Ant-Man (2015)

There are lots of reasons to like Ant-Man. You’ve got the sparkling comic chemistry of Paul Rudd and Michael Peña (Evangeline Lilly’s there too). There’s a zippy Michael Douglas/John Slattery/Hayley Atwell prologue that makes you long for an MCU film set in the ‘80s. Minus a misjudged training sequence, the film’s bouncy heist framework is…

Ruben Guthrie (2015)

The easiest barb to direct at Brendan Cowell’s Ruben Guthrie is that it’s another Aussie film about the problems of rich white blokes (see also: Little Death, The/Any Questions for Ben?). This isn’t technically incorrect; the titular protagonist is, indeed, a wealthy white dude (Patrick Brammall). But the screenplay’s real concerns aren’t so much the…

Which is the Best Weekend of MIFF 2015?

Breaking down a film festival program – especially one that stretches to 370 films, as does this year’s Melbourne Internal Film Festival – is a daunting task. And, frankly, kind of futile. Unless you’re a Melbourne-based cinephile with no day-to-day commitments, the films you choose to see are going to determined more by scheduling than…

Freezing Vibration (Season 2)

Freezing Vibration is the follow-up to Freezing, a 2011 fanservice anime which suffered from lacking any apparent target audience. Taking a conventional premise – a primarily female-populated high school spiced up with frequent magically-augmented battles – the first season failed to provide any kind of interesting plot, wasting its time on progressively tiresome hierarchical disputes.…

Lupin the 3rd (2014)

It’s hard to fault the craft behind this live action adaptation of iconic Japanese gentleman thief; it is nothing if not competent. It looks very professional, with a sleek, slickly colour-graded aesthetic that resembles an up-scale watch or automobile advertisement. The action scenes – of which there more than a few – are crisply edited…

Terminator Genisys (2015)

On the way to completing my Science degree, most of my electives were spent on Philosophy courses, thanks to a roughly-equal combination of intellectual inquisitiveness and a desire for bludgey subjects. My favourite course was probably the one titled Philosophy of Time Travel, which looked at the philosophical and metaphysical ramifications of time travel; specifically,…

Young Sophie Bell (2015)

Amanda Adolfsson’s Young Sophie Bell is an intimate insight into female friendship; passionate and personal, combative and competitive all at once. Sophie (Felice Jankell) – whose surname is actually Karlsson – has been best friends with Alice (Hedda Stiernstedt) since infancy. They shine together, as exemplified by the opening scene, where their vibrant pink and…