Four years after director Kitty Green and actor Julia Garner channeled whispers and silence into the stuff of workplace horror in The Assistant, they reunite for a movie that turns up the volume and ratchets up the fear and loathing. Way up.
Instead of the careerist corridors of Manhattan, the setting is a mining town in Australia — specifically, a hotel bar frequented by hard-drinking men. Garner, again, is extraordinary, and the chemistry between her and an equally superb Jessica Henwick, as best friends whose backpacking adventure takes a detour into a kind of hell, doesn’t hit a false note. Yet despite the flawless performances and outstanding craftsmanship, The Royal Hotel is a pummeling experience rather than a revelatory one.
For her second narrative feature, and her first film set and filmed in her native Australia, Green was inspired by the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, in which Pete Gleeson chronicles the...
Instead of the careerist corridors of Manhattan, the setting is a mining town in Australia — specifically, a hotel bar frequented by hard-drinking men. Garner, again, is extraordinary, and the chemistry between her and an equally superb Jessica Henwick, as best friends whose backpacking adventure takes a detour into a kind of hell, doesn’t hit a false note. Yet despite the flawless performances and outstanding craftsmanship, The Royal Hotel is a pummeling experience rather than a revelatory one.
For her second narrative feature, and her first film set and filmed in her native Australia, Green was inspired by the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, in which Pete Gleeson chronicles the...
- 9/3/2023
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
‘Strange Colours’
Alena Lodkina’s Strange Colours and Jessica Leski’s documentary I Used to be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story opened on limited screens last weekend.
Not much store should be placed on ticket sales because both titles have already had a significant impact at Australian and international festivals and both have the upside of ancillary revenues and and foreign sales.
Indeed both have been very effective launching pads for their directors, fulfilling one of Screen Australia’s remits of funding films as a talent escalator, particularly for first-time filmmakers.
“It’s been a life-changing period for me,” Lodkina tells If. “Strange Colours has given me a lot of hope and energy and enabled me to form a lot of relationships during the production and distribution.
Co-written by Lodkina and producer Isaac Wall, who produced with Kate Laurie, the evocative drama follows Kate Cheel as Milena, who travels to...
Alena Lodkina’s Strange Colours and Jessica Leski’s documentary I Used to be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story opened on limited screens last weekend.
Not much store should be placed on ticket sales because both titles have already had a significant impact at Australian and international festivals and both have the upside of ancillary revenues and and foreign sales.
Indeed both have been very effective launching pads for their directors, fulfilling one of Screen Australia’s remits of funding films as a talent escalator, particularly for first-time filmmakers.
“It’s been a life-changing period for me,” Lodkina tells If. “Strange Colours has given me a lot of hope and energy and enabled me to form a lot of relationships during the production and distribution.
Co-written by Lodkina and producer Isaac Wall, who produced with Kate Laurie, the evocative drama follows Kate Cheel as Milena, who travels to...
- 11/26/2018
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
I met Alena Lodkina two years ago, when she bounded up to a stall I was staffing at a book fair in Melbourne. She’d heard the film magazine I publish would be dedicating an issue to Pedro Costa, and so we got to chatting—about Costa, and particularly about Casa de Lava (1995), a film which famously birthed Costa’s Fontainhas trilogy, after he was asked to pass on gifts from people in Cape Verde to their families and friends in Lisbon. She ended up penning an essay for that issue of Fireflies, kicking off a friendship anchored upon a reciprocal love of cinema that comes full circle now with the release of her debut feature, Strange Colours. Developing from her earlier documentary Lightning Ridge: The Land of Black Opals (2016), Strange Colours is, like Casa de Lava, a melancholic fiction rooted firmly in a study of place. Apart from the three leads,...
- 9/2/2018
- MUBI
Alena Lodkina: 'I think the night scenes are important because they evoke this hidden, half-sense of being lost' Alena Lodkina: 'I think the eastern European sensibility is probably ingrained in me, because I grew up with Russian cinema' Alena Lodkina’s Strange Colours is one of the three films to emerge from Venice Film Festival’s Biennale College this year, an initiative that helps filmmakers fund and develop their work. Set in an opal mining community in the Australian Outback, it tells the story of young woman Milena (Kate Cheel) and her attempts to reconnect with her estranged father (Daniel P Jones), while also striking up a friendship with younger miner Frank (Justin Courtin).
Although scripted – Lodkina wrote the story with Isaac Wall – the film has a strong documentary flavour, with the supporting cast made up by members of the Lightning Ridge community in New South Wales and...
Although scripted – Lodkina wrote the story with Isaac Wall – the film has a strong documentary flavour, with the supporting cast made up by members of the Lightning Ridge community in New South Wales and...
- 9/5/2017
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Writer and director Nick Matthews made his feature debut at this year's Austin Film Festival with One Eyed Girl, a riveting psychological thriller that takes place in South Australia but could just as easily occur anywhere. Co-written by co-star Craig Behenna (The Babadook), this film -- which just won the Aff 2014 jury prize in the "Dark Matters" category -- slowly reveals the layers of pain and guilt experienced by a psychiatrist and the unexpected rocky path to redemption and salvation.
Travis (Mark Leonard Winter) is a thirtysomething psychiatrist severely damaged by the death of former patient Rachel (Katy Cheel). Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Travis' relationship with Rachel extended beyond and was impacted by her mental health. Travis' inability to connect to his patients and Rachel is compounded by the desensitization to the violence and corruption of the modern world, as well as a refusal to accept his own identity.
Travis (Mark Leonard Winter) is a thirtysomething psychiatrist severely damaged by the death of former patient Rachel (Katy Cheel). Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Travis' relationship with Rachel extended beyond and was impacted by her mental health. Travis' inability to connect to his patients and Rachel is compounded by the desensitization to the violence and corruption of the modern world, as well as a refusal to accept his own identity.
- 10/28/2014
- by Debbie Cerda
- Slackerwood
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