REVELATION 2011: TYRANNOSAUR

Actor-turned-director Paddy Considine’s remarkably assured debut begins with ageing widower Joseph (Peter Mullan) giving in to a fit of fury and kicking his yelping dog to death - instantly followed by wordless contrition. Later, when a boorish, cowardly neighbour's vicious dog threatens Joseph with a menacing snarl, Joseph tells the dog, “its not your fault”. Joseph, himself a grizzled, vicious old mutt, knows an animal can only take so much humiliation and punishment before it bites back. Welcome to the world of Tyrannosaur, or, one angry man's unflinching search for redemption from beasts inside and outside - including the beasts that are now bones in the earth serving as reminders of the past.

Escaping the aftermath of another violent outburst, Joseph runs into a Samaritan shop run by Hannah (Olivia Colman) who responds to Joseph’s hostility with Christian charity (after Joseph introduces himself as Robert De Niro, Hannah responds, “Would you like me to pray for you, Robert?”). Joseph delivers a blistering, condescending summation of what he considers to be Hannah’s perfect little life – which, in actuality, is far from rosey. Hannah lives in fear of her brutal, sexually demanding, God-fearing husband James (a brilliantly chilling Eddie Marsan), and numbs her fear with drink. Eventually she leaves James following a particularly terrifying violent episode, and seeks solace in Joseph. Joseph, who was similarly cruel to his late wife (who he nicknamed 'Tyrannosaur' due to her obesity), begins to exercise self-control now that he sees his cruel tendencies, and their grizzly consequences, reflected in other people.

The piss-soaked streets, dim, decaying interiors and the simple guitar-driven score help plant Considine’s film in familiar British neo-kitchen-sink territory similar to recent work from Clio Barnard, Andrea Arnold, Mullan, and Considine collaborator Shane Meadows. Most of all, however, I felt Tyrannosaur was cut from the same cloth as fellow actor-turned-director Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth. Colman, like Kathy Burke in Oldman’s film, is primarily known for her comedy work, but here displays a mournful vulnerability that becomes increasingly more complex. And boy, does James make her suffer – she is pissed on, beaten, sexually abused, must withstand tearful faux-apologies (“I don’t deserve you”) and also pretend to believe them. Like Oldman (who gets an end-title shout-out) Considine gives us effective domestic brutality but does not get off on it, edging into exploitation. A horribly tense, tender shot of James cupping Hannah’s cheek, for example, is instantly followed by the loud whack of Joseph destroying a shed. The centerpiece of Tyrannosaur is Mullan’s gruff Joseph – his meatiest performance since his breakthrough in My Name is Joe. Despite the pleasure of hearing Mullan's deep Scottish growl, his best moments are silent and observational - Joseph sitting on his couch among the ruins of his destroyed shed, for example, like a hurricane who has stopped to reflect on his destruction. Considine makes sure Tyrannosaur is not without a few moments of levity – but the order of the day here is bleak, hard-worn redemption, the kind where the only way out is through.

REVELATION 2011: MARS

Up to a point, if you strip away the ragged pseudo-rotoscope and all of the sci-fi elements from Geoff Marslett’s debut feature Mars, you might be left with almost the same film – that is, until the titular red planet comes into view from the spaceship windows. Marslett’s Mars is more than a destination or flimsy deux ex machina - it is the living, beating heart of this casual romantic comedy that embraces all lovers, human, robot or alien, into its orbit.

America in 2015 is a strange place: alt-country star Kinky Friedman is the president, and NASA’s space program is manned the sons and daughters of Slacker. When a Mars rover malfunctions, NASA send a trio of cosmonauts to discover what is really happening out on the red planet; Hank (Paul Gordon), Casey (Zoe Simpson) and Charlie (mumblecore hero Mark Duplass). Charlie used to have The Right Stuff on the spacewalk scene but on this trip he just coasts along, slouching around cross-stitching rhinestones and a cape onto his custom spacesuit, or phoning in to a z-grade tabloid TV show back on Earth.  As the trio get closer to the red planet, Hank spills the beans regarding the secrecy of the mission, so Charlie and Zoe must descend to the surface to discover if there really is love on Mars...

Between teaching animation full-time and fronting a kung-fu rock band, Marslett found the time to shoot Mars entirely before a green screen on an Austin sound stage for only $450,000 – he even created the DOS program that processes the footage to create the roto-esque look. Marslett confronts genre tradition not with subversion, but with a too-cool-for-school shrug that recalls Carpenter’s Dark Star, and is carried along by an appropriate comic-book aesthetic. The laid-back chemistry between Charlie and Zoe is endearing despite the faux-roto keeping us at arms length, however, their snappy sarcasm grates as the boredom of extended space travel sets in. While the green screen allows Marslett a high degree of freedom with backgrounds, the actors feel often removed from their environment, and only when the film arrives on Mars does the animation edge into the similar dream-like territory of Linklater’s cine-lecture Waking Life, as we are introduced to smitten alien critters and robots that do not dream of electric sheep, but zeroes and ones.

REVELATION 2011: FIRE IN BABYLON

As someone who knows diddly about the game of cricket, it is with great relief to see a fire in the belly of Steven Riley’s Fire In Babylon that sets it apart from most sports-docs. In the Carribean, we're told, cricket is more than a pleasant way to spend an afternoon - it is a way of life, and in this documentary, a passionate symbol of revolution. Babylon charts the struggle of the West Indies cricket team of the 70s and 80s to restore national dignity by beating their white oppressors with one of the seemingly harmless tools of British colonization. I say ‘seemingly’ because here, the ball is bowled as much to inflict pain on the batsman as to score points. The balls thrown from the West Indies bowlers have teeth, documented in yellowing stock footage that chronicles the violent clash between ball and man-flesh. The most vicious West Indian bowlers (Colin Croft, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, and Michael Holding) were even dubbed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – yet, as the doc illustrates, they were driven by a relentless national pride: mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Aside from a wonderful opening sequence in which various contemporary West Indies players bowl alongside footage of their 70s and 80s forbearers, the presentation of Babylon is reasonably simple: talking heads, stock footage, Flash-animated newspaper headlines and musical interludes to tie it all together. We see it all exclusively through the eyes of West Indies players and club members – which means the Australians and the English get the bum rap as villains. However it must be said - from Australian bowler Dennis Lillee intending a “military assault on West Indies cricket” for “self-preservation”, to English captain Tony Greig infamously expecting the West Indies team to “grovel” - that both nations play their respective villainous roles quite effectively. By having the advantage of being lithe and fit against fat, balding white men, Riley sets up his West Indies heroes for a glorious reckoning in the last third of the film. Before its all over, Babylon will fall (or as one talking head tells us, “the slaves whip the asses of their masters”), records will be set, and so many more batsmen will get clocked, painfully, in the balls.

REVELATION 2011: DRAGONSLAYER

Dragonslayer follows washed-up skater Josh “Screech” Sandoval as the pesky grown-up walls of responsibility begin to close in around him. We first meet him dynamically swooping on his board around the pool of a seemingly abandoned house until an irate occupant appears and kicks him out. This doesn’t faze Sandoval; he’ll just trawl the Fullerton streets by board or Google to find another pool to swoop around in. This without-a-safety-net style defines Sandoval’s approach to life – a friend even dubs him “random chaos”. Wanting to provide a positive role model for his newborn son Sid Rocket, Sandoval reappears on the skating scene after quitting a few years previously (and losing his sponsors in the process). He travels to Sweden for a competition with high hopes, but doesn’t win and returns to the same-old monotony of the local skate park with the other ‘Fresnoids’. To escape the ennui, Sandoval eventually decides to move to Arizona with his girlfriend Leslie on just a pittance - an attempt to avoid a horrifyingly dull ‘ordinary’ life that could also thrust him deeper into it.

Director Tristan Patterson met Sandoval at a party and was impressed enough by his energy and optimism that he decided to make a short about him, which ballooned into this SWSX-winning feature. Despite displaying Sandoval’s less attractive moments (his girlfriend isn’t the only disgusted one when he vomits blindly on the footpath), his approach to life is admirable in its fearlessness even if it edges into stoner stupidity at times. Patterson allows the story reveal itself in a sort-of real time – there is no narration and only a few intriguing clues to Sandoval’s past skating life and childhood – and Sandoval never appears to be fussed by the camera’s presence. Patterson even increases the intimacy by having Sandoval document himself with a smaller flip-camera; this visceral observational flip-cam footage highlights Patterson’s distant, beautifully melancholic 5D footage (those pretty Californian amber waves also won SWSX’s cinematography award).

Dragonslayer recalls the youthful Californian suburban-rot of Gummo or River’s Edge where pointlessness is the point, slowly pushed along by a hopeless sense of foreboding. As the film counts down in titles from ten, the invisible noose tightens around Sandoval while he shuffles his feet, battling silently with the dragon of adult responsibility that follows him everywhere.