Japandroids’ music feels like the embodient of velocity. Each song has a forward momentum, the feeling of the wind rushing by (it’s dangerous driving music). Their songs are about having fun, the possibilities of youth, but there’s also a distinct pang of regret beneath the dynamic façade. The Japandroids aren’t racing to anything; they’re racing…
When a Stranger Calls is, essentially, two well-produced, scary scenes bracketing a meandering, uninteresting private detective movie. It’s a shame, because the premise is actually interesting: introducing a faceless psychopath then treating him with some sympathy, revealing him to be a real, irrevocably damaged, person. This premise is executed without effort or imagination. The opening…
This is not the kind of song I like. I have a problem with the contrived singing voice that Lisa Mitchell, like many other singers nowadays, adopts. It reminds me of that silly baby voice that people put on around young children, a vocal style that would sound ridiculous if used in everyday conversation. And…
I was skeptical coming in to Season 2 of Homeland – the first season had been excellent, but the writers had put themselves in a difficult position at season’s end. The start of Season 2 allayed my fears, with a spectacular opening batch of episodes. The early reveal of Brody’s tape was a genuine surprise,…
“It’s extremely personal. When I wrote the things that I’m singing, I didn’t expect anyone to hear it, or know it, or say it.” – Megan James1 When discussing music, the word “intimate” is generally reserved for the discussion of gentle, crowded-sounding music. Acoustic guitars accompanied by fragile singing, that sort of thing. But an…
The Omen is silly when it should be scary, despite the stately sets and sombre acting surrounding it. David Warner (not the cricketer) does an admirable job of delivering a huge chunk of ominous exposition without it sounding too absurd (until he loses his head) and Gregory Peck is always reliable. The soundtrack and special…
I had expected something revolutionary from The 400 Blows: imaginative, exciting filmmaking from the film that began the New Wave movement. The cinematography itself didn’t wow me as I’d hoped, aside from a spectacular and extended series of tracking shots that conclude the film. But the story of young Antoine Doinel is certainly touching, particularly…
There’s something to be said for nostalgia, especially when it comes to music. It’s no accident that whenever people put together a “best music of all time” the list tends to skew very heavily to the music that was coming out in their late teens and early twenties; the time when they were singing along…
Yes, another horror movie… Sinister is, for its first half, a genuinely scary film populated by reasonably well-developed characters. Ethan Hawke, writing a true crime novel, finds a handful of creepy snuff films in the attic of his latest house (the site of a recent murder, naturally) and watches them, one by one, late at…
Frank Ocean’s channelORANGE seems to have topped nearly every “best albums of the year poll” I can think of, and it’s not undeserved. The album is futuristic and retro together, the personal vision of a thoroughly talented individual. It’s also not really my thing: R&B is just not a genre that does a whole lot…
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