2010 Underrated Films: Animal Kingdom

David Michôd is the writer/director of "Animal Kingdom," the Australian drama starring Guy Pearce. The film, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, is being released on DVD on January 18.

“The thing that made me want to make a movie about this world has always been to comprehend how people live lives like these where the stakes are so high, where making mistakes can mean the difference between life or death or freedom and incarceration, where a whole level of society operates just below what we know as moral and correct”. 

In order to get to the heart of the story, I felt I needed to meet the Jack Abramoff himself who had been sitting inside a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland for two years. After several months of back and forth between an Abramoff representative, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Abramoff family, I was allowed six prison visits and approximately thirty hours of interview time with Jack Abramoff, where he was being held on a six-year sentence–George Hickenlooper

Joel and Ethan Coen are the writers/directors of "True Grit," the adaptation of the Charles Portis novel of the same name. The film, which stars Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Hailee Steinfeld, is being released by Paramount on December 22.

“It’s told by this very self assured 14 year-old girl,” adds Ethan, “which is probably what makes the book so strange and funny. But it’s also like Alice in Wonderland because this 14 year-old girl finds herself in an environment that’s really, now-a-days, exotic.”  

Toronto Sun

http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/movies/2010/12/09/16494251.html

Rabbit Hole: Passion Project for Nicole Kidman

Read our review

Read the NY Times on the making of the film:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/movies/12kidman.html?_r=1