Bernie is an odd film; an odd story about an odd man. It tells the tale of Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), a funeral director unfailingly described as “nice.” The kind of man who looks you in the eye and listens to everything you say as though it’s the most important thing he’s ever heard. We…
Piranha 3DD is a grotesque Frankenstein’s monster of a film, B-movie components clumsily sutured together without imagination. These extremities are sporadically entertaining, but while Ving Rhames blasting piranhas with a shotgun in slow motion might have its appeal, this slim charm is amputated by the film’s troglodytic smirk, its sneering need to ridicule the very…
An overheard conversation regarding last week’s almost pornographic episode: “Oh, did you watch last night’s Underbelly?” “Nah, I’ve already given up on the show.” “Boobs. BOOBS!” Yes, Channel Nine knows what its audience wants – Gracie Gilbert naked – and it delivers again quickly, showing flashes of her nude form in otherwise unrelated scenes. Only a…
Watching Prometheus upon release, it was hard not to sympathise with scientist Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green). Having spent years hoping to find the “Engineers” who brought about the genesis of mankind and left cryptic messages painted on cave walls, he found himself filled with existential despair, upon finding only their corpses. I walked out of…
At least there’s one lesson to be learned from the amorphous blob of mediocrity that is Exorcist II, a woefully disappointing sequel: this is the kind of film that doesn’t get made anymore. Not so much the half-assed sequel thing – there are plenty of those – but the advent of the internet means that…
If you’re looking for a definition of “Cronenbergian,” The Brood isn’t a bad place to start. It’s deliberately paced, pairing operatic grandeur with restrained domesticity. It prominently features Cronenberg’s early obsessions of science fiction, horror and body horror, interwoven with more conventional problems; as Cronenberg uses genre conventions to comment on the emotional damage dealt…
It’s easy to imagine an alternative universe where 2001: A Space Odyssey is a cult oddity, a largely-forgotten curio. Where Kubrick’s iconic sci-fi was met with mystified reactions to its glacial pace and its puzzling, almost religious narrative. That universe is perhaps more plausible than our own, where this thoroughly weird, elliptical film is an…
“Then, maybe your best course would be to tread lightly.” Man. That was satisfying. Breaking Bad has always been primarily about plot, with some compelling characterisation carried along in the wake of amazing storytelling. And the strength of that storytelling is on display in a taut, tense premiere that’s a welcome return to Albuquerque. Perhaps…
One of the big hooks of the Underbelly series is that it depicts, with some degree of veracity, real crime events from Australia’s history. The drawback to this selling point is that the show can often feel like it’s merely ticking off sufficiently interesting occurrences without having to bother with questions like “How does this…
Horror sequels make a habit of ramping things up to the point of ridiculousness: compare the simplicity of Wrong Turn to the excess of its sequel, or how Prom Night shifts from a garden-variety slasher to a supernatural romp. The Collection is a sequel to the almost-plausible The Collector, which began by carefully establishing character…
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