film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Joel Fisher

  • Like A House On Fire: Review

    Like A House On Fire: Review

    Dara (Sarah Sutherland) has been drinking since she was 14. She grew up and married Danny (Jared Abrahamson) and they had a little girl called Isabel (Margaux Vaillancourt). However, Dara’s drinking became a problem over the years and when Isabel was two years old, she decided to leave her and Danny behind.

    Two years later, Dara decides that the time is right to come back and try to make amends to what she did to Danny and her daughter. The problem is that Danny really doesn’t want her to come back and Isabel doesn’t remember her own mother. So, all Dara can do is to try her best to fit in with her family and get her life back.

    Like a House on Fire is an emotional drama written and directed by Jesse Noah Klein about a woman trying to pick up the pieces of her life after succumbing to addiction. Gently paced, the story takes its time to tell the audience about Dara’s life and the repercussions of her actions.

    The script does so by cleverly interweaving these details, making the film feel like the audience aren’t being preached about the dangers of addiction either. Slowly letting the audience into Dara’s world, they soon come to realise what Dara has done, what she’s sacrificed and how difficult it must have been.

    Sarah Sutherland gives a great performance as Dara, a woman clearly desperate to get back the people she holds so dear, yet knows all too well what price it could pay. Beautifully shot with a great cast including Margaux Vaillancourt who is adorable as the child caught between the family issues that she’s too young to understand.

    There is an issue that the story may be a little too predictable for audiences, but thankfully the performances and the tight script will manage to keep their interest even if they may know where it’s going.

    Also, there could have been a tendency for Like A House on Fire to go into melodrama, trying to showcase an actor’s ability with dealing with scenes that exploit addiction. Luckily though, the characters and script have been very well thought out and the issues raised are dealt with sensitively.

  • Violation: Review

    Violation: Review

    Miriam (Madeleine Sims-Fewer) is visiting her sister, Greta (Anna Maguire) and her brother-in-law Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe). It’s been a while since the sisters saw each other and Miriam becomes concerned that Dylan’s influence over her sister may not be good for her.

    However, Miriam tries to make the best of things despite Greta’s attitude towards her and she gets to know Dylan. They seem to get on well and Miriam starts to relax around him, but later that night Dylan does something unspeakable to Miriam and it sets her mind on revenge.

    Violation is a horror film written and co-directed by Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer. A different take on rape revenge films, Violation doesn’t set up the premise for the film until much later, giving time for the audience to settle in and get to know the characters before the film turns to the grislier horror aspects.

    The problem is that the way that Violation decides to tells Miriam’s story inadvertently makes Miriam an unsympathetic character to support. Sims-Fewer does give a great performance throughout and the film does set up the characters, and the dialogue and chemistry between the cast all feels very natural. It’s just a little troubling as Miriam’s violent actions seem to come out of nowhere.

    Add to this the way in which she enacts her revenge and the audience may start to think that Miriam may be carrying it out a bit too easily.

    Saying this though, the scenes where Miriam gets her revenge are done quite differently from the usual scenes in this subgenre of horror. The audience is perhaps meant to feel uncomfortable and it’s certainly effective where in other films it would be all about the glamorisation of blood and gore.

    Also, thankfully the film does pull away from the gory revenge aspect that other films would revel in, instead showing Miriam’s reactions to what she’s done and perhaps to make the audience think about what she’s done. One violation for another may not be what we consider to be fair, but it’s up to the audience to decide what’s worse.

  • When Claude Got Shot: SXSW Review

    When Claude Got Shot: SXSW Review

    Claude Motley was studying at law school and was weeks away from his bar exam when he was carjacked. Claude knew the risks, but thinking about his wife and family he drove away and the person who held him up fired his gun at his car.

    Unfortunately for Claude, it also hit him in the face and fractured his jaw. In the hospital despite his injuries, Claude was also treated like a perpetrator, but once he got out of hospital, he was able to identify the person who shot him. Also, because of his belief in the law, Claude wanted to see the young man brought to justice.

    However, Nathan King was the person who shot him, a 15-year-old boy and it was his first offence. Not only that, but after a second incident Nathan was shot in the back which left him paralysed from the waist down.

    When Claude Got Shot is a documentary about a single case where a man got shot and the difficulties that people from all sides have to go through when dealing with the criminal justice system in America.

    What starts out as a seemingly straightforward documentary about gun control in America starts to go much deeper as it concentrates on its subjects. Issues such as Nathan’s life changing injury in the face of self-defence and Claude’s treatment in the hospital are raised, but not for very long as the documentary goes into intricate detail about this one case.

    Everything from Claude’s time in hospital, the trial and the aftermath are all dealt with, showing all sides from Claude’s family to Nathan’s mother. There are even times when the court system itself is shown to be biased against a certain type of person.

    The assumptions are that because Claude is a man going to law school and that Nathan lives in a single parent family that Nathan must have had a bad upbringing. It’s just a coincidence that they both happen to be black. However, looking deeper into Claude’s own life, When Claude Got Shot shows that the choices people make are what defines them.

  • The Tangle: Review

    The Tangle: Review

    Laurel (Jessica Graham) and Edward (Christopher Soren Kelly) are a married couple living in a world run by an artificial intelligence known as The Tangle. The Tangle runs every aspect of human life and is able to connect everyone from anywhere at any time and people have accepted this new life, even going as far as to have hard drives installed in their brains so that they can stay connected.

    Everything seems fine under the control of The Tangle and what with The Tangle’s predictive abilities, crime is at an all time low. Laurel and Edward are only two of a select few who have opted out of being under The Tangle though, monitoring human life without being subject to its ever-vigilant watch.

    So, when Carter (Joshua Bitton) gets caught up in a murder, they disconnect him from The Tangle and bring him in for interrogation. If only it were that easy.

    The Tangle is a sci-fi noir co-starring, written and directed by Christopher Soren Kelly in his feature debut. Boasting connections in its theme and style to films such as Blade Runner and Minority Report, due to its smaller budget and lack of action sequences The Tangle comes across more like Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca. However, that’s still a very worthy comparison.

    As the story unfolds, the audience is not lead in with any easy exposition as it takes them along the story and introduces the ideas of the world seamlessly. The Tangle creates a world that’s not all that unlikely considering the world we live in now and the way we may be heading.

    Like Minority Report it may even show us a not-too-distant future and for those conspiracy theorists we may already be there in part. Although, The Tangle’s focus is a noir murder mystery and that’s where it stays for the most part. However, it simultaneously talks about the wider world, making the audience think of where we could be.

    Not a film to sit down to watch if you’re not keen on paying attention to the details, but for those who do then they will be rewarded.

  • Spring Valley: SXSW Review

    Spring Valley: SXSW Review

    Spring Valley is a documentary about the ethics of using SRO’s (School Resource Officers) in American schools, particularly focussing on one incident in Spring Valley High School in South Carolina in 2015.

    An incident where a black teenage girl was forcefully removed from her seat and thrown to the ground simply for refusing to leave the class. The documentary talks to people from all sides, including Shakara, the girl who was assaulted and Officer Ben Fields who assaulted her.

    Talking to Officer Ben Fields, at first it may seem like the documentary is siding with him to tell his story and set the record straight. However, the more he talks the more it seems that his refusal to take blame and accept responsibility may be a small part of a wider issue. Not only an issue among the police, but among white America.

    In fact, the fact that Officer Fields had even agreed to be a part of the documentary shows a certain kind of arrogance as he constantly maintains that he did no wrong, despite the evidence of the contrary. Through discussions with Officer Fields and Black Lives Matter activists, there’s an attempt to try and show him what he did was wrong and that he should accept responsibility and this comes across well.

    It not only shows how Officer Fields feels about what he thinks is right, but it also shows how other white people may completely ignorant of institutional racism as it’s just not been questioned in such an open way as it has been recently.

    Spring Valley also talks about the history of South Carolina, from the slave trade and the Confederate flag which a lot of people still hold onto fiercely, despite its connotations with racism. It shows that society may have instilled racism into the blood of certain white Americans and that it can be very hard to change their minds. Especially when some consider they’ve done no wrong. Spring Valley shows that even in a post-Trump era, America still has a long way to go to reverse the damage caused by institutional racism.