That Sugar Film manages to be both entertaining and educational; no easy task when you’re spending your runtime lecturing your audience on what they’re putting into their body. Director – and ‘subject’ – Damon Gameau (who I interviewed earlier this year) shifts from a wholesome no-sugar diet to forty teaspoons of the stuff a day,…
Cormac McCarthy had no hand in the production of The Homesman, but his shadow stretches long over Tommy Lee Jones’ neo-Western. The spare landscape, lensed with wintery clarity by Rodrigo Pietro, embodies the harsh tone of the author’s prose while also allowing for the glimpses of poetry that pervade his writing. The setting is, of…
For whatever reason, I seem to have been watching a lot of documentaries lately, and I’m becoming increasingly aware that, by and large, my reaction to the genre is a shrug and an “It was okay, I guess.” I’ve seen so many good documentaries, portraits of fascinating people telling fascinating stories … and, yet, I’ve…
Whether or not you’re familiar with the life story of Brian Wilson, Beach Boys leader and troubled genius, Love & Mercy’s story will be a familiar one. How that story is told distinguishes is what the film from a raft of interchangeable musician biopics. Its potentially conventional rise-fall structure is softened by splitting the narrative…
Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) finds herself torn between three suitors in Thomas Vinterberg’s Far From the Madding Crowd. There’s the honest, earthy masculinity of Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), the restrained respectability of wealthy William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) and the hot-blooded lustfulness of Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge). Vinterberg establishes Miss Everdene’s independence amidst gorgeous, pastoral…
Inside Out is the Platonic ideal of a Pixar movie. It begins with a simple idea, as though plucked from the brilliant creativity of an infant’s imagination – What do your toys do when you’re not around? What if the world was populated by cars? – or perhaps cribbed from a ’90s television producer –…
The main selling point of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, a day-in-the-life melodrama centring on a small Los Angeles neighbourhood in which a pair of trans sex workers hunt down a cheating boyfriend, is that it was entirely shot on iPhone. While it’s not the first feature to boast this claim – cursory Googling suggests that Uneasy…
Modern horror is increasingly looking to the past for inspiration. There’re clever, nostalgic takes like You’re Next and It Follows. You’ve also got your remakes: the latest being the widely-derided Poltergeist. We Are Still Here shoots for the former category, but ends up missing the mark. Ted Geoghegan’s emulation of ‘70s haunted house films –…
Like most prepubescent boys (and girls) in the early ‘90s, I was obsessed with Jurassic Park. I can still vividly remember the first time I saw the movie – perhaps my earliest clear memory of a movie theatre – clutching my armrests in fear as an attempt to transport velociraptors went horribly wrong. By the…
Marriage equality in Australia is, at this stage, inevitable – and long overdue. Opponents of same-sex marriage have increasingly found their go-to arguments rendered obsolete or not fit for polite company. Even regressive politicians like Cory Bernardi try to avoid blatant homophobia (not always successfully), while religious dogma’s relevance continues to erode. The one argument…
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