Two-time Palme d’Or winner Bille August’s latest, Silent Heart, addresses the controversial topic of euthanasia in this tale of a family coming together to farewell their grandmother, Esther (Ghita Nørby), planning to overdose on pills before she is rendered immobile by a degenerative disease. August seems strongly influenced by Fanny and Alexander – in particular,…
Thanks to Icon Film Distribution, ccpopculture has 5 double passes to give away to Absolutely Anything, releasing in Australian cinemas Thursday November 19th. “It’s comedy magic when Simon Pegg teams up with the voices of the Monty Python team to remind us to be careful what you wish for in Absolutely Anything. Unbeknownst to school teacher Neil Clarke…
Building a long-term relationship is like renovating a house. You construct a space together, bringing your own furniture into a communal area that gradually encroaches upon – but never consumes – each person’s private domain. Maintenance of this communal space requires careful management of memories; positive ones are amplified and reinforced, while the murkier moments…
I wanted to hate Youth. I usually walk into movies wanting to like/love them, but given my antipathy for Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, I was hoping for some more ammunition in my argument that it’s terribly overrated. Youth gave me sufficient ammunition, I’ll give it that. Sorrentino’s take on affluent, existential aimlessness, spent…
The worst kind of biopic is the Wikipedia-checklist biopic; The Program, in retelling Lance Armstrong’s rise and fall, instead opts for the ASADA-report-checklist, chronicling the cyclist’s doping habits in careful detail but failing to offer a substantial supplementary storyline. Admittedly, after a clunky cancer-centric introduction – think “I got the results of the test back.…
Successful speculative fiction is essentially sociology. It’s grounded not in the details of the alternate reality it concocts, but in investigating how societies and individuals would react to different structures and opportunities. The best speculative fiction isn’t inspired by spaceships or wizardry; rather, it’s impelled by an overriding interest in human nature – a considered,…
There’s a germ of a good idea in Man Up, a disappointing rom-com starring Simon Pegg and Lake Bell. It’s the idea of its characters as “emotional jigsaws” – dating in their mid-30s/early-40s while burdened by the baggage of failed relationships. In Man Up’s world, the challenges of dating aren’t so much associated with finding…
As a portrait of David Foster Wallace, The End of the Tour is mostly a failure. Along with Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), we follow Wallace’s 1996 promotion tour for Infinite Jest, but we learn less about him from the film than we could divine from reading his justly-celebrated novels and essays. Jason…
What even are you, Last Witch Hunter? The ominous title and gothic poster suggest a grim action-fantasy flick – think Vin Diesel’s antihero Riddick shtick, but with witches – but we’re actually granted a slipshod, poorly-paced disappointment. Vin Diesel – sorry, “Kaulder” – was cursed with immortality some eight centuries ago, but where ‘curse’ would…
Results is a conscious step towards the mainstream for director Andrew Bujalski, who cut his teeth on indie “mumblecore” features like Funny Ha Ha before wowing critics [who are not me] with 2013’s eccentric, experimental Computer Chess. This is decidedly more conventional fare – with recognisable actors (Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Kevin Corrigan) in a…
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