My thoughts on Life of Pi are going to be very different from yours. This is true of any artwork. Art is subjective, after all. But Life of Pi is unique. Sure, you might be equally enchanted by the whimsical opening scenes, as young Pi learns about life and religion, portrayed with visual flair and…
Premium Rush is a high-octane thrill ride, a white-knuckle rush of a film. There’s technically a plot, revealed in smatterings of flashbacks, but it’s essentially a barebones excuse to fill the film with exhilarating bicycle races. One of my (and apparently everyone’s) favourite actors at the moment, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, plays Wilee (like the Coyote), an…
A French Deliverance with a satanic twist, Sheitan focuses on a group of crass twentysomethings who travel into the countryside following a flirtatious girl. These characters are exceedingly unlikable, and if you’re anything like me, fifteen minutes in you’ll be eagerly looking forward to whatever unpleasant plight awaits them. You’ll be waiting a while. The…
Tucker and Dale vs Evil is built on a simple germ of an idea – what happens if you use the hillbilly-slasher framework, but portrayed from the hillbillies’ perspective? And what if said rednecks are actually innocent sweethearts, the “murders” caused by freak accidents (that are hard to describe without mentioning Rube Goldberg)? It’s a…
Given the Academy Award nominations were just announced today, it seemed a good a time as any to finally publish my top 10 films of 2012 list. My criteria for inclusion is a little shaky, but critically acclaimed films like Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty and Flight are all yet to be released in Australia…
Beasts of the Southern Wild creates a world unlike any other I’ve encountered in either real life or fiction. It concerns the ragtag residents of “The Bathtub,” a small Louisiana community on the wrong side of a levee, in perpetual danger of disappearing beneath the ocean every time a storm hits. The tale is told…
Shallow Grave concerns the misguided actions of a group of university students upon discovering their new flatmate is (a) dead and (b) in possession of a suitcase filled with cash. It was the breakthrough film for Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor, and it’s easy to see why on both counts. Boyle’s filmmaking is flashy, energising…
Videodrome is a mad, grotesque nightmare, all writhing flesh and flicking hallucinatory visions. We switch from one scene to the next without a narrative umbilical cord to follow, like a torpid couch potato flicking between channels. The movie is dank and forbidding, dripping with amniotic fluid, an aborted mutation. Max Renn (James Woods) is the…
Noirs are at their best when they reveal the darkness hiding beneath a thin veneer of civilisation, with ever-present shadows stretching across the screen. Killer Joe is a grimy neo-noir, but its characters wear their darkness on their sleeves without the façade of civility. Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) discusses the murder of his mother with…
I was expecting, thanks to its marketing, The Loved Ones to be a tongue-in-cheek horror movie, with a broad, comedic take on the prom night slasher film. I certainly hadn’t anticipated the gutpunch of an early scene where a girl drives alongside a dog, who, recently stabbed, pants futilely for air. It gets darker from…
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