There are a lot of things this movie does great, I want to comment right off the bat. However, part of me was frustrated I didn't love the whole movie, and I think there were just a few things holding it back from greatness. As such, I'm probably going to cover more negatives than positives here. If anything it's probably more like the equivalent of a 7.5 rather than a 7, so I hope it doesn't read too much like I'm bashing on the movie.
On the topic of positives: the acting across the board is very strong, particularly from Ben Mendelsohn, who seems to shine no matter what movie he's in. It captures the feeling of living in the Australian suburbs with an uncanny accuracy (can confirm, I've been there all my life), it uses music extremely well (especially one scene around the halfway mark that uses the anxious yet beautiful 'Bizness' by Tune-Yards), there are some genuinely emotional moments, and the direction is largely good.
I say largely good because aspects of how the movie looked would be one of my complaints. It adopts a handheld style for much of the runtime, and honestly it works the vast majority of the time. That being said, I couldn't help but notice a couple of instances where it was too rough; where it stopped looking like handheld camerawork and instead just looked like shoddy camerawork. These moments were rare, but one instance early on- where it looked like the camera banged into something and jolted slightly but noticeably- was distracting.
Speaking of distracting: so were the occasional Flea-Bag style glances to the camera from the main character. I'm sure there was a purpose, but it was lost on me (such a minor comment though, and not really a flaw if it just comes down to me being a dummy and not understanding).
Also, the film has a very episodic feel that creates a mild sense of repetition in parts. For just under two hours, it does feel a tiny bit long. I think you could have kept it episodic and maybe shortened some sequences, or excised one of the subplots (the violin teacher stuff didn't add a whole heap to the story, in my opinion). Or: give the narrative more of a logical flow and make the series of events more coherent and satisfying; traditional, even. The risk with doing that would be making the already quite simple story feel dangerously cliche, and so I think the best solution would be to keep the episodic feel but with about 10-15 minutes trimmed off the run time.
Like I said, it's very good though. And the acting, music, emotional content, setting, and most of the visuals are clearly good, while some of those other aforementioned nitpicks- had they been addressed- could have made for a movie that I would've loved.
On the topic of positives: the acting across the board is very strong, particularly from Ben Mendelsohn, who seems to shine no matter what movie he's in. It captures the feeling of living in the Australian suburbs with an uncanny accuracy (can confirm, I've been there all my life), it uses music extremely well (especially one scene around the halfway mark that uses the anxious yet beautiful 'Bizness' by Tune-Yards), there are some genuinely emotional moments, and the direction is largely good.
I say largely good because aspects of how the movie looked would be one of my complaints. It adopts a handheld style for much of the runtime, and honestly it works the vast majority of the time. That being said, I couldn't help but notice a couple of instances where it was too rough; where it stopped looking like handheld camerawork and instead just looked like shoddy camerawork. These moments were rare, but one instance early on- where it looked like the camera banged into something and jolted slightly but noticeably- was distracting.
Speaking of distracting: so were the occasional Flea-Bag style glances to the camera from the main character. I'm sure there was a purpose, but it was lost on me (such a minor comment though, and not really a flaw if it just comes down to me being a dummy and not understanding).
Also, the film has a very episodic feel that creates a mild sense of repetition in parts. For just under two hours, it does feel a tiny bit long. I think you could have kept it episodic and maybe shortened some sequences, or excised one of the subplots (the violin teacher stuff didn't add a whole heap to the story, in my opinion). Or: give the narrative more of a logical flow and make the series of events more coherent and satisfying; traditional, even. The risk with doing that would be making the already quite simple story feel dangerously cliche, and so I think the best solution would be to keep the episodic feel but with about 10-15 minutes trimmed off the run time.
Like I said, it's very good though. And the acting, music, emotional content, setting, and most of the visuals are clearly good, while some of those other aforementioned nitpicks- had they been addressed- could have made for a movie that I would've loved.