School's Out

There is something so captivating about ‘School’s Out’, and it’s hard to put your finger on. Is it the impending sense of doom? Is it the nostalgia? Is it just wanting to know exactly what these kids are up to? Or are we even allowed to know? As adults, maybe we are just too far gone. If you like being slightly uncomfortable for an entire film, ‘School’s Out’ is for you - but maybe leave the kids at home.

• Brent Davidson

Read Brent's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-schools-out-the-children-know-too-much

Head to https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/sff for more Sydney Film Festival reviews.

Too ambiguous for its own good

There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Ecosystems as diverse as the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations.

• "Climate Change"; United Nations

Based on Christophe Dufossé's 2002 novel, L'Heure de la sortie [lit. trans. The Time to Exit] had its world premiere at the 2018 Venice Film Festival where it screened in the new "Sconfini" section, a non-competition category for difficult-to-classify films. Which should tell you a great deal. If you can imagine the ecological themes of films such as Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter (2011) or Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2017), filtered through the milieu of Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society (1989), but with the tonal qualities of Wolf Rilla's Village of the Damned (1960) or Fritz Kiersch's Children of the Corn (1984), then you'd be some way towards nailing director and co-writer Sébastien Marnier's second feature. Is it a satire about liberal Generation Z snowflakes overdramatically reading apocalyptic omens into trivial matters? Is it an allegory about how difficult it can be for gifted children to fit into so-called normal society? Is it a metaphor for the generation gap, and how today's children can often be alienated from even relatively young adults? Is it about desensitisation amongst a generation who have never known life without the internet or a world without post-9/11 paranoia? Is it a desperate call-to-arms, a plea on behalf of tomorrow's adults that humanity is rapidly reaching the point-of-no-return in terms of the damage we are doing to the Earth? Is it a horror movie...