Sometimes deadlines get the best of us, and if we had a second crack at The Best Films Of 2018…We’ve Already Seen, “Sweet Country” would’ve certainly made the cut. The new film from Warwick  Thornton picked up a slew of awards at film festivals throughout the past year, and we highly recommend this western, which crackles with racial tension.

Starring Sam Niell, Bryan Brown, Hamilton Morris, and Ewen Leslie, the film heads to Australia’s Northern Territory, where an Aboriginal man goes on the run after killing a white man.

Continue reading ‘Sweet Country’ Trailer: Award Winning Aussie Western Tackles Racism at The Playlist.

As much as we want to spend the rest of December not thinking about movies, at least for once second, the Sundance Film Festival is already the corner, and organizers are keeping us on our toes.

This afternoon, a few more titles have added to this year’s lineup, and a couple have caught our eye. Tamara Jenkins, director of “The Savages,” finally returns with her first feature in a decade with “Private Life” starring Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti, Molly Shannon, John Carroll Lynch, and Kayli Carter, and that’s hugely exciting.

Continue reading Sundance 2018 Adds Films By Lynne Ramsay, Tamara Jenkins, And More at The Playlist.

There are few more charged, more disturbingly redolent images than that of a black man in shackles. And so when Australian director Warwick Thornton, winner of the Venice Special Jury Prize and the Toronto Platform Best Film opens his outback western with just such an image (after an enigmatic prologue of offscreen violence which is gradually explained) it’s like he is drawing a line in the sand — that reddish dust that turns the parched ground round here the color of old blood.

Continue reading Superb Venice & TIFF-Winning Aussie Western ‘Sweet Country’ With Sam Neill [Review] at The Playlist.

In a huge surprise move, unexpected by almost all pundits, Fox Searchlight’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” won the coveted Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award today.

Directed by Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges“), ‘Three Billboards’ is a darkly comic drama about a mother who personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter’s murder, when they fail to catch the culprit.

Continue reading ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ Wins TIFF’s People’s Choice Award at The Playlist.