My Favourite Films of the Last Decade
Movies meant a lot to me in the 2010s. These are the fifty that meant the most.
Widows: The Genre Film That Isn’t
But Widows exhibits cosmetic similarities with the heist genre, it resolutely resists generic conventions.
Racial Violence as Horrific Spectacle: Detroit
American films about race are films about white supremacy and black suffering. Detroit is primarily a film about the latter.
Queensland Film Festival 2015 and Brisbane Film Culture
What is the purpose of an international film festival? This is a tricky question, with many answers. It’s a question I’m not particularly qualified to answer, either, but as I see it, the primary responsibility of a film festival is to provide an opportunity for cinephiles to see films that they otherwise might not –…
Jimi: All is By My Side (2013)
It’s easy to commiserate with the difficulties John Ridley – Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave – faced getting his passion project, a biopic of Jimi Hendrix, off the ground. Unable to acquire the legal rights to Hendrix’s recordings or songs (a common problem – notice that the only Hendrix song you ever hear…
The Top 20 Films of 2014
Here are the top 20 films from 2014! I’ve decided to stick to films that received an Australian theatrical or home entertainment release in the 2014 calendar year or films that screened at an Australian festival but haven’t yet been picked up for 2015 release. This means that 2015 films that I have seen (like,…
Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival 2014
The last time I wrote about the Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival, my attitude was one of scepticism. And, I’ll concede, a modicum of bitterness. You see, the birth of BAPFF meant the death of BIFF (the Brisbane International Film Festival), the latter cut down in its prime (at twenty-one years old!) to pave…
Source Material: 12 Years a Slave as an Adaptation
Solomon Northup’s autobiography, Twelve Years a Slave, was a bestseller in its own time, but like many others I’d never heard of this account of Northup’s gruelling ordeal in slavery until it was adapted into Steve McQueen’s masterpiece 12 Years a Slave. (McQueen’s film is actually the second adaptation of the book – television movie…
On Festivals
Today heralded the end of a great Australian festival that has lasted over two decades. I’m not referring to the Big Day Out, whose cultural capital was irrevocably eroded by the influx of teenage, Australian-flag-wearing bogans a decade ago and has limped its way to extinction ever since. No, I’m talking about the Brisbane International…
The 86th Academy Awards – Predictions and Thoughts
I’m not really that interested in getting too caught up in the Oscars fol-de-rol that consumes the critical community around this time of year. I read a lot about the Academy Awards because, well, it’s people getting passionate about film! People arguing emphatically about which film is better and the industry, about who will win…
