The opening film of GOMA’s Forbidden Hollywood program might as well have been Nietzschean Superwoman, following as it does the “adventures” of Lily (Barbara Stanwyck) as she sleeps her way up the big city corporate ladder, following the advice of her Nietzsche-obsessed cobbler (Alphonse Ethier). As you’d expect from a film over eight decades old,…
New Zealand drama Fantail is quite similar to this year’s excellent British film The Selfish Giant. Both address the metaphorical prison constructed by modern-day poverty and each is a loose adaptation of an old story; the latter takes inspiration from Oscar Wilde’s short story, while Fantail is based on the Maori myth of the mischievous…
Over at FilmInk, I took Josh Lawson’s comments regarding Australian film (and its pereceived lack of diversity/quality) while promoting his new comedy The Little Death as an opportunity to discuss our country’s persistent cultural cringe when it comes to cinema while highlighting some great Aussie films that don’t tend to attract the spotlight. Check out…
Thanks to Universal Pictures Australia, ccpopculture has 4 double passes to give away to Dracula Untold, releasing in Australian cinemas Thursday October 2nd. “Luke Evans (Fast & Furious 6, Immortals) stars in Dracula Untold, the origin story of the man who became Dracula. Gary Shore directs and Michael De Luca produces the epic action-adventure that…
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida is a contemplative experience defined by its restrained emotionality, cool black-and-white photography and its static, reflective mise en scène. The film tells the tale of Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young novice nun who’s lived with sisters for her entire life, who’s sent to visit her aunt, Wanda (Agata Kulesza). Former Stalinist prosecutor…
Zero Dark Thirty was one of the best films of 2013 (going by Australian release dates), but its relentlessly American point-of-view is arguably a failing. I don’t think that Bigelow’s film unambiguously views Bin Laden’s murder as a success, but the controversy/conversation that developed regarding the film as “pro-torture” was predicated on that very assumption.…
The Double is a thoroughly unpleasant cinematic experience. Whether or not that makes it a bad flm is a more complicated subject. Amongst the most affective films I’ve seen are films mired in misery – Requiem for a Dream or Irréversible – so I’m not prepared to dismiss a movie simply because it can’t be…
Thirst tackles vampirism as a metaphor for primal transgression – forbidden sexual desires and our capacity for violence – a conventional narrative that’s elevated by Park Chan-wook’s stylistic excess (that excess isn’t always appreciated – the runtime didn’t need to stretch past two hours). Song Kang-ho stars as a tormented priest turned vampire after a…
On a purely visual basis, The Boxtrolls is one of the most inventive animated films in some time. Like Laika predecessors Paranorman and Coraline, it’s animated in tremendously tactile stop-motion. Its troglodytic characters are cast amongst the cobblestone streets of a 18th century minor metropolis which brings to mind, variously: the spindly grotesquery of the…
“[Nosferatu] is not a political figure, not even in the allegorical way in which the diabolical Dr. Caligari can be seen to represent oppressive political authority. Rather, he is both the agent and the icon of death, the natural cause and the supernatural symbol, metonymy combined with metaphor, at once elemental and unearthly.” – Gilberto…
ccpopculture 