Founded in the 1930s, Hammer Film Productions became infamous for their run of horror films that began in the 1950s through to the 1970s, when changing audience tastes sent the studio into effective hibernation. The shift away from Gothic horror came with the rise of the more graphic violence of Night of the Living Dead (1968), the psychological terror of Rosemary’s Baby and the moral bending films of Wes Craven. Unsure of how to respond to this, the studio floundered. However, the last few years have seen something of a revival for the studio, who co-produced the successful Let Me In (2008), itself a remake of the Sweden’s new breed of horror, Let the Right One In. With The Woman in Black, Hammer finally returns to its roots.

During the Edwardian era, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) lives with his four-year-old son and his nanny, following the death of his wife during childbirth. Plagued with visions and financial problems, he takes an assignment to take care of the remote estate of Alice Drablow. When he arrives, the locals are less than welcoming, and a strange pall hangs over the village. Befriended by the wealthy Sam Daily (Ciarán Hinds) and his wife Elizabeth (Janet McTeer), Arthur soon discovers that the strange house he is investigating may not be as abandoned as he first thought.

Based on the 1983 novel by Susan Hill, The Woman in Black has been one of the longest running plays on London’s West End, second only to Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. This is perhaps indicative of the simple fascination audiences have in unravelling a mystery, and with this film Hammer, together with Alliance Films, demonstrate that they gotit right back in the 1970s: the world just needed to come full circle again. Helping them bridge the gap for modern audiences is Eden Lake helmer James Watkins, and geek favourite Jane Goldman, who penned the adaptation. Eschewing the hyperkinetic energy she co-wrote into Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class, Goldman’s script fundamentally understands that with Gothic horror, the pace is the trick.

The Woman in Black is noticeably absent of the gore that changed the game for Hammer back in the 1970s, but instead crafts a chilling landscape filled with darkness in every corner. Cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones also departs from his singular style of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels to cast a fog over the marshes, finding more spooks in what isn’t seen. When the scares come, and they do, they are all the spookier for the restraint shown earlier in the piece.

Unburdened from the shackles of the Harry Potter franchise, Daniel Radcliffe proves to be a capable leading man, wisely choosing to slightly underplay it, but not to the wooden extents of his more famous wizard counterpart. Bolstered by an excellent supporting cast, The Woman in Black may have a familiar conclusion, but most of the joy (and the scares) are in getting there.

The Woman in Black is released in Australia on 17 May 2012 from Roadshow Films.

Sacha Baron Cohen‘s singular quest to deride and belittle his targets has earned him accolades around the globe, and has become known for portraying a variety of fictional characters who set up real-world people to fall in front of the cameras. Just as Gary McDonald’s Norman Gunston satirised Australian culture and show business, Baron Cohen’s Ali G, Brüno and, most infamously, Borat set out to challenge what people thought of cultural stereotypes and expose general ignorance. Yet there is a fine line between mocking bigotry and simply being offensive.

In The Dictator, Baron Cohen portrays Admiral General Aladeen of the fictional Republic of Wadiya, said to be based loosely on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.  One of the most tyrannical dictators in the world’s history, he visits New York to address the United Nations. However, forgotten heir Tamir (Ben Kingsley) betrays him, replacing him with a decoy intending to bring democracy to Wadiya. Aladeen is set adrift in the Big Apple, taken in by do-gooder Zoey (Anna Faris), but is determined to ensure democracy is kept away from the country he has lovingly enslaved.

Baron Cohen’s schtick has to date been a straightforward one, employing tried-and-true candid camera techniques to catch his unsuspecting targets behaving more like themselves than they would care to admit. With The Dictator, the co-writer and star tries on a narrative structure for size. On one hand, the move shows a progression in a career that was beginning to become stagnant, with each character effectively a variation on previous incarnations, with turns in Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Hugo notable exceptions. However, it is not the form of the film that betrays Baron Cohen’s weaknesses, but rather the character(s) he chooses to continually portray. It also means he no longer has the excuse of using bigotry for the purpose of catching people off guard.

Stripped of his beard and identifiable accent, Aladeen is the basest of racist humans, sparing nobody in his tirades. With Borat, he played off his own Jewish heritage with the anti-Semitic character. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Baron Cohen explained “By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice”. Yet nobody is spared in The Dictator, with the character of Aladeen being against women (and feminism generally), various races and religions and implicitly a parody of Arabic stereotypes. Which begs the question of who or what Baron Cohen is actually targeting in this very broad slapstick farce, except perhaps deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, to whom the film is ‘dedicated’.

There are moments when Baron Cohen’s point is almost visible, including the perception of an American couple who assume Aladeen and his colleague are terrorist. In a final speech, perhaps designed to mirror Charlie Chaplin’s seminal monologue in The Great Dictator (1940), Baron Cohen comes closest to making a point about the hypocrisy of the United States on a global scale. Yet he squanders every other chance at comedy on slapstick, and cheap shots that would have seemed dated in the days of Ayatollah t-shirts. In the end, Baron Cohen doesn’t so much hold up a mirror to bigotry, but seems to have finally become one himself, providing an easily imitable cartoon to be misused by the masses.

The Dictator is released in Australia on 16 May 2012 from Paramount.

It has been over a decade since Amélie, and yet it still seems to define how the world views its beautiful star, Audrey Tautou. Not that she isn’t complicit in this perception. Of the dozen or so films she has made in the interim, over half of these have been romantic comedies, and more than half of those have been largely forgettable. When we last checked in with Tautou in Beautiful Lies, she remained the beautiful eye-candy that she was a decade ago in what will always remain her most famous of roles. Yet despite her “edgier” window dressing, she did little to escape the shadow of a role that has hung over her for the better part of that period. With Delicacy (La Délicatesse), Tautou continues her water-treading.

Nathalie (Tautou) is hopelessly in love with her husband, until he is unexpectedly killed. Mourning his loss, she buries herself in her work, not allowing herself to enjoy life at all. Shunning the advances of her sleazy boss (Bruno Todeschini), she spontaneously kisses her unattractive Swedish co-worker Markus (François Damiens). She thinks nothing of it, but it radically changes Markus’ outlook on life. Against the odds, the two begin to form a romantic relationship, baffling everyone around them.

David Foenkinos‘ 2009 novel of the same name is a beloved tome in its native France, where the novelist/screenwriter’s work has been a popular bestseller since its release. As such, this adaptation is expected to come with some sense of the familiar, but the standard plotting of the attractive younger women inexplicably drawn to the “ugly” and quirky guy is hardly original. Indeed, it would have made for a far more interesting turn if the roles had been reversed, but that film is another film entirely. Foenkinos’ directoral debut, which he shares with his brother Stéphane Foenkinos, is a quietly confident one, but it all too often falls back on the familiar.

Using the post-Amélie tweeness that seem to have afflicted every film now shot in the Gallic borders is not a barrier in and of itself. The brothers Foenkinos do a miraculous job of setting up a doomed romance at the start of the film, and a genuine sense of loss when Nathalie’s husband is removed from the scene. Following the sufficiently cinematic period of mourning, a typically preposterous set of events leads to new and incredulous love. Again, this is hardly unexpected in this most reliable of genres, but what becomes important are the events and behaviours set in motion after the inevitable is set in motion.

Very much a showcase for Tautou’s beauty and talents, she doesn’t get much of a chance to stretch her acting skills beyond the first act. Once she is snapped out of a convincing depression, it is François Damiens who begins to steal the scenes. Insights into his neuroses and inner fears border on Woody Allen territory, although these are largely used as a comic roadblock to the inevitable. Unexpectedly, the chemistry that develops between the two leads is a warm one, and makes the path of least resistance an even smoother ride.

Although there is a slightly cloying sweetness to Delicacy, including a Pez dispenser used as a shorthand for something of significance, but the relationship between Nathalie and Markus is filled with some well-earned laughs. Some of these are squarely at the expense of the Swedish, some of which will go over the tops of the heads of anybody who doesn’t share in the Franco-Swedish rivalry. Despite this, there is much to like in this fairly inoffensive cool breeze of a romantic comedy. If this is not an antidote to the more overbearing cousin of the Hollywood rom-com, it serves as a good placebo until one gets here.

Delicacy was released in Australia on 3 May 2012 from Transmission.

If the name Boaz Yakin seems familiar, it is possible you need to start watching a better class of film. A veteran with only six directorial credits under his belt, he is better “known” for his writing. Going all the way back to The Punisher (1989), with a brief highlight of directorial debut Fresh (1994), his filmography is peppered with sequels and adaptations, including From Dusk Til Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999), Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights (2004) and the admittedly underrated Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). Safe may be the culmination of that life’s work.

Abducted from her home in China after displaying brilliant math skills, Mei (Catherine Chan) is sent to work for the Triad in New York. She soon finds herself caught in a war between the Triad, the Russian mob and corrupt NYC cops when she is asked to commit an important number to memory. Temporarily escaping their custody, she is aided by ex-cage fighter Luke Wright (Jason Statham), who is now destitute thanks to the Russians.

Safe is a throwback to the kind of action films that haven’t been made in three decades, and reminds us that there is a reason for that.  Not moving on from his fairly forgettable 1980s take on Marvel’s The Punisher, Yakin seems to have cherry-picked his favourite things from the decade, right down to the presence of veteran character actor James Hong (Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China) as a Chinese gangster. The simple character archetypes leave little room for ambiguity, with Statham unequivocally the Good Guy and the mob collectives are filled with very, very bad men. All other characters, from crooked cops to corrupt officials, are wholly familiar constructs.  Statham might actually be one of the last action heroes, a relic of a cinema that treated its muscle men as gods, before unceremoniously dumping them direct to video and occasionally reunite them for the unabashedly retro The Expendables.

Not necessarily a bad film, Safe is an incredibly uninspired one. Yakin creates a vision of New York that only ever existed in the movies, and one that was only found on the cinematic mean streets of the 1970s and 1980s. While individual elements of action are well-staged, including a fist-fight on a train and a few car chases, they make all other elements seem perfunctory. Laughable dialogue is the type familiar to connoisseurs of the genre, but here Yakin seems to have gone the extra mile and equips Statham  with as many lame puns as there are henchmen in the Big Apple. There was a solid action film in here somewhere, but having failed to achieve this in what feels like a first draft of a movie, Yakin may instead achieve cult status with an unintentional comedy.

Safe is released in Australia on 10 May 2012 from Icon.

Best known for the better part of the last decade as Ted Moseby on TV’s How I Met Your Mother, Josh Radnor made his directorial debut with the audience-pleasing Happythankyoumoreplease in 2010. The winner of the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and a nominee for the Grand Jury Prize the same year, it is wonderful to see that Radnor has not only returned to writing and directing, but has brought one of the better reflections on the mid-30s funk that is all too familiar to anybody with a liberal arts and social sciences background.

Thirty-something Jesse (Josh Radnor) is recently single and bored with his job in university admissions. With his head constantly buried in a book, he worries life has passed him by. When his favourite college professor Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins) invites him back to his old campus to speak at a retirement dinner, he quickly accepts the offer and heads off for a weekend of nostalgia. However, there he meets Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), a forthright undergraduate who sparks feelings in Jesse that he thought he’d lost for good.

The coming-of-age genre has increasingly shifted over the last few decades to studies of people in their 20s and 30s, and this is perhaps indicative of the uncertainty a world of choice brings with it. Radnor’s heartfelt exploration of the impotency that accompanies the ambiguous career paths of a liberal arts/humanities/social science degree is a genuine one, and undoubtedly something that a number of people of a similar age (who didn’t go on to a successful acting career) will share with the filmmaker. Radnor contrasts this dilemma with the ageing character of Hoberg, flawlessly played by the incomparable Jenkins, who is having his own crisis of faith at the tail end of a career Jesse wishes he had followed to some extent.

Radnor transplants enough of his television persona into Jesse to make him instantly accessible, but this is not simply a retread of his previous work. Olsen continues to dominate the indie world after an impressive debut last year in Martha Marcy May Marlene, but here she has a more concrete persona to latch onto. Yet what sells Liberal Arts is that this is a romantic comedy that develops a believable romance between Jesse and someone almost half his age, and doesn’t quite take you where you expect. This sense of the offbeat is embodied in the guru Nat (Zac Efron), who doesn’t attend college but irregularly turns up to dispense sage wisdom from his bottle of water.

Liberal Arts marks the continuation of a strong storytelling voice in Radnor, who hipefully focus more on this kind of filmmaking when his television children eventually find out how he met their mother. Smart, funny and sincere, not to mention being beautifully shot by Seamus Tierney (Veronika Decides to Die) – possibly boosting Ohio university admissions – this is a film that you should let wash over you.

Liberal Arts debuted at Sundance in January 2012, and Sundance London in April 2012.. It will play at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2012, and be released theatrically in Australia on 11 October 2012 from Icon.

When did we lose Johnny Depp? It is hard to tell exactly, for he has experienced a ubiquitous position in the limelight for the last few decades, his cool cache transcending both the indie and the mainstream swooners. Yet with his recent career-defining performance in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Depp birthed Jack Sparrow onto the world, and he has been swimming in a sea of rum and swagger ever since. Following a string of poor films – beginning with the disappointing Public Enemies, the embarrassing Alice in Wonderland, the cash-grabs of The Tourist and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and the misguided The Rum Diary -  we have begun to wonder if we’ve finally lost Depp for good with this eight collaboration with director Tim Burton.

In 1752, the English Collins family arrives in North America. Their industry grows so much that the seaside town of Collinsport is named after them, and young Barnabas Collins (Depp) takes over the burgeoning fishing trade. He falls in love with Josette (Bella Heathcote), but after jilting the wrong house-servant, the wicked witch Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), his love is killed and he is cursed to be a vampire for all eternity. Locked in a box by the townspeople, he awakens to a very changed Collinsport of 1972. Taken in by Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer), the current Collins matriach, his new “family” is a ragtag group. However, when he falls in love with the current incarnation of his beloved Josette, governess Victoria (also Heathcote), he much foil Angelique if he is to hold onto his family.

Tim Burton has developed a certain gothic sameness to his last few films, even when experimenting with the CGI-heavy Alice in Wonderland or musical Sweeney Todd. To have such a recognisable voice is admirable, as so few filmmakers have an identifiable artistic niche as easily identifiable as Burton’s. Yet with Dark Shadows, Burton reaches the tipping point between signature and retread. Burton’s visuals certainly make the film engaging initially, but Seth Grahame-Smith’s debut feature screenplay drags before taking a very long walk off too short a pier. Caught somewhere between gothic horror and a groovy 1970s that never existed outside of the movies, the cliché riddled script bores where it should soar. For it isn’t the high concept, based very loosely on the 1960s/70s sopa opera of the same name, that is at fault but the execution.

Much of the script invests its strength in Depp’s performance, but even he seems to be going through the motions with familiar “fish out of water” gags. Indeed, much of the original series’ popularity came from the introduction of Barnabus Collins. While Depp is in his element, he isn’t given much to work with, to the point that even the other characters comment on how stiff an archaic he seems. This carries about a quarter of the film, but the rest of the film plays out like a greatest hits package of the rest of the original series. The mandatory inclusion of the suitably batty Helena Bonham Carter is purely perfunctory, creating a subplot that distracts from the already scatterbrained main narrative, and the increasingly woeful Chloë Moretz is just terrible. Indeed, she is only introduced for a third act reveal that is best described as silly. Only Eva Green, reconstructed by Burton to bear an uncanny resemblance to former muse Lisa Marie, brings any real life to this cold fish of a film.

At best, Dark Shadows is boring, aping other films in a misguided attempt at retro-charm, exemplified by an extended appearance by Alice Cooper. Yet there is something more sinister at play here, with Grahame-Smith and Burton failing to connect even the most basic building blocks of plot together long enough to sustain interest. In all this confusion, it is unsurprising that Bella Heathcote’s accent slips once or twice. Given his fumbling with this material, it is no wonder that the already repetitive Burton is returning to familiar turf with remakes and sequels to his own work in Frankenweenie and Beetlejuice 2.

Dark Shadows is released in Australia on 10 May 2012 from Roadshow Films. It is released in the US on 11 May 2012 from Warner.

Last year, Jason Segel told us that he and frequent collaborator Nicholas Stoller “share a comedy brain”. It is a mind of many laughs, with the pair already behind bona fide modern classics Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and last year’s The Muppets. So the reunion of this dream team for a comedy with Emily Blunt, Segel’s co-star of the Stoller-penned Gulliver’s Travels, seemed like a surefire recipe for success. The Five-Year Engagement is apparently a practical exercise in the course of true love not running smoothly.

Up and coming sous chef Tom (Jason Segel) and psychology post-doc Violet (Emily Blunt) are a happy couple who decide to get engaged after a year together. However, their pending nuptials are interrupted when Violet’s sister Suzie (Alison Brie) gets pregnant to Tom’s best friend Alex (Chris Platt), and their wedding takes a backseat to the shotgun nuptials. Things get further delayed when Violet is offered a post-doctoral position in Michigan under the suave professor Winton Childs (Rhys Ifans), forcing Tom to uproot from his San Francisco home and job to support Violet. As their marriage is again put on hold, the nature of their relationship changes.

In a mere 124 minutes, The Five-Year Engagement bends time and space by seemingly playing out its premise in real time. Segel and Blunt have proven in the past that they have great chemistry together, even through the stilted and unnatural performances of Gulliver’s Travels. While there is still some of that magic here, particularly in the easy back-and-forth the pair share, any magic between the two of them seems comparatively forced. Yet unlike most rom-coms, this isn’t a film about falling in love, and by the time we first meet them they are already very much in love. The film follows the trials and tribulations of staying in love, although it never quite decides whether it wants to be a comedy or a soppy dramatic romance. While it is true that a film can be both things, Segel and Stoller’s script never seems confident in its own drama. Whenever a tender moment is shared between any two characters, it is quite literally punctuated with a dick joke or potty-level humour. This is especially true of Chris Pratt, and Community‘s Alison Brie is simply wasted as a run-of-the-mill and frequently hysterical character.

There are, of course, moments of great hilarity. Tom’s descent from supportive partner to stay-at-home wilderness man is a running gag throughout the film, and plays to Segel’s natural strengths as a comedian. Of course, it comes with an awkward implication about man’s natural place not being in domesticity, with Violet’s career success partly to blame for his ‘softening’. Indeed, apart from one readily dismissed infraction, Segel has written his character in a far more positive light than Blunt’s, making the final act something of an uncomfortable drag. Carrying the film on long after the happy ending is a foregone conclusion, The Five-Year Engagement gets quite dark in its lead-up to the denouement, confusing sinister for subversive. A noble attempt at doing something different with the genre, just not an entirely successful one.

The Five-Year Engagement was released in Australia on 3 May 2012 from Universal.

Debut filmmaker Sheldon Candis has stepped into some pretty big shoes with his debut feature, a curious mixture of autobiography and HBO series The Wire. Drawing on his own formative years growing up in the infamous city of Baltimore as a “stoop” kid, observing but not partaking in the violence around him, his film school years found an artistic voice to express the realities of living in that environment. Candis’ Sundance debut may not hit all the right notes, but signals the arrival of someone to watch.

Woody (Michael Rainey Jr) is an 11-year-old boy waiting for the return of his missing mother. Living with his grandmother and his Uncle Vincent (Common), who has recently finished an 8 year stretch in prison, his outlook on the world is narrowed by his innocence. Haunted by his past, Vincent seeks to go legitimate with a waterfront business, but he struggles to raise the money. Spying a need to school Woody in the ways of being a man, Vincent takes the boy with him while he sorts out his affairs. However, Vincent’s past catches up with him, throwing Woody into the deep end of adulthood.

The gritty streets of Baltimore have served as the playground for a number of seriously good crime dramas over the last few decades, beginning with David Simon’s Homicide: Life on the Streets. Baltimore was elevated to inhumanly grand proportions with The Wire, which might be one of LUV‘s closest contemporaries. LUV doesn’t share The Wire‘s ambitious city-spanning hyperlinks, but rather singles out a day-in-the-life portrait of a father-figure and son. It is true that the events of this particular day are far from typical, and indeed the principal character arc is a fairly rapid one even by film standards. Like a junior Training Day, Woody learns the ropes the hard way, but his transformation from innocent to determined sharpshooter is faster than Anakin Skywalker’s.

The central performances are phenomenal, especially young Rainey Jr, who impresses in his  second feature role. He embodies the innocence of youth, complete with an accompanying naivety, which makes his transformation all the more heartbreaking. Rapper Common, continuing a string of strong performances off the back of TV’s Hell on Wheels, shows us his true calling on screen, not giving Woody an inch but hiding years of pain behind his character’s eyes. Charles S. Dutton and Danny Glover, as polar opposite mentors in Vincent’s life, both turn in admirable performances. Indeed, it would be tough to connect the Glover of the 1980s with the accomplished performances he has turned out recently.

Yet more than this, LUV is about not wanting to disappoint those that look up to you the most, but winding up doing so anyway. The film’s title stands for Learning Uncle Vincent, but could just as easily be Living Under Violence. In what is effectively a two-hander between father figure and son, co-writer/director Sheldon Candis has the occasional misstep and rushes the ending, but proves to be a strong new voice in cinema. Yet as we witness a man who wants to be there for Woody, but terrified of failing, Candis leaves us with a tragic and optimistic ending, one that doesn’t always reconcile with the film we’ve seen, but is fascinating to watch unfold.

LUV debuted at Sundance in January 2012, and Sundance London in April 2012. It does not currently have an Australian release date.

A few years ago, an advertisement was placed anonymously in the classified section of newspaper The Copenhagen Post, a weekly newspaper providing Danish news in English. The text became the stuff of Internet legend: “Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke…You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before”. Director Colin Trevorrow has taken this small paragraph and crafted it into a fictional narrative that defies the boundaries of time and space.

Darius (Aubrey Plaza) has found herself in something of a funk years after the premature death of her mother. Working as an abused intern at a newspaper, she is looking for anything to bring meaning to her life. When journalist Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) pitches the idea of chasing up the owner of the time travel classified ad, she quickly volunteers. Heading off to a small coastal town with Mark and fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni), they quickly discover the identity of the potential temporal tourist. A local loner, Kenneth (Mark Duplass) is intense and potentially unhinged, but his openness and earnestness draws Darius in to his world. His reasons for wanting to go back are “classified”, but he slowly begins to trust Darius. Meanwhile, Mark’s intentions aren’t entirely editorial, using the opportunity to try and hook up with the “one that got away” from his youth.

Director Trevorrow, together with writer Derek Connolly, could have very easily mocked the character of Kenneth, rallying the audience around a more cynical style of comedy. Yet, like Lars and the Real Girl before it, the real charm of Safety Not Guaranteed is in its own sincerity. The question of whether Kenneth is for real is a mini-mystery right up until the very end, but there is very little questioning his own belief in the time travel project. Whether it is the product of madness or deep personal tragedy and loss, the audience is just as readily drawn into this complex world. In this sense, Trevorrow’s film draws its closest parallels with the fantasy films of the 1980s, especially Steven Spielberg’s Amblin productions. Unlike J.J. Abrams’ recent retro-awesome in Super 8, there are no children or aliens wrapped up in an adventure. There may or may not be a government conspiracy, but the fundamental parallel is in wanting to believe in the high concept against all rational evidence to the contrary. This is the real achievement of Safety Not Guaranteed, and there will be a few few moments where you may not be able to restrain an audible cheer or joy or jeer of sadness.

Trevorrow’s cast is largely peppered with a collection of actors best known for their work on the small screen. Duplass is magnificent as Kenneth, equal parts socially awkward and potentially creepy. He presents himself as the caricature at first, bailing up coworkers and customers at his retail job with stories of quantum mechanics. As Darius gets to know him, Duplass reveals a complex creation that sits underneath the obvious. AF doesn’t deviate significantly from her deadpan Parks and Recreation performances, here working it to get advantage to perhaps offset any audience incredulity at the core premise. Contrasting their buddy relationship is that of Mark and old flame Liz (Jenica Bergere), cleverly weaving a parallel narrative that demonstrates that sometimes you can’t go back. Newcomer YY is a delight, and hopefully to be seen in more productions. Safety Not Guaranteed is one of the most charming films of the year, and destined to be a cult classic. Safety may not be assured, but big sloppy grins are guaranteed. Weapons are optional.

Safety Not Guaranteed debuted at Sundance in January 2012, and Sundance London in April 2012. It does not currently have an Australian release date.

Ry Russo-Young‘s debut film, Orphans (2007) won a Special Jury Prize at South by Southwest upon its release, immediately grabbing audiences with her vision. Her sophomore effort, You Won’t Miss Me (2009), appeared at the Sundance Film Festival, and went on to win a Gotham Award for Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You. Her third film, co-written with Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture, HBO’s Girls), continues her exploration of the intimacies of human relationships in this often funny, and sometimes cold, dissection of the complexities of modern relationships.

23-year-old Martine (Olivia Thirlby) arrives in the hip hills of Los Angeles to stay in the poolhouse of sound designer Peter (John Krasinski) and his wife Julie (Rosemarie Dewitt). There to work on her short film about insects, her presence sparks something in all three parties that not only shatter the idyllic lives of the couple, but bring to light the thin veneer that everybody holds up on the pretense of civility in the big city.

Thirlby’s Martine is an ambiguous seductress, never overtly portrayed as a consciously disruptive force, but rather she brings with her the scent of sex. It is suggested that she is using her sexuality to her own advantage, but all she merely does is open the door. It is further implied that Peter and Julie had already allowed it to be left ajar, and it is their willingness and desire to be seen as an open-minded couple fostered this environment. Few other wives would willingly allow an attractive young girl into their house to be locked in a tiny soundproof room for days with their husband, after all. An interesting parallel is the young daughter Kolt (India Ennega of TV’s Treme), who independently manages to make her feelings of disgust clear to her slimy older Italian teacher Marcello (Emanuele Secci).

Rapidly becoming a genre of its own, thanks partly to the pseudo-mainstream success of the likes of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and Somewhere, the slow-paced style of dramedy has carved out a niche as the artistic outlet of 20 and 30-something filmmakers, precariously perched inside an ironic voicelessness that comes from ubiquitous access to communication platforms. Like co-writer Dunham’s microcosmic view of New York’s Tribeca in Tiny Furniture, there is an element of parody to this portrait, but unlike that earlier work the writing duo have constructed a set of characters that are worth exploring. While this sometimes treads dangerously close to creating a void between he audience and the film, Russo-Young’s snapshot of a dysfunctional unit captures the reality of living in a big city.

Nobody Walks premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012, and screened again at the Sundance London Film Festival in April 2012. It has been picked up by Magnolia Pictures for US distribution.