The artistry of kung fu is found in its discreteness and in its completeness. Most martial arts are composed of distinct movements; thrusts, jabs and parries akin to the bars of a musical composition or the paragraphs of a novel. The fluid fabrication found in these movements coheres into a kind of violent beauty: their…
Halfway into Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – battered and bloodied – ascends a fire escape, consumed by trepidation. We know this because he continues to grimly intone his fears on the narration track, and because there’s a woman waiting for him in the hotel room at the top of the…
While interviewing Taika Waititi, director, writer and star of What We Do in the Shadows, and Rhys Darby, who appears as the “alpha male” werewolf, it quickly became clear how these guys could make a film so hilarious without any need for careful scripting. Despite meeting the pair towards the tail end of a busy media…
It doesn’t surprise me to learn that British costume drama Belle came about after its screenwriter, Misan Sagay, spotted an 18th century portrait of a woman of colour, apparently an ensconced member of the aristocracy in an era where black skin was synonymous with slavery. The film is fundamentally good-intentioned, but strikes me as the…
I am all about director boxsets. There’s something intimidating about the exploration required to engage in completionist cinephilia, where you endeavour to see every single picture a director filmed, so it’s a relief to simply plonk a box down on your shelf and set yourself a more manageable goal, rather than scurrying around the outskirts…
Given how much time I waste compiling lists, it’s hard not to be disappointed when mistakes are made. So it was with last year’s list of my favourite 20 films of 2013, which crucially omitted Only Lovers Left Alive – which was technically an Australian 2014 release, but I caught the film at BIFF (rest…
Spectacular lip-synch scene aside, The Skeleton Twins is much lesser comedic than the presence of SNL alums Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader would lead you to believe. They play twin siblings, each possessing an air of superior condescension that barely conceals their crippling insecurity and depression. They’re re-united after Hader’s suicide attempt, and share a…
Both Tod Browning and Francis Ford Coppola’s interpretations of Dracula hone in on the heart of the vampiric myth – the commingled fear and allure of eroticism – while reflecting the norms of their time. Browning’s film is mostly remembered for Bela Lugosi’s undeniably iconic (yet profoundly overrated) performance, but there’s surprising little substance to…
Wish I Was Here has copped a lot of undeserved flack; Zach Braff’s foray into Kickstarter to film the thing raised the ire of those who saw his use of the crowdfunding site as a co-option of a resource for everyday Joes and Janes. A lot of critics entered the cinema with well-sharpened knives, and…
Who wouldn’t want to be a vampire? Save the minor inconvenience of hyper-photosensitivity and a rarely quenchable thirst for human blood, you gain the ability to fly, to transform into a bat, and to carry an aura of lascivious sexuality to go with your extended incisors. Not to mention the whole immortality deal, which turns…
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