I’ve never seriously contemplated walking out of a movie theatre; consequently I’ve sat through the entirety of some truly execrable films. Yet halfway through Short Term 12, I strongly considering getting up and leaving the cinema. Short Term 12 takes its name from the foster care facility that serves as its primary setting, and is…
Despite the fact that Ja’mie: Private School Girl finds Chris Lilley returning to a character he’s played not once, but twice before, the series is a risk for the comedian. Each of his previous series have been thematically distinct but shared a common narrative structure, splitting their time with roughly half-a-dozen characters (all played by…
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, Don Jon, demonstrates sparks of clever filmmaking. The film’s construction is deliberately repetitive, using recurring rituals (church, Sunday lunch, gym, jackin’ it to internet porn) that change to highlight the growth of its (unlikable) characters. It also mines humour from these subtle variations – generally at the expense of its Jersey-Shore-esque…
Increasingly, this season of Homeland has been about the show reinventing itself as a slower, more contemplative show. The silly plot twists are still in evidence – see Mira’s lover being revealed as a spy – but the series is putting its emphasis on slower moments rather than the over-exaggerated tension of “look out! Terrorists!”…
All documentaries have an agenda; all documentaries reflect the perspective and opinions of the filmmakers producing them. The Act of Killing is a profoundly difficult film to watch because of its agenda. It’s not surprising that a film about the Indonesian mass-murders of 1965-66 would be confronting: this was a time where hundreds of thousands,…
Only Lovers Left Alive is, yes, yet another vampire romance. But before you toss up your hands and perhaps make a snide joke about Robert Pattinson sparkling in the sunlight, it should be clarified that this is no teen romance. Indie director Jim Jarmusch goes in a very different direction to your standard vampire fiction.…
Like most episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., “The Hub” does a few things right and a few things poorly. Some of those things… Good: The series beginning to treat S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organisation worthy of scepticism rather than filled with unquestioned goodies. The titular hub was a timely reminder that S.H.I.E.L.D. is a large, pseudo-military…
The fourth episode of Ja’mie has the same problem I spoke about last episode in that there’s a continued reluctance to provide any kind of substantial characterisation to any non-Ja’mie characters. It’s telling that her romance with Mitchell has been relegated to descriptions of text messages/Facebook statuses and the occasional wordless montage; if I’m being…
It’s very easy to slip into cliché and hyperbole when describing an extraordinary live music performance, tossing around “transcendental” and “a religious experience” like you’re the first idiot with a word processor to connect a crowd of people singing in unison to a church gathering belting out a hymn or two. But, dammit, clichés are…
Lately writing a review of a Homeland season three episode is like sifting through a pan of dirt for flecks of gold, and each week those glimmers are buried deeper in dense soil. That dirt is deep, rich and increasingly suffocating. The seeds of the Javadi storyline bear some fruit this episode, but every highlight…
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