BURNING MAN is possibly the shiniest wildest and most dazzling new Australian film this year. Absolutely modern in tone and emphatically heartless this is the jigsaw-puzzle depiction of one very confident handsome man imploding and emotionally fracturing. I could suggest it is emotional Inception requiring 2 viewings to slot it all together. However you might not want to because, as gorgeous a leading man as he is, and as sexually magnetic as every woman he meets finds him, and as slick as the film making clearly is, he is not a very nice person for 108 of the 109 minutes on screen. BURNING MAN is a heterosexual version of Matthew Goode’s own recent film A SINGLE MAN which won an Oscar last year for someone else. Set in Bondi Sydney this chef with a lonely egg beater and a bewildered son gets mangled in a car crash to jiggle himself through his life flashing by long enough for us to know he actually fell in love (hence kid) … perfect performances, confusing casing and in need of an edit, BURNING MAN is terrific and annoying all at once. Great film making and aggravatingly modern. Imagine Jamie Oliver played by Tom Hardy. Hump on the hotplate, anyone? wanna watch? All that and more…. then there’s the wanking scene…..

I was not very interested in watching Seeking Justice but I decided to risk myself, because the publicity and the title suggested a typical tale of personal revenge in the purest style of B cinema, and besides, Nicolas Cage can be a good actor whenever he wants to. To my surprise, the film ended up defying my low expectations with a screenplay which is more ambitious than I expected, and even though it eventually tangles itself too much for its own good, I never found it boring or predictable.

I found the concept of Seeking Justice very interesting…something like an hybrid thriller, built with parts from Fight Club, Straw Dogs and Strangers on a Train. The combination works pretty well until the half of the film, when we get into conspiracy fields which quickly become confusing, improbable and even a bit ridiculous. However, Roger Donaldson’s dynamic direction avoids the movie to get boring. Cage makes a credible work in the leading role, and he is well complemented by the solid performances from January Jones and Guy Pearce.

So, I would say that the screenplay from Seeking Justice is simultaneously its main pro and its main obstacle, because it starts with an interesting idea, it develops it well for a while, but it looses the course and the narrative focus during the second half, until leading to an excessively convenient ending.

Anyway, I had a good time while watching Seeking Justice, and I consider it worthy of a moderate recommendation. However, if you wanna watch better movies about revenge, I recommend you Oldboy, both versions of I Spit on Your Grave or Death Wish. Nevertheless, I liked Seeking Justice despite its fails, and it was better than I expected.

What a sad attempt to portray stray girls in the big city. This is a huge disappointment that fits in with the declining quality of many HBO series. If you want to see uncaring sex there is plenty of porno that is a whole lot better and readily available.

There is nothing noteworthy about these “girls” except they are all fairly doleful and apparently adrift. It is a gloomy indictment of current society if most young women living in a big city are in this blighted state. The melancholy of it is really the only thing that makes them sympathetic.

The acting is atrocious and borders on the junior high school level. Stone faced they read their lines in a near monotone. There is better acting from children on Nickelodeon. Hopefully it will improve over time.