The framing of Bill Condon’s Mr Holmes is, on the face of it, rather peculiar. Adapted from Mitch Cullin’s “A Slight Trick of the Mind”, it tells a fictional tale about a fictional character – Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) – yet it’s presented as though it were a biopic about the final years of a…
Breaking down a film festival program – especially one that stretches to 370 films, as does this year’s Melbourne Internal Film Festival – is a daunting task. And, frankly, kind of futile. Unless you’re a Melbourne-based cinephile with no day-to-day commitments, the films you choose to see are going to determined more by scheduling than…
On the way to completing my Science degree, most of my electives were spent on Philosophy courses, thanks to a roughly-equal combination of intellectual inquisitiveness and a desire for bludgey subjects. My favourite course was probably the one titled Philosophy of Time Travel, which looked at the philosophical and metaphysical ramifications of time travel; specifically,…
Amanda Adolfsson’s Young Sophie Bell is an intimate insight into female friendship; passionate and personal, combative and competitive all at once. Sophie (Felice Jankell) – whose surname is actually Karlsson – has been best friends with Alice (Hedda Stiernstedt) since infancy. They shine together, as exemplified by the opening scene, where their vibrant pink and…
For whatever reason, I seem to have been watching a lot of documentaries lately, and I’m becoming increasingly aware that, by and large, my reaction to the genre is a shrug and an “It was okay, I guess.” I’ve seen so many good documentaries, portraits of fascinating people telling fascinating stories … and, yet, I’ve…
Whether or not you’re familiar with the life story of Brian Wilson, Beach Boys leader and troubled genius, Love & Mercy’s story will be a familiar one. How that story is told distinguishes is what the film from a raft of interchangeable musician biopics. Its potentially conventional rise-fall structure is softened by splitting the narrative…
Inside Out is the Platonic ideal of a Pixar movie. It begins with a simple idea, as though plucked from the brilliant creativity of an infant’s imagination – What do your toys do when you’re not around? What if the world was populated by cars? – or perhaps cribbed from a ’90s television producer –…
The main selling point of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, a day-in-the-life melodrama centring on a small Los Angeles neighbourhood in which a pair of trans sex workers hunt down a cheating boyfriend, is that it was entirely shot on iPhone. While it’s not the first feature to boast this claim – cursory Googling suggests that Uneasy…
Like most prepubescent boys (and girls) in the early ‘90s, I was obsessed with Jurassic Park. I can still vividly remember the first time I saw the movie – perhaps my earliest clear memory of a movie theatre – clutching my armrests in fear as an attempt to transport velociraptors went horribly wrong. By the…
Marriage equality in Australia is, at this stage, inevitable – and long overdue. Opponents of same-sex marriage have increasingly found their go-to arguments rendered obsolete or not fit for polite company. Even regressive politicians like Cory Bernardi try to avoid blatant homophobia (not always successfully), while religious dogma’s relevance continues to erode. The one argument…
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