After a fortnight of emotional, stirring pictures at the Brisbane International Film Festival, it seemed only fitting to return to the warm, blood-stained blanket of a dumb ‘80s slasher movie. My Bloody Valentine’s strongest elements aren’t particularly dumb. The setting of an industrial coal-mining town provides a welcome reprieve from the pretty, wealthy teenagers that…
“Clear Brody… what does that even mean?” Good point, Saul. This kind of question demonstrates Homeland’s third season in its strongest mode, questioning the motives and decisions of its increasingly misguided characters. Despite an impressive, strung-out performance from Damian Lewis, Brody remains an albatross around the show’s neck, one that will – if this episode…
Last week’s middling episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was an even mix of good and bad. “The Well,” an insipid tie-in to Thor 2, had a lot of the bad but very little of the good. The links to Thor 2 are unimaginative – they’re literally cleaning up the wreckage – and hanging a lampshade…
I’ve never seriously contemplated walking out of a movie theatre; consequently I’ve sat through the entirety of some truly execrable films. Yet halfway through Short Term 12, I strongly considering getting up and leaving the cinema. Short Term 12 takes its name from the foster care facility that serves as its primary setting, and is…
Despite the fact that Ja’mie: Private School Girl finds Chris Lilley returning to a character he’s played not once, but twice before, the series is a risk for the comedian. Each of his previous series have been thematically distinct but shared a common narrative structure, splitting their time with roughly half-a-dozen characters (all played by…
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, Don Jon, demonstrates sparks of clever filmmaking. The film’s construction is deliberately repetitive, using recurring rituals (church, Sunday lunch, gym, jackin’ it to internet porn) that change to highlight the growth of its (unlikable) characters. It also mines humour from these subtle variations – generally at the expense of its Jersey-Shore-esque…
Increasingly, this season of Homeland has been about the show reinventing itself as a slower, more contemplative show. The silly plot twists are still in evidence – see Mira’s lover being revealed as a spy – but the series is putting its emphasis on slower moments rather than the over-exaggerated tension of “look out! Terrorists!”…
Like most episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., “The Hub” does a few things right and a few things poorly. Some of those things… Good: The series beginning to treat S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organisation worthy of scepticism rather than filled with unquestioned goodies. The titular hub was a timely reminder that S.H.I.E.L.D. is a large, pseudo-military…
The fourth episode of Ja’mie has the same problem I spoke about last episode in that there’s a continued reluctance to provide any kind of substantial characterisation to any non-Ja’mie characters. It’s telling that her romance with Mitchell has been relegated to descriptions of text messages/Facebook statuses and the occasional wordless montage; if I’m being…
Lately writing a review of a Homeland season three episode is like sifting through a pan of dirt for flecks of gold, and each week those glimmers are buried deeper in dense soil. That dirt is deep, rich and increasingly suffocating. The seeds of the Javadi storyline bear some fruit this episode, but every highlight…
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