Red Sparrow and the Objectification of Jennifer Lawrence
I’m not here to acclaim Red Sparrow as some misunderstood masterpiece. It’s not. Nor is it the disaster its detractors declaim it as.
Is ‘Mother!’ Actually Worth The Pain?
mother! is not fucking around. This is a film that well and truly earns its exclamation mark.
Giveaway: Win Double Passes to mother! [COMPLETED]
Thanks to Paramount Pictures, ccpopculture has 10 double passes to give away to mother!, releasing in Australian cinemas September 14th.
Expectation vs Reality: Marketing Collateral Beauty and Passengers
There’s a gulf of difference between the trailers for Collateral Beauty and Passengers and the films themselves…or is there?
15 Reasons why X-Men: Apocalypse Sucked
My estimable colleague Jono Winter recently posted a favourable – if tentatively favourable – review of X-Men: Apocalypse on this site. As a steadfast fan of (most) of the X-Men films, I found time in my overseas holiday to fit in a (Croatian-subtitled) screening of the film and, regrettably, I can’t concur with his positive…
Brooklyn (2015)
Brooklyn is a chick-flick with credentials. That is to say: a well-acted, beautifully staged period melodrama. The film chronicles the challenges faced by a young woman, Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), as she journeys from Ireland to the States in search of opportunity. Unquestionably small in scope, Brooklyn shines as it draws from the poignant well of…
Joy (2015)
Watching David O. Russell’s Joy is akin to watching his career: abundant potential dribbling sadly away. The first half hour or so of the film, a biopic of Joy Mangano, Miracle Mop inventor (Jennifer Lawrence), takes the kind of stuff usually brushed over in these films – the anxieties of running household, familial tensions, financial…
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)
If you’re looking for an action-packed, entertaining blockbuster, you won’t find it in the final Hunger Games instalment. The atmosphere here is dour and soaked in dread; fitting, really, given we’re observing the final days of a bloody revolution. Constricted by the expectations of her role as an icon – much like the actress playing…
Shifting Gears: How the Rise of the Fast and the Furious Franchise Represents the Changing Landscape of Modern Blockbusters
Looking back at The Fast and the Furious (in case you’re puzzled by the title, that’s the first one, made in 2001) from 2015, the film looks a lot like a stepping stone. An unassuming genre picture that shared more than a bit in common with the preceding year’s Gone in Sixty Seconds remake, its…
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014)
Mockingjay – Part 1 is unsatisfactory not simply because it’s telling half a story, but because its ideas are given neither sufficient depth nor a sufficiently engaging narrative to wrap around them. Much like fellow threequel Matrix Revolutions, it trades the diverse visual palette of its predecessors for drab bunkers and ruins painted in endless…
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