Spies, lies and final goodbyes ratchet up the tension in this nail-biting movie collection
Joe
The irrepressibly anarchic Nic Cage depicts an ex-con-turned-lumberjack attempting to chill in the woods in Halloween reboot director David Gordon Green’s gritty rendition of the Larry Brown novel. His dogged focus on the straight and narrow is rewarded when a fatherly bond forms with young runaway Gary (Mud actor Tye Sheridan). But of course, Gary’s abusive biological dad (the late Gary Poulter) comes crashing back onto the scene with a metaphorical yell of “timber”. Can Joe keep Gary safe and keep his shit together? You’ll be on tenterhooks as this provocation of wounded masculinity works its way out.
Joe is streaming at SBS On Demand.
These Final Hours
These Final Hours is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Double Lover
Double Lover is streaming at SBS On Demand.
You Were Never Really Here
Brilliant Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay followed her adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s button-pushing novel We Need to Talk about Kevin with another literary hand grenade tossed. Joaquin Phoenix is incendiary in this spin on Jonathan Ames’ explosive thriller as a grizzled veteran, Joe. Tasked with rescuing a kidnapped senator’s daughter (Ekaterina Samsonov) from a human trafficking ring by any means necessary, frenetic violence follows. But his vengeance trail of destruction isn’t without mercy (or pop tunes) in an impressionistic film questioning what’s real in a world where war breaks minds and bodies.
You Were Never Really Here is streaming at SBS On Demand.
You Were Never Really Here
Fly By Night
When Martin Scorsese cast Robert De Niro in the Paul Schrader-penned Taxi Driver, he turbo-boosted a trend of bad things happening in the back of said for-hire vehicles that’s been going strong at least since German director Harry Piel’s 1929 silent movie, Taxi at Midnight. Flash forward 90 years to Malaysian director Zahir Omar’s Kuala Lumpur-shot neo-noir. Sunny Pang’s mob boss, Tailo, runs a rewarding scam fleecing cashed-up travellers landing at the airport. But diddle the wrong mark and mayhem awaits, as when the gang fall foul of Frederick Lee’s even bigger bad, Jared.
Fly By Night is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Hinterland
In the shadow of the Great War and the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna is a politically fractured and dangerous place into which former police officer Peter (Murathan Muslu) stumbles after languishing in a Russian PW camp. Now an alien place, all exaggerated, oppressive angles – director Stefan Ruzowitzky shot almost entirely on CGI-augmented blue screen – what should be a welcome return soon turns to horror. With his fellow soldiers picked off one by one, he races to uncover the serial killer and their motives before his is just another nail in their collective coffin.
Hinterland is streaming at SBS On Demand.
A Taste of Hunger is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Talk about saving the best for last, Michael Caine blows the bloody doors off in this intriguingly twisty turny spy thriller adapted from the Len Deighton novel. Canadian director Sidney J. Furie casts the dashing Caine as Harry Palmer, a decidedly working-class, bespectacled and irascible Cockney spin on Ian Fleming’s 007. Pursuing disappearing scientists and a mind-warping villain through a rain-lashed London that appears to have been drained of all colour, his no-nonsense approach to the dastardly dealings is amplified by the unmooring angles of cinematographer Otto Heller’s BAFTA Award-winning cinematography (it also picked up Best British Film and Art Direction in 1966)
The Ipcress File is streaming at SBS On Demand.
