy Nelson and Shawn Murphy)
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE Don’t Look Up (Nicholas Britell); Dune (Hans Zimmer); Encanto (Germaine Franco); Parallel Mothers (Alberto Iglesias); The Power of the Dog (Jonny Greenwood)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY CODA (screenplay by Siân Heder); Drive My Car (screenplay by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe); Dune (screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth); The Lost Daughter (written by Maggie Gyllenhaal); The Power of the Dog (written by Jane Campion)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Belfast (written by Kenneth Branagh); Don’t Look Up (screenplay by Adam McKay; story by Adam McKay & David Sirota); King Richard (written by Zach Baylin); Licorice Pizza (written by Paul Thomas Anderson); The Worst Person in the World (written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier)
BEST ANIMATED SHORT Affairs of the Art (Joanna Quinn and Les Mills); Bestia (Hugo Covarrubias and Tevo Díaz); Boxballet (Anton Dyakov); Robin Robin (Dan Ojari and Mikey Please); The Windshield Wiper (Alberto Mielgo and Leo Sanchez)
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT Ala Kachuu — Take and Run (Maria Brendle and Nadine Lüchinger); The Dress (Tadeusz Lysiak and Maciej Ślesicki); The Long Goodbye (Aneil Karia and Riz Ahmed); On My Mind (Martin Strange-Hansen and Kim Magnusson); Please Hold (K.D. Dávila and Levin Menekse)
BEST FILM EDITING Don’t Look Up (Hank Corwin); Dune (Joe Walker); King Richard (Pamela Martin); The Power of the Dog (Peter Sciberras); Tick, Tick … Boom! (Myron Kerstein and Andrew Weisblum)
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING Coming 2 America (Mike Marino, Stacey Morris and Carla Farmer); Cruella (Nadia Stacey, Naomi Donne and Julia Vernon); Dune (Donald Mowat, Love Larson and Eva von Bahr); The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Linda Dowds, Stephanie Ingram and Justin Raleigh); House of Gucci (Göran Lundström, Anna Carin Lock and Frederic Aspiras)
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Encanto (Jared Bush, Byron Howard, Yvett Merino and Clark Spencer); Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Charlotte De La Gournerie); Luca (Enrico Casarosa and Andrea Warren); The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Mike Rianda, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Kurt Albrecht); Raya and the Last Dragon (Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada, Osnat Shurer and Peter Del Vecho)
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, Kira Simon-Kennedy and Nathan Truesdell); Attica (Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry); Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sorensen and Charlotte De La Gournerie); Summer of Soul (Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein); Writing With Fire (Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh)
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT Audible (Matt Ogens and Geoff McLean); Lead Me Home (Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk); The Queen of Basketball (Ben Proudfoot); Three Songs for Benazir (Elizabeth Mirzaei and Gulistan Mirzaei); When We Were Bullies (Jay Rosenblatt)
BEST ORIGINAL SONG “Be Alive” — music and lyrics by DIXSON and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (King Richard) “Dos Oruguitas” — music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Encanto) “Down to Joy” — music and lyrics by Van Morrison (Belfast) “No Time to Die” — music and lyrics by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell (No Time to Die) “Somehow You Do” — music and lyrics by Diane Warren (Four Good Days)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Dune (Greig Fraser); Nightmare Alley (Dan Laustsen); The Power of the Dog (Ari Wegner); The Tragedy of Macbeth (Bruno Delbonnel); West Side Story (Janusz Kaminski)
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE Drive My Car (Japan); Flee (Denmark); The Hand of God (Italy); Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Bhutan); The Worst Person in the World (Norway)
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN Dune (production design: Patrice Vermette; set decoration: Zsuzsanna Sipos); Nightmare Alley (production design: Tamara Deverell; set decoration: Shane Vieau); The Power of the Dog (production design: Grant Major; set decoration: Amber Richards); The Tragedy of Macbeth (production design: Stefan Dechant; set decoration: Nancy Haigh); West Side Story (production design: Adam Stockhausen; set decoration: Rena DeAngelo)
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Dune (Paul Lambert, Tristan Myles, Brian Connor and Gerd Nefzer); Free Guy (Swen Gillberg, Bryan Grill, Nikos Kalaitzidis and Dan Sudick); No Time to Die (Charlie Noble, Joel Green, Jonathan Fawkner and Chris Corbould); Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Christopher Townsend, Joe Farrell, Sean Noel Walker and Dan Oliver); Spider-Man: No Way Home (Kelly Port, Chris Waegner, Scott Edelstein and Dan Sudick)
Simon Foster
