As befitting the blood pact all movie bloggers must sign upon founding their website, what follows is a list of my favourite films of 2015. It’s been a strong year at the cinema, even if I felt it was a slight step down from last year (specifically, I didn’t see a single new film I…
More writing for Junkee! Here I make the uncontestable argument that Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) should really hook up in the next Star Wars movie. Read the case for Finn/Poe here!
It took me until the third episode of Ghost in the Shell: Arise (the first instalment of which I reviewed precisely one year ago) to realise that this was a prequel, rather than an alternate universe take à la GITS:SAC. That’s as much a reflection of my obliviousness as it is Arise’s similarities to its…
Watching David O. Russell’s Joy is akin to watching his career: abundant potential dribbling sadly away. The first half hour or so of the film, a biopic of Joy Mangano, Miracle Mop inventor (Jennifer Lawrence), takes the kind of stuff usually brushed over in these films – the anxieties of running household, familial tensions, financial…
Recently I’ve realised that I’m drawn to documentaries that are recognisant of their own failure – that is, the failure of the documentary as a factual medium. Which means that Listen to Me, Marlon, a biographical doco on Marlon Brando told largely through his own hitherto-unheard personal recordings, answering machine messages and the like, was…
Read a synopsis of either of Creed or Magic Mike XXL, two of 2015’s best films, and sight unseen it might hard to understand the excellence of either film. The former film, after all, follows a fairly stock Hollywood formula, hitting its Best Picture-winning predecessor’s plot points beat for beat, while Magic Mike XXL is…
“I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength.” That quote is spoken by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) in The Force Awakens, the long-awaited seventh instalment in the Star Wars franchise, but those words could easily have been put into the mouth of almost every prominent character in the…
Over at Junkee, I explained how Please Like Me has established itself as the best television show of 2015 by exploiting the inherent sadness of sitcom stasis. Read the piece here.
Experimenter has a fascinating premise, but loses its way by focusing on the wrong subject. It opens on Stanley Milgram’s now-famous obedience experiments, wherein an unknowing subject provides near-fatal electrocutions to an innocent man who they believe to be failing a multiple-choice questionnaire – or at least, they’re led to believe that’s what they’re doing.…
Space Dandy’s second season keeps pretty well to the tone of season one – reviewed here – which means plenty of restlessly-creative, energetically-absurd space nonsense revolving around the most narcissistic, impressively-coiffed man in the universe. If you dug the silliness of season one, you’ll be equally appreciative of this, though it’s worth noting there’s slightly…
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