22 Jump Street is the kind of sequel you get from people who hate sequels. That’s not an entirely bad thing. This is the first sequel Hollywood wunderkinds Chris Lord and Phil Miller have helmed, though not the first they’ve inspired: they fobbed off Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 to Cody Cameron and…
Early in Galore, Billie (Ashleigh Cummings) intones in voiceover that her life on the outskirts of Canberra is soon to be devastated by a bushfire. It’s the kind of introduction that’s there to assure its audience that this all means something. A shame, because Galore is most meaningful when it’s simply existing. The first half…
There’s something intoxicating about the thrill of a perfect musical moment. When you hear that song – whether it’s on the radio, on the record, or on the stage – and there’s this transcendent surge as you’re transported somewhere else. Perhaps that rare electricity was coursing through legendary DJ John Peel’s veins when he famously…
The Two Faces of January is set in 1962, but it could just have easily been made in the same year, or even a decade earlier. The film – from Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini – is a close facsimile of the thrillers of half a century ago, to the point where it could be a…
Romantic comedies aren’t known for their unconventionality. There’s the meet-cute, the (often ridiculously contrived) premise to get the two leads together, the last act reveal, the grand romantic gesture. It Boy is no different in this regard; David Moreau’s rom-com ticking all the boxes. Its two-pronged premise – that late-thirties magazine editor Alice Lantis is…
The first How to Train Your Dragon was a special kind of miracle. A simple tale of a father and his son, of a boy and his dragon, it soared beyond its modest ambitions. HTTYD succeeded thanks to gorgeously composed and edited animation and a spectacular Oscar-nominated score, yes, but mostly because of the simplicity…
Improvisational comedy is fast becoming the norm. Whether it’s This is the End, Bad Neighbours or Anchorman 2, the construction is the same: narrative skeleton to keep the audience interested interspersed with some carefully-honed gags and a lot of loose improvisation, edited into something tighter. I’m not complaining, mind; I love the shooting-shit-with-your-mates vibe of…
The Essential‘s The World on War is a monthly feature where “we travel around the globe and investigate how armed conflict influences a country’s popular culture and its representation of war in film.” My contribution to this feature was an analysis of Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped as an embodiment of the fear and faith…
Love is Strange resembles a gay version of Tokyo Story filtered through Woody Allen’s wry, New Yorker worldview except, unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as great as that sounds. After thirty nine years together, George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow) take the opportunity to legally recognise their relationship in matrimony. Legal acceptance doesn’t necessarily translate…
Blue Ruin feels like a feature-length version of the suspenseful, often silent showdowns found within understated thrillers. I’m thinking Coen Bros specifically – the climax of Blood Simple, or the hotel showdown between Chirgurh and Moss in No Country for Old Men. Executed right, these scenes practically define the cliché “on the edge of one’s…
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