In Contention

Tag: Ryan Kwanten

  • ‘Red Hill’ trailer

    Okay, so “Red Hill” has about as much of a future in awards season as I do in pro football, but I can’t resist flagging up this trailer anyway — because Patrick Hughes’s debut feature, which I reviewed in brief at the Berlinale in February, is pretty much a blast. A gleefully schlocky, but genuinely jolting, comedy-western-horror hybrid from Down Under, it’s one of the year’s most spirited and inventive genre outings, and also makes a very strong case for “True Blood” star Ryan Kwanten as a leading man. My only question is why Sony is rolling out such obvious Halloween fodder on November 5. Click on the image below to check out the trailer via Apple, or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • BERLIN: ‘Please Give,’ ‘Red Hill,’ ‘Submarino’

    Ryan Kwanten in Red HillFilm festivals have a curious way of either dulling one’s critical faculties or provoking them to an impolite degree. I almost never walk out of a screening under normal circumstances; at a festival, while compressing five-odd films into one day, it’s almost life-affirming to do so.

    Such was the case yesterday, halfway through “Caterpillar,” a Competition entry from widely admired Japanese veteran Koji Wakamatsu. An apparent Oshima knockoff combining catatonic narrative inertia with visual dinginess, it centers on a mute, limbless Sino-Japanese War vet rebuilding his relationship with his wife: “rebuilding his relationship” being a euphemism for working his way through the paraplegic Kama Sutra.

    After a sufficient number of po-faced sex scenes, interspersed with shots of cherry-blossom to indicate the passing of seasons — the film, it seems, was edited with a blunt axe — Tim turned to me and whimpered, “I can’t take it anymore.” We bailed and headed for “Gentlemen Broncos” instead; and you know now how that worked out.

    The film has its champions, mind. And I’m now convinced it will win something on Saturday just to spite me. After the cut, however, are three films I happily sat through in their entirety.

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