DVD
BITTER ART
(MA 15+) Independent
Western Australian director Michael Hatch pulled this flick together in five weeks of shooting around Pemberton in WA. It stars Christopher Morris (Crownies and Offspring), Dana Rosendorff, Andrea Addison and Ben Purser, a Newcastle actor with a credit in . This privately funded film weaves a dark comedy around rivals shooting for a short film festival in Pemberton. It has some strong moments, and the town and its surrounds are stunningly beautiful. But, as the director himself says: ‘‘I am quietly confident that at some point in the future one of the actors or myself will make something that breaks out and is seen by a large international audience and, when that day comes, people will get curious and go back and visit an earlier work of ours called Bitter Art.'' JK
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UTOPIA,
Saturday, May 31, 8.35pm, SBS ONE
Veteran Australian journalist John Pilger’s controversial documentary makes its television premiere tonight and, while it is not exactly relaxing weekend viewing, it should be, as footballer and Australian of the Year Adam Goodes has said, "required viewing for every Australian". Essentially a sequel of sorts to Pilger’s 1985 film The Secret Country, the journalist revisits remote indigenous communities and is shocked to discover little has changed in almost 30 years. While it is largely Pilger on the attack – in interviews with MPs such as Warren Snowdon –and has been criticised for its lack of objectivity, it is, nonetheless, a sobering insight into how many of Australia’s first people live, poles apart from most white Australians. KN
BOX SET
THE ESCAPE ARTIST
(MA) Hopscotch
Although David Tennant could probably hold your attention reciting the telephone book, he gets to do a lot more than just that in this three-part British legal thriller. He plays ambitious and accomplished barrister Will Burton, who has a knack for finding legal and procedural loopholes. That results in the acquittal of a reprobate who, with echoes of Patricia Highsmith’s brilliant sociopathic creation Tom Ripley, does not take kindly to a perceived slight. Written by Spooks creator David Wolstencroft, it teases out Rumpole-esque riddles about justice and the presumption of innocence, before careening into a less-than-original and slightly overcooked revenge thriller. Tennant, however, does nothing wrong with the pulpy material, nor does Sophie Okonedo and Spooks’ Anton Lesser. PK
DVD
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
(MA) Roadshow
Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis is the portrait of the artist as a young man – a cantankerous, unfortunate, self-sabotaging young man with a guitar and a folk repertoire, whose career, launched in the early 1960s, seems doomed to oblivion. So, what do we make of these qualities? And what do they say about his art? Such questions haunt this dark comedy of aspiration and frustration right to the very end. Oscar Isaac’s performance, in the title role, is assured and unsentimental, and in a film full of intriguingly varied performances, he is utterly convincing as a musician. PH
