The Aussie New Wave was a group of Australian and New Zealand based film-makers who shook up Antipodean cinema during the 1970s. A key figure of the movement was Peter Weir, whose seminal 1975 film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, is receiving a one off screening at the Irish Film Institute on Sunday afternoon. Based around the disappearance of four schoolgirls during a trip to the mysterious title location, it’s a wonderfully atmospheric movie that, like many Australian films of the period, questions man’s volatile relationship with nature and the rugged Aussie landscape.
The Lighthouse Cinema continues its summer long musical season on Wednesday with a screening of Robert Wise’s 1965 Oscar winning The Sound of Music. A perennial Sunday afternoon favourite, it’s a strikingly visual piece of work packed with memorable tunes. Feel free to wear a nun outfit if attending.
Love Eternal comes from Irish director Brendan Muldowney and explores the psyche of a young death-obsessed man who becomes a necrophiliac following the death of his mother. It’s not quite as bleak as that description would suggest, and therein lies the problem. The film struggles to settle on a tone and veers awkwardly between lurid psychodrama and black comedy.
The outlandishly titled The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared is based on the popular novel by Swedish author Jonas Jonasson. It’s an ambitious movie but feels highly derivative of films like Forrest Gump and Benjamin Button.
Transformers: Age of Extinction is easily the worst film I’ve had the misfortune of seeing in 2014 and makes the first movie in the series seem like a masterpiece in comparison.
By Eric Hillis
Image: Movie of the Week, Picnic at Hanging Rock
