Indie sensation Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a proven crowd-pleaser, with Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s film’s easy, cutesy humour and plethora of classic movie references earning it Audience Awards at Sydney and Sundance. It’s certainly entertaining enough. But the exceedingly twee title also hints at its incessant solipsism, with the “Me” of the title…
“What was your point?” “Nothing. It’s just a funny story.” Your typical creature feature suffers from the ‘fireworks factory’ effect: the cumulative expectations of violence, horror and – of course – the appearance of the creature in question building into frustration and, often, disappointment. Spring, on the other hand, had me wondering if I’d put…
A biopic of the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A feels long overdue in 2015. It doesn’t seem especially surprising that F. Gary Gray’s take on the material has busted down the doors upon its States release, clocking up over $100 million shortly after its release. The story of Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Dr Dre and associates…
When introducing the 2014 Brisbane Asia Pacific Festival, my largely optimistic take briefly pondered “will anyone actually turn up?” before concluding, basically, “who cares.” Fast-forward a year or so later and I have to adjust that answer slightly; as I noted in my Queensland Film Festival piece argued that “sometimes, the atmosphere of the film…
The intellectual American subjects of Best of Enemies – bug-eyed National Review editor and conservative iconoclast William F. Buckley Jr; vaguely-aristocratic-looking playwright, screenwriter and very-un-Right Gore Vidal – are a long way from household names nowadays. This documentary covers the infamous ABC debates between the pair, but where I’d expected a “things sure have changed”…
Opening your tragic love story with a re-enactment of Romeo and Juliet is a bold move, but it’s the kind of decision that neatly encapsulates the strengths – and weaknesses – of Holding the Man, Neil Armfield and Tommy Murphy’s film adaptation of Timothy Conigrave’s memoir. This is a film that unashamedly tilts for the…
She’s Funny That Way, the new comedy from famed New York director Peter Bogdanovich, is achingly inauthentic from start to finish. In part, that’s a reflection of its inception as a refurbished script from last millennium dusted off for a contemporary setting. This explains why, in 2015, a part-time call girl (Imogen Poots) still takes…
Dope begins with three dictionary definitions of the title, suiting the purposeful restlessness of a movie that’s neatly trisected into three distinct sections: each one assured, stylish and articulate. The first half is a teen film – all the colourful kineticism of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl except with, y’know, something to say…
So I’ve been doing this ccpopculture thing for nigh on three years and nine hundred posts now, and – aside from a shift away from 200-word reviews and towards film – things haven’t changed too much over that time. That’s probably a problem; features like Critical Dissent and Double Feature have appeared less regularly lately…
The Gift opens on ominous shots of an abandoned, modernist mansion, grey stone and brown wood gleaming dully in the afternoon L.A. sun. Soon, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall), a professional couple from Chicago, will be escorted through the hollow house by a real estate agent. But for now it lies dormant, the…
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