Queensland Film Festival Announced

The demise of the Brisbane International Film Festival left a vacuum in Brisbane’s cinematic culture. Thankfully, nature and cinephiles alike abhor vacuums, and events like GOMA’s Lynch exhibition, the Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival and, now, John Edmond and Huw Walmsley-Evans’ Queensland Film Festival have rushed to fill the void. As much as I enjoyed…

The 500 Cast Episode 3: Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit Edition

In this monthly podcast, we usually round up 500 Club writers for a lively discussion of contentious new releases, emerging trends and issues in movies, and relevant cinematic goings-on in Brisbane and broader areas. For our third episode, however, we’ve ditched our regular schedule in favour of waxing lyrical about all things David Lynch, ahead of…

Kwaidan (1964)

Kwaidan probably deserves a higher rating than the three stars I’ve given it here; I watched this at GOMA’s Myths and Legends screening (it was the ~160 min European cut, not the 183 minute cut they advertised) in the middle of a busy week and spent the majority of the film drifting in and out…

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013)

Last Saturday I made a mid-morning visit to GOMA’s Cinémathèque for a couple documentaries by Hong-Joon Kim on the subject of Korean cinema. It was hardly an accessible double feature: as a fellow critic commented, it was “too niche for its audience of five people,” presenting interesting but opaque oral histories. I expected the same…

Baby Face (1933)

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,…

Forbidden Hollywood: The Wild Days of Pre-Code Cinema

While I may have just written an article criticising a certain Australian actor/director for his advocacy of cultural cringe, I must admit I’m susceptible to the same kind of cringe when talking about my city of residence: Brisbane. I’m pretty vocal about the perceived cultural black hole that is Queensland’s capital, a city that’s seemingly…