Magic Mike is a weird movie. It’s essentially a musical, except instead of big Broadway numbers you have male strippers (Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer) cavorting on stage, routines with such meticulous choreography and high production values that they’re as fantastical as a town spontaneously breaking into song. Outside of these scenes, Steven Soderbergh…
As a disaster movie, Black Sunday feels almost quaint compared to the destruction reaped in modern superhero films; the film sees the Goodyear blimp descend upon the Superbowl, laden with plastic explosives, a threat level a few notches below Superman tossing Zod through Metropolis’s skyscrapers or the Chitauri laying waste to Manhattan. The difference between…
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a lengthy hike indeed: the film stretches over nearly two-and-a-half hours, chronicling the life of Nelson Mandela from young revolutionary to iconic leader. A half hour in, I was dreading the next couple hours; the first thirty minutes thrusts its way through a checklist of Mandela’s early life –…
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* asks a lot of questions. Questions like “Do Aphrodisiacs Work?” and “What Happens During Ejaculation?” and “What is Sodomy?” If you’re looking for answers – or a coherent feature length film – you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking to watch Woody Allen’s series of sketches loosely parodying…
The Outlaw Michael Howe tells the story of its eponymous bushranger’s rebellion against the British empire in early nineteenth century Van Diemen’s Land (an embryonic title for Tasmania). Played by Damon Herriman (who you might recognise as a far less noble outlaw, Dewey Crowe, from Justified), Howe is defined by anger and sadness. His rebellion,…
The Last Detail finds a couple navy lifers – Buddusky (Jack Nicholson), better known as “Badass,” and Mulhall (Otis Young), better known as “Mule” – accompanying a young man called Meadows (Randy Quaid) to a prison in Portsmouth. Meadows is eighteen years old facing eight years in the brig. The length of his punishment is…
Over a decade later, Manic feels too familiar for its own good. An indie with an impressive cast – Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Don Cheadle – it spends its time in the walls of a psychiatric institution. Handheld, Dogme 95-style camerawork indicates the film’s insistence on naturalism, but the institution itself feels filmic, like any…
“I can’t remember. And it doesn’t matter.” Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) responds with the above when his son, David (Will Forte) asks about his childhood dreams. That kind of no-nonsense refutation of warmed-over romanticism is critical to Nebraska’s appeal, which tells the story of Woody’s journey to Nebraska, fuelled by his delusional conviction that he’s…
One of my favourite novels is Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, a document that posits a futuristic dystopia where books and liberty alike are immolated in streams of fire. It’s touching and prescient and achingly well-written. It’s also founded on a belief that I reject, the notion that television is an ignorance-inducing tool of slavery. Bradbury’s…
My review of Shane Carruth’s enigmatic Upstream Color ended with a statement that it was a film “I’m eager to revisit.” Six months later, the film’s strengths and weaknesses became more apparent. One such weakness: I remain unconvinced by Carruth’s acting. He’s an impressive director, producer, sound engineer etc … but an average actor. I…
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