Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) sees himself as a failure. As he flips through his personal budget, rifles through negatives in his job at LIFE magazine or stares at the eHarmony profile page of co-worker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), he emits an aura of vacancy. It’s like he’s barely there and, sometimes, he isn’t, lost in flights…
If you believe The Dissolve and The AV Club, Computer Chess is one of the best films of 2013. I don’t entirely agree, but the film is appealingly different, an eccentric little movie filmed using (comparatively) ancient video cameras. It initially concerns a gaggle of geeks in the 1980s competing in a tournament pitting chess-playing…
The Graduate and Harold and Maude have a lot in common. Each tell stories about a May-December romance, with the male the younger partner (still a rarity in mainstream films), but are more interested in interrogating bourgeois malaise. They’re both satires laced with black comedy, but each has a real sadness at the core. Folk…
My Top 20 films of the year are listed below. For most them, clicking on the title will take you to my review of the film from earlier in the year. One qualifier before I begin: this doesn’t neatly fit into a “films of 2013” from a cinematic release perspective; thanks to film festivals and…
I can vividly remember watching Anchorman in the cinema. Going in with no expectations, I found myself in the throes of infectious, intense laughter throughout. That unexpected experience ranks among my favourite cinema memories. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues didn’t replicate that experience. It has its fair share of belly laughs – generally found in…
Epiphanies about art are few and far between. You remember them. So it goes with me and Grade 7 English, when we analysed George Orwell’s Animal Farm. As my teacher unpacked the meaning and symbolism of the novel, how it was an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism, how the exile…
10. Spartacus: War of the Damned – “Victory” Not the last finale on this list, “Victory” is a triumphant conclusion to a slightly overstuffed season of the great, underrated Spartacus. With a substantial list of casualties, “Victory” was defined by tragedy and, yes, victory, even if that victory was a moral one, not born of…
Wadjda is deeply influenced by cinematic history. Writer/director Haifaa al-Mansour has stated a significant influence on her film was neorealist cinema, and it’s not hard to see the influence of a film like Bicycle Thieves in this story of a young Saudi girl’s quest to purchase a bicycle, or the way al-Mansour’s camera creates a…
What Maisie Knew presents a unique perspective on domestic drama, telling the story of a bitter divorce and strained custody battle through the eyes of seven-year-old Maisie. This point-of-view keeps the film from feeling conventional despite its well-worn subject matter, but it also keeps the audience from gaining a deep insight into its characters. The…
I may not have written all that much about music here this year (in case you haven’t noticed, the focus of ccpopculture has been shifting gradually towards film at the expense of other media), but that doesn’t mean I’m not listening and, uh, listing. Here are my 10 favourite songs of the year: and the…
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