Reviews by Anton Bitel

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Winter Vacation (2010)

  Review preview for Winter Vacation

  Bleak and spare... would be deeply depressing were it not so absurdly funny.

  A deadpan comedy about the last day of the holidays and the first day back at school in Inner Mongolia.
• 
  Sawako Decides (2009)

  Review preview for Sawako Decides

  Its occasional flashes of quirkiness are never enough to justify its overstretched duration.

  A young woman struggles to save her family's ailing clam-packing business.
• 
  Despicable Me (2010)

  Review preview for Despicable Me

  Would be a serious examination of the family in the postmodern age, were it not so laugh-out-loud funny.

  A super-villain plots to steal the Moon.
• 
  Mammuth (2010)

  Review preview for Mammuth

  Anchored by Depardieu's unflinching performance and his sheer physicality, the film mixes melancholic nostalgia and mordant satire with a strong sense of the absurd.

  An anarchic comedy in which a retired abbatoir worker takes to the road on his Mammuth motorbike in search of the paperwork he needs to get his pension.
• 
  Another Year (2010)

  Review preview for Another Year

  Although the tragicomic episodes that make up Another Year seem casual and low-key, they encompass birth, death and everything in between.

  Mike Leigh drama about family, friendship and ageing.
• 
  The Parking Lot Movie (2010)

  Review preview for The Parking Lot Movie

  More a portrait than a narrative film, it may place viewers in park for its relatively brief duration rather than drive them in any particular direction, but Eckman's subjects are so wittily articulate that the film just offers one quotable zinger after a

  A documentary about parking lot attendants, their feelings about their job, and their theories about other aspects of life.
• 
  Carlos The Jackal (2010)

  Review preview for Carlos The Jackal

  This is bravura filmmaking.

  A biopic of the mercenary soldier and assassin Carlos the Jackal, his shifting interests in politics and money and his bid to go down in history as a hero.
• 
  Let Me In (2010)

  Review preview for Let Me In

  It has nearly everything that filmgoers loved about Alfredson's Swedish original – except the originality.

  A lonely boy meets a strange girl with a dark secret.
• 
  Lesbian Psycho (2002)

  Review preview for Lesbian Psycho

  A nightmare in a damaged brain, using an imagination no more, nor less, disturbed than our own.

  Camping for girls ends in slashfest.
• 
  Tabloid (2010)

  Review preview for Tabloid

  Morris traces this perfect tabloid tale in all its hilarious, sad and bizarre particulars.

  A documentary about a former beauty queen alleged to have raped a Mormon missionary with whom she was infatuated.
• 
  Living On Love Alone (2010)

  Review preview for Living On Love Alone

  The film's action ultimately moves to a borderland between not just France and Spain, but also crime thriller and love story, dreams and reality.

  A relationship with a daring young actor offers a young woman escape from the tedium of her nine to five job.
• 
  The American (2010)

  Review preview for The American

  The killer-for-hire subgenre takes on an abstract, existentialist complexion.

  An assassin tries to escape his past.
• 
  A Town Called Panic (2009)

  Review preview for A Town Called Panic

  A Town Called Panic is a truly postmodern concoction, where, along with the village's properties, narrative norms are deconstructed brick by brick, as free associations and visual gags come thick and fast, offering a surreal jaunt through toy town.

  Three friends pursue thieves to the centre of the Earth and beyond in this animated adventure.
• 
  The Peddler (2009)

  Review preview for The Peddler

  We are reintroduced, through the most improbably modest of routes, to the extraordinary power that cinema can have to galvanise a community and bring it together.

  A documentary about a self-taught filmmaker visiting a small town in search of a cast and crew for his latest b-movie.
• 
  Pink Saris (2010)

  Review preview for Pink Saris

  Sampat is a subject so complex and compelling, so fearless and flawed, that in the end the documentary itself is drawn into her irresistible orbit no less than she dominates all the people and situations around her.

  Low-caste women in Uttar Pradesh fight back against social injustice in this documentary.
• 
  A Serbian Film (2009)

  Review preview for A Serbian Film

  The whole point of A Serbian Film is to sicken and offend the viewer.

  Controversial film about a porn star's descent into depravity.
• 
  Road Train (2010)

  Review preview for Road Train

  Francis positively relishes taking his viewers on deranged, demonic detours down uncharted byroads of body horror, too, with grand guignol as icky as it is utterly irrational.

  Supernatural chiller sees a camping trip to the outback turn sour.
• 
  Burning Bright (2010)

  Review preview for Burning Bright

  The tiger here is no CG or animatronic confection, but a living, breathing predator (or, more exactly, three of them playing one), brought into proximity with the actors through seamless compositing.

  Tiger terror.
• 
  The Loved Ones (2009)

  Review preview for The Loved Ones

  A joyous genre mash-up of John Hughes-style adolescent anxieties and drill-bit depravities (call it 'torture prom'), all married in McLeavy's wonderfully unhinged turn as a pretty-in-pink princess of perversion.

  The father of teenager Lola will go to any lengths to get her the boy of her dreams... including kidnap and torture. Plus read our exclusive interview with Robin McLeavy.
• 
  Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)

  Review preview for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

  For all the postmodern presentation, every emotion here ultimately rings true, and there are enough great ideas, oddball characters, amiable performances and big laughs to ensure that this remains a cult favourite.

  A man finds he has to defeat his girlfriend's evil ex-boyfriends.
• 
  14 Blades (2010)

  Review preview for 14 Blades

  As spectacular as it is slyly sentimental.

  A ruthless fighter is forced to reconsider his life by a beautiful hostage.
• 
  Kamui: The Lone Ninja (2009)

  Review preview for Kamui: The Lone Ninja

  Amid horrific iniquities and inequalities, the film asks, is true freedom ever possible for anyone but the privileged?

  Ninja-tastic adaptation of the famous manga.
• 
  The Perfect Sleep (2009)

  Review preview for The Perfect Sleep

  An overwrought, eccentric folly, surely never to be repeated, but truly amazing to behold.

  An assassin returns to a city of his past to try to rescue a lost love.
• 
  The Karate Kid (2010)

  Review preview for The Karate Kid

  Give it time, and this remake, too, will seem dated, but its coming-of-age story has a timeless appeal.

  After moving a to China, a bullied boy discovers a new approach to life as he learns kung fu.
• 
  Senseless (2008)

  Review preview for Senseless

  Senseless is a well-crafted, relatively restrained affair, boasting rock solid performances, believable characters (in extremis), highly effective sound design, and a clinically claustrophobic Big Brother-style set.

  A businessman is abducted and deprived of his senses one by one as his torment is broadcast live over the internet.
• 
  Revanche (2008)

  Review preview for Revanche

  Here justice moves slowly, and in mysterious ways.

  An accidental shooting leads to a search for revenge.
• 
  Inception (2010)

  Review preview for Inception

  You will no doubt need to see Inception more than once to appreciate every nuance of Nolan's carefully balanced ambiguities – but, more importantly, you will also want to.

  DiCaprio's dream spy takes on the ultimate inside job.
• 
  Tetro (2009)

  Review preview for Tetro

  Aesthetically, it is a joy from start to finish.

  Two reunited brothers consider their family's past.
• 
  20th Century Boys: The Complete Saga (2010)

  Review preview for 20th Century Boys: The Complete Saga

  Dazzles us with so many balls in the air, so many twists and turns, that there is not enough room left for his characters to develop as believable, interesting people, as opposed to comicbook archetypes.

  Epic manga trilogy sees a boy and his friends fight to save mankind.
• 
  Wizards (1977)

  Review preview for Wizards

  While having so little money may, paradoxically, have liberated Bakshi from studio interference, this freedom allows him to indulge in ideas that are, metaphorically and otherwise, away with the fairies.

  A post-Apocalyptic Earth is the setting for wizard warfare.
• 
  Institute Benjamenta, Or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)

  Review preview for Institute Benjamenta, Or This Dream People Call Human Life

  An abstract, uncanny experience.

  Enigmatic story of a man who enrolls at an institute to learn to be a servant.
• 
  Vengeance (2009)

  Review preview for Vengeance

  With Vengeance, To gives well-worn tropes of the revenge thriller some mannered tweaks, before ultimately turning them on their head.

  A chef - and former killer - returns to Hong Kong to avenge the deaths of his daughter's family.
• 
  Eraser Children (2009)

  Review preview for Eraser Children

  A film to be admired more for its vast ambitions than for its actual achievements.

  In a futuristic totalitarian state, where human memories are literally converted to fuel, one man becomes convinced he can save the world.
• 
  Fish Story (2009)

  Review preview for Fish Story

  Fish Story may at first seem almost aleatoric in its structure, but this punkish chronicle of hope enduring in extremis and heroism paid forward turns out to be much more than a mere shaggy dog story.

  A record shop owner insists that one of the records in his store will "save the world".
• 
  Meat Grinder (2009)

  Review preview for Meat Grinder

  There is more to Tiwa Moeithaisong's artful horror than mere visceral sensation, as the politics of gender, family and society all find their place at the perverted feast.

  A noodle soup store's recipe has a worrying 'special' ingredient.
• 
  1 (2009)

  Review preview for 1

  Enigmatic in form, encyclopaedic in scope, and leaving room between its lines for many different readings, Sparrow's 1 encapsulates, much like the book from which it takes its name, the whole of human experience in eccentric, elliptical cross-section.

  Adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's One Human Minute, sees bookshop staff incarcerated because copies of a book describing everything that happens to everyone on the planet in the space of a minute are found on their shelves.
• 
  Drones (2010)

  Review preview for Drones

  Amber Benson and Adam Busch's Drones may be slight, but that low-key triviality is an essential part of its humour.

  An office worker discovers one of his colleagues is an alien.
• 
  Transmission (2009)

  Review preview for Transmission

  A dystopian allegory like no other.

  As the airwaves fall dead and communication systems become useless, three brothers try to survive.
• 
  Depositarios (2010)

  Review preview for Depositarios

  A sedate, not always coherent construct that somehow seems less than the sum of its harvested parts.

  Futuristic clone thriller sees genetic doubles suffering the pain of their 'real world' twin.
• 
  Blood (1989)

  Review preview for Blood

  For all the film's particularities of time and place, everything here feels essential and archetypal, as painful rites of passage are played out in the forms of mystery.

  After their father dies, two brothers find themselves facing up to his troubled legacy.
• 
  Geisha Assassin (2008)

  Review preview for Geisha Assassin

  Episodes of combat unfold like levels in a videogame, with next to no story and only the most perfunctory of dialogue to link them together.

  After a girl witnesses the slaying of her father, she becomes a master of the sword herself in order to avenge his death.
• 
  How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

  Review preview for How to Train Your Dragon

  Fast and funny enough to let even its derivativeness take wing – and, as any seven-year-old can tell you, dragons are cool.

  A young viking becomes an unlikely dragon master.
• 
  Sinking Of Japan (2006)

  Review preview for Sinking Of Japan

  While the film certainly grabs the attention with its opening sequence, it struggles to hold it over its excessively long duration.

  The race is on to evacuate Japan after an earthquake threatens its existence.
• 
  The House Of The Devil (2009)

  Review preview for The House Of The Devil

  As a genre filmmaker through and through, West is unlikely to be winning an Oscar any time soon – but when it comes to the extraordinary manipulation of tension and atmosphere, he is an unsung master of cinema.

  Retro suspense thriller centers on a cash-strapped college girl who answers a babysitting ad only to gradually unravel the horrifying secret behind why she was truly hired.
• 
  Stone Bros (2009)

  Review preview for Stone Bros

  Stone Bros is perhaps the first Australian film to take the rapidly shifting body politic of the nation's race relations and to roll it into fresh, full-flavoured comedy.

  Two cousins embark on a road trip fuelled by spliffs.
• 
  The Marriage Of Figaro (2009)

  Review preview for The Marriage Of Figaro

  The characters never develop, some of the performances are questionably 'broad', and the quality of the digicam images evokes a cheap telesoap.

  A hairy biker and his long-time love face comic complications as they try to get hitched
• 
  The Crazies (2010)

  Review preview for The Crazies

  If The Crazies is content just to be a ghost-train ride of empty genre thrills, at least it manages to be a slick affair, mixing convincing performances with plenty of well-handled tension.

  A mysterious toxin in the water supply drives most of the people of a small town crazy, so that they turn upon their friends and neighbours in this remake of the George Romero classic.
• 
  Shutter Island (2010)

  Review preview for Shutter Island

  Even when one has a rough idea of where this mystery thriller is headed, the devil is in the detail, and each turn of the screw is handled with the sort of deft craftsmanship that becomes a pleasure unto itself.

  Two US marshalls are sent to a remote island to investigate the disappearance of an inmate from a mental asylum.
• 
  The Fool Of The World And The Flying Ship (1990)

  Review preview for The Fool Of The World And The Flying Ship

  This Emmy-winning fable of piety rewarded makes a virtue of its own simplicity.

  Russian fairytale about a woodcutter who wins the heart of a princess.
• 
  Pandorum (2009)

  Review preview for Pandorum

  Alvart has found a way to allegorise the survival (or otherwise) of humanity itself in an environment not unlike our own.

  Two astronauts wake up on a broken-down spaceship with no idea how they got there. What's worse is that they discover they're not alone...