Keir O'Donnell

Marmalade

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Marmalade in a car

A clever one-two of a movie, Marmalade starts out looking like one thing, then turns into something else, but saves its best moves for the finale, when revelations come tumbling out at a rate of knots. What it looks like is one of those dweeby, comic coming-of-agers of the early 2000s, movies like Elizabethtown or Garden State, in which uptight milquetoast guys are given an injection of va-va-voom by a force-of-nature free-spirit female. The creation of the passive, sex-starved male writer, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl – one dimensional, a catalyst in someone else’s story rather than a hero in her own and just incidentally as hot as lava – was so ubiquitous … Read more

The Dry

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Aaron and local cop Greg investigate

A very familiar whodunit with an unfamiliar setting, The Dry sees Eric Bana on home Australian turf as a cop investigating the case of a man who killed his wife and kid before turning the gun on himself. How familiar? How about: cop returns to old stomping ground, drawn back by a case which also re-awakens some slumbering trauma from years before. Yes, that one. Ringing the changes is the parched, dust-dry Outback where years-long drought is squeezing the life out of Kiawarra, a one-horse town dominated by farming, as well as the sweat-stain masculinity that’s an Aussie specialty. Drinking, brawling, swearing and scowling, plenty of all those too. Specifically, Eric Bana plays … Read more