Apologies for the delay in posting (both this episode and on the blog in general); as a teacher, this is a busy time of year, filled with marking and little time for blog posts. Plus, much of my blogging energy went into TripleJae over the weekend. Perhaps my focus on marking means that I missed…
It’s difficult for ghost stories to maintain the careful balance of tension and release across the length of a feature length film. Most feature some good scares, but thin characterisation necessitated by poor decisions leads to boring, uneventful stretches. James Wan overcomes this problem with Insidious by breaking the film up into three sections: a…
My votes for Triple J’s 20 Years of Hottest 100 are below! I decided to keep things interesting (and make decisions a little easier) by selecting only one song for each of the last twenty years, which did require omitting some great songs. It was a good opportunity to delve back into my own musical…
The producers of 50/50 had the unenviable task of turning a surprise cancer diagnosis into a light-hearted comedy (based on screenwriter Will Reiser’s own experiences with cancer), and for the most part they’ve done a good job. Appropriately, given the title, 50/50 spends half its time as a hang-out comedy (focusing on Joseph Gordon-Levitt as…
Hannibal’s early episodes demonstrated an affinity for horror, realised in thick brushstrokes of sumptuous gothic tableaux and direct references to horror classics like The Shining. That horror focus has diminished, but not disappeared, as the season has continued, fleshing out both its characterisation and serialisation. “Buffet Froid” serves as a return to elegant, unnerving horror;…
I watched Lifeforce with high expectations. After all, it’s a sci-fi/horror B-movie written by the director of Return of the Living Dead, from the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and adapted from a novel called … Space Vampires. But the first hour of the film lowered those expectations dramatically. Sure, there’s a gorgeous, completely naked…
Frailty is the kind of film that poses challenging, ambiguous questions and then, unfortunately, answers them. Director Bill Paxton stars as the deeply religious working-class father of two young boys. He believes that God has delivered him a message: that he must destroy – not murder – “demons” in the local community. He enlists his…
“Trou Normand” opens on a majestic and terrible spectacle, a totem of twisted corpses reaching to the sky. It’s grand and imposing, but belies the subtlety of an episode populated with little moments like Abigail’s look of recognition as she tastes the meat that Hannibal has served; or, amidst a gripping confrontation between Will and…
Spring Breakers is a fluorescent dream, an elusive ode to excess. Korine’s film is gorgeously ugly, illuminating the worst of human behaviour in swathes of hypercolour; neon bikinis pulsing in streaky, candy-coloured lights. Spring break is an escape, an emblem of the modern American dream – not to work hard for success, but the aspiration…
“I didn’t poison you Tobias. I wouldn’t do that to the food.” Hannibal delves into the Dexter wheelhouse this week, pairing Dr Lecter with his mirror: another cultured murderer named Tobias, who uses his victims to create music rather than fine cuisine. On Dexter the two would spend a season becoming friends, then rivals, before…
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