It’s rare for a film to come along which is so unique, and downright bizarre, that it completely defies any attempt at categorisation, and reminds you that the possibility for innovation in cinema is nowhere close to being exhausted.

Danish director Thomas Vinterburg has never been one to shy away from diving head first into provocative territory, and this tendency is on display once again in his latest offering, The Hunt. Maaks Mikkelsen gives an outstanding lead performance as a kindergarten teacher working in a close-knit community, only for his life to be overturned when an accusation is made [...]

Cultural Australian icon Paul Kelly’s life has been brought to the screen in the form of a documentary by Ian Darling.

I’m always tentative when walking into the screening of an Australian film; for every Face to Face (2011) there’s a You and Your Stupid Mate (2005), which means that I’m always pleasantly surprised when the film is actually good, and when it’s really good, I tell everyone to go and see it.

Based on an article “On Seeking a Sex Surrogate”, The Sessions details the struggles and triumphs of Mark O’Brien, a poet from Boston who was paralysed from the neck down since early childhood complications from polio.

Projection issues aside, Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 is a film about a film. And what better place to see than at the Melbourne International Film Festival? A sold out session in the already crowded Greater Union cinema in Russell Street sat back and let Stanley Kubrick’s images from The Shining flow over them.

The latest film from Billy Bob Thornton as writer/director reteams him with co-writer Tom Epperson (with whom he wrote the excellent crime drama One False Move) and is a solid, if slightly disappointing, return.

Although Into The Abyss, the new Werner Herzog documentary was supposed to be screened during the festival, what was actually shown (without any announcement or acknowledgement previous to or during the screening from MIFF) was two episodes of the four part mini-series On Death Row

One of the documentaries screening at this year’s festival is Side By Side, an excellent exploration of how digital technology is taking over and revolutionizing the film industry, ultimately making the traditional celluloid that we have all grown up watching obsolete.

The prolific and brilliant Takashi Miike returns to MIFF (he has two other films showing; Ace Attorney and For Love’s Sake) with the stunning tragedy Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai.