I enjoyed this flick—but then again, I’m an X-Men disciple who worships at the altar of film series progenitor, Bryan Singer. Ordinary film-goers who don’t know their Wolverines from their Cyclopses may be inclined to mutter ‘X-Meh’ when leaving the theatre. And understandably so as, on this occasion, Singer fails to find cohesion with a…
As Penelope in A Bigger Splash, Dakota Johnson is enigmatic yet authentic, knowing yet naïve; a daughter, a lover, a seductress, and a child all at once. The role allows Johnson to undercut the cliches of Hollywood femininity: innocent child, sexualised nymph, or idealised mother. In projects like A Bigger Splash, television sitcom Ben and Kate…
Action flick Bastille Day opens with a naked Frenchwoman (Stéphane Caillard) strolling through Paris. We soon learn that her nudity is intended to serve as a particularly dramatic distraction, allowing pickpocket Michael Mason (Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden) to pilfer a few wallets and passports at the orders of a local fence (Eriq Ebouaney). With…
Truman’s tone is set from its opening scene. Telling the tale of a long-term friendship between two men, Julián (Ricardo Darín) and Tomás (Javier Cámara), tested by the former’s terminal illness, it begins by chronicling the banal vagaries of Tomás’ lengthy transit from his home in Canada to Madrid, Spain. The weariness of Tomás’s journey…
Any long-running television show tends to look to its past for inspiration. One of the primary drawcards of serialised TV is characterisation, and what better way to flesh out a character than delve into their past. There’s a tendency for this to go bad – I’m thinking specifically of a second season episode of The…
It’s been a while since I’ve gone to a cinema and done nothing but laugh for 90 minutes. Was this because laughter surround me from beginning to end? Or was it that Bad Neighbours 2 was simply a well-written comedy? You can judge for yourself but in my opinion the sequel surpassed the original in many…
Are you in the mood for cutting edge military surveillance, white-knuckle tension and political intrigue? Then welcome to the best war film since 2009’s Hurt Locker. The plot interconnects disparate players, including politicians, generals and drone pilots in a mission to eliminate a terrorist cell in Kenya. With an insightful look into modern military tactics,…
I’m a city boy at heart, but I’ve spent much of my formative years in country towns big and small. In Ararat – a Victorian town best known for being ‘the fattest town in Australia’ – I had friends and family on farms down the road. Toowoomba, where I spent my late school years, was…
Marguerite seems like an odd choice to make the move from the Alliance Français French Film Festival to a general Australian release. Granted, it did well at the Cesars, but its pedigree is paired with a lacklustre, sluggish heap of a movie, ambling through half-assed farce and undercooked politics while finding little of merit beyond…
You’d expect Marvel to be running out of steam by now, but this latest offering confounds expectations. Captain America: Civil War brandishes the series’ signature eye-popping visual spectacle in a package that skimps on neither heart nor wit. This is the best MCU film since the original Iron-Man. The screenwriters have managed to succeed in two key areas…
ccpopculture 