Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Written by Sophie Henderson and directed by Gaysorn Thavat, The Justice of Bunny King wobbles somewhere between comedy and drama, with its initially chipper title character (played by Essie Davis) driven to an act of desperation. Above it hangs a social issue – that mothers in a lower socio-economic bracket in New Zealand struggle to get housing for their fractured family, with the cause of family breakdown driven by an abusive male partner. Henderson and Thavat don’t go further into asking why New Zealand men from a lower socio-economic background turn on their partners and what can be done about it. The majority of the film’s male characters are lecherous twerps who deserve to have ‘scum’ spray-painted onto their cars – as happens here. The only kind man in the film is Maori. It is implied that his morals are kept in check by his mum, who has a strong sense of family. When we first meet her, Bunny is cleaning car windows at a busy intersection for dollar coins, twirling her m...

  Contains spoilers Adapted by Rita Kalnejais from her 2012 play and directed by Shannon Murphy, Babyteeth is an antidote to Love Story . Films about men who fall in love with women who have fatal diseases inevitably end badly, but usually tug on the heartstrings. We imagine the life the young couple could have enjoyed together and blub uncontrollably. We empathise, which is to say we relate their loss to any loss that we have experienced, be it of a person or family pet (but usually a person). Some of us identify, because we have had the sad, sickening misfortune of losing the partner we love in the prime of youth. Set in a leafy suburb of Sydney, Australia , Babyteeth elicits neither identification nor empathy because it is nihilistic. It posits suicide at the beginning and suggests a mercy killing at the end. The main character, sixteen-year-old Milla (Eliza Scanlen) lives in her own bubble of inevitability. At the beginning, we see her in her school uniform trembling on a...