One of the unfortunate consequences of Australia’s long-delayed exposure to Oscar contenders is that the critical narrative around these films has coalesced long before they screen here. So it is with Still Alice, which the majority of critics have described as some variation of overly sentimental Alzheimer’s weepy that will win Julianne Moore the Oscar.…
Aussie time-travel rom com The Infinite Man sits somewhere the middle of the triangle formed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Primer and, uh, Triangle. That’s a promising combination, and given my fondness for time-travel films, I had high expectations. They were not met. The film’s main problem is a lack of emotional authenticity.…
Illmatic is one of those rare texts to have established itself as a classic within two decades of its release; it’s a hip-hop touchstone and unquestionably one of the greatest records ever released. It’s understandable, then, that Nas: Time is Illmatic, One9’s documentary of both the artist and the album, takes an uncontroversial, conventional approach…
Elmore Leonard is one of those authors that you can be familiar with having not read a single page of his writing. This is thanks to the numerous cinematic adaptations of his work – whether its Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, Out of Sight or, now, Life of Crime. Daniel Schechter’s film has plenty of familiar…
Ingmar Bergman’s Oscar-winning Autumn Sonata succeeds on two fronts. At first, it operates as a chamber drama two-hander, with a mother (Ingrid Bergman) and daughter (Liv Ullmann) cracking open deep emotional faultlines and unearthing toxic secrets. The subject matter – neglectful parent, unwanted abortions – is familiar but vital, thanks in large part to the…
A couple weeks ago, The Daily Beast asked the question Why Can’t Movies Capture Genius?, looking at the recent cluster of British biopics Mr Turner, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything and considering how difficult it is to convey genius without being burdened by overblown exposition. The chief success of Reaching for the…
Ghost in the Shell: Arise is a perfectly good anime series. Its four hour-long episodes – the first two having just been released on Australian Blu-Ray – navigate labyrinthine cyberpunk narratives layered with themes of identity and our perceptions of reality. This philosophical density is leavened by the show’s kinetic, deftly-directed action sequences and sharp…
Ignoring its truncated introduction – which dispatches Smaug, introduces Sauron and earns Cate Blanchett a paycheque – The Battle of the Five Armies is the most coherent chapter of The Hobbit. It’s also the least satisfactory, despite its character arcs and narrative consistency. I was entertained throughout, but that’s more a reflection of my fondness…
It seems like it’s nigh-impossible to talk about Israeli ‘workplace’ dramedy Zero Motivation without referencing Office Space. Give or take a Jarhead, though, I’d argue that Talya Lavie’s feature-length debut more closely resembles The Office (the UK version). Both The Office and Zero Motivation make paperwork integral to their story, for example; the former takes…
Last Saturday I made a mid-morning visit to GOMA’s Cinémathèque for a couple documentaries by Hong-Joon Kim on the subject of Korean cinema. It was hardly an accessible double feature: as a fellow critic commented, it was “too niche for its audience of five people,” presenting interesting but opaque oral histories. I expected the same…
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