Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Opening with a titillating full-frontal act of fornication in front of a group of champagne guzzling, celery-stick chomping upper-class lady types, X seemingly prepares you for the ensuing unflinching proceedings that lay ahead. But contrary to the beautifully blunt title this is no exposé of the seedy underworld of Sydney’s red light district – director Jon Hewitt is more interested in setting up some suspenseful surprises that give this film more of a instinctual killer thriller narrative thrust.
Not that we should be surprised. Hewitt is a film-maker infamous in Oz for smart serial killer thrillers like Redball and Acolytes and the sexually tinged Darklovestory. But before that there was his audacious Melbourne-set vampire killing, all-screwing and drug-taking 1992 debut Bloodlust. So there were always sordid hints in this film-maker’s make-up.
The narrative for his latest follows the final exploits of 30-year old upper-class call girl Holly (Viva Bianca) who,...
Opening with a titillating full-frontal act of fornication in front of a group of champagne guzzling, celery-stick chomping upper-class lady types, X seemingly prepares you for the ensuing unflinching proceedings that lay ahead. But contrary to the beautifully blunt title this is no exposé of the seedy underworld of Sydney’s red light district – director Jon Hewitt is more interested in setting up some suspenseful surprises that give this film more of a instinctual killer thriller narrative thrust.
Not that we should be surprised. Hewitt is a film-maker infamous in Oz for smart serial killer thrillers like Redball and Acolytes and the sexually tinged Darklovestory. But before that there was his audacious Melbourne-set vampire killing, all-screwing and drug-taking 1992 debut Bloodlust. So there were always sordid hints in this film-maker’s make-up.
The narrative for his latest follows the final exploits of 30-year old upper-class call girl Holly (Viva Bianca) who,...
- 11/7/2011
- by Oliver Pfeiffer
- Obsessed with Film
The benchmark for any decent film festival is the level of cinematic diversity it offers. A good mix of entertaining, provocative, intriguing and possibly even perverse selections from around the globe with a few classic retrospectives thrown in for good measure that inform, intrigue, delight, outrage and provoke thoughtful debate is all that one can hope for in a well compiled line-up. Thankfully Brisbane’s 20th anniversary international film festival, which commences on the 3rd November, appears to have delivered that desired ensemble.
While commencing with the Aussie premieres of Joe Cornish’s UK genre-bender Attack the Block and closing with Pedro Almodovar’s psychologically intense genre hybrid The Skin I Live In, and with a few entries bleeding over from this year’s Sydney Film Festival (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Tyrannosaur and Take Shelter amongst others), there’s more than enough fresh material in between to make the trip to another Aussie state worthwhile.
While commencing with the Aussie premieres of Joe Cornish’s UK genre-bender Attack the Block and closing with Pedro Almodovar’s psychologically intense genre hybrid The Skin I Live In, and with a few entries bleeding over from this year’s Sydney Film Festival (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Tyrannosaur and Take Shelter amongst others), there’s more than enough fresh material in between to make the trip to another Aussie state worthwhile.
- 10/27/2011
- by Oliver Pfeiffer
- Obsessed with Film
The Queensland sun beats down and dust blows up from the dirt track when Fango steps onto the first of several locations to witness the filming of the stylish new Australian serial-killer thriller Acolytes (out this week on Anchor Bay DVD following numerous festival appearances over the past year). Virtually entombed in concrete—beneath an overpass that supports a busy highway—one can still hear the traffic, but it’s virtually drowned out by the noise of a fly swarm—perhaps entirely fitting for a film that deals with the stench of rotting corpses and the people who cause them.
Fango freezes just before rounding a corner where a rehearsal is taking place; much shouting stops suddenly, and this writer takes a spot behind the monitors being fed the picture from the Viper camera—the hi-def rig of choice for the likes of David Fincher and Michael Mann. Director Jon Hewitt...
Fango freezes just before rounding a corner where a rehearsal is taking place; much shouting stops suddenly, and this writer takes a spot behind the monitors being fed the picture from the Viper camera—the hi-def rig of choice for the likes of David Fincher and Michael Mann. Director Jon Hewitt...
- 7/29/2009
- by no-reply@fangoria.com (Michael Helms)
- Fangoria
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