Ad Astra Offers an Aching Examination of Masculinity’s Failures
Ad Astra is an astonishing achievement.
The Martian is the Anti-Alien – an Optimistic Paean to Science and Nerddom
Three-and-a-half decades ago, Alien established Ridley Scott as a director to watch. Drawing on the conventions of the increasingly-popular slasher film and rejecting the Star-Trek-esque optimism of the sci-fi films of that era, he created a chilling classic. But his potential as a director has dribbled away somewhat in the years since; while I don’t…
Love & Mercy (2015)
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…
Interstellar (2014)
Where T.S. Eliot found fear in a handful of dust, Christopher Nolan finds it in huge clouds of the stuff. Dust storms are consuming America’s failing agrarian communities decades from now. Blight ravages the planet’s few remaining crops as that dust brings illness and despair. This is a pre-apocalyptic world, a wasteland upon which mankind…
The 500 Cast Episode 2: Certain Tendencies of Australian Cinema Edition
The second episode of the 500Cast podcast has yours truly joining Brisbane critics Jesse Thompson and Laurence Barber to discuss Whiplash, Australian Cinema .. not to mention a quick quiz where we endeavour to differentiate quotes as relating to 2001: A Space Odyssey or Christopher Nolan’s latest, Interstellar. Check it out! Listen to the podcast…
Under the Skin (2014)
Under the Skin is a challenging viewing experience. Those attending entirely off the back of “I heard Scarlett Johansson gets naked in this” will find themselves faced with a film more in tune with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey than Species. From its opening screen of black inexplicably infiltrated by white lights and rings that…
Transcendence (2014)
As we were dutifully informed before the preview screening of Transcendence, Wally Pfister not only shot this movie on film, but he also developed the film photochemically rather than digitally. This isn’t surprising for Pfister, acolyte of fervent film fetishist Christopher Nolan, but it is reflective of this cinematographer-turned-director’s old-fashioned approach to the material. Old-fashioned…
Double Feature: Barry Lyndon (1975) and Dogville (2003)
Lars von Trier identifies Barry Lyndon as an influence on his 1993 experimental film, Dogville; his choice to break his film up into chapters was inspired by Kubrick’s film, as was his use of a detached, ironical narrator (John Hurt). The films have other similarities – a three hour runtime and a protagonist (Ryan O’Neal…
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
It’s easy to imagine an alternative universe where 2001: A Space Odyssey is a cult oddity, a largely-forgotten curio. Where Kubrick’s iconic sci-fi was met with mystified reactions to its glacial pace and its puzzling, almost religious narrative. That universe is perhaps more plausible than our own, where this thoroughly weird, elliptical film is an…
