With It: Chapter Two, Andy Muschetti Captures the Weird Resonance of Stephen King’s Novel
You might not like It: Chapter Two. But I loved it.
Miss Sloane (2016)
Miss Sloane prioritises politicking over politics.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)
The Huntsman: Winter’s War traffics pretty well exclusively in clichés. Oh, you can point to Frozen – Emily Blunt’s ice queen, the ‘power of love’ – or Lord of the Rings – there’s a golden circle emblazoned with Elvish runes that drives people to murder and dwarven comic relief (Nick Frost, Sheridan Smith, Rob Brydon)…
Crimson Peak (2015)
I’ve never been much for antiques. By and large, that’s a reflection of budgetary issues – the furniture I own is nearly all cheap-as-chips or hand-me-downs – but I’ve just never really been invested in the aestheticisation of aging and decay that seems to drive aficionados of antiques. Guillermo del Toro, though, seems like a…
Giveaway: Win Double Passes to Crimson Peak [COMPLETED]
Thanks to Universal Pictures Australia, ccpopculture has 10 double passes to give away to Crimson Peak, releasing in Australian cinemas Thursday October 15th. “When her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her…
The Martian is the Anti-Alien – an Optimistic Paean to Science and Nerddom
Three-and-a-half decades ago, Alien established Ridley Scott as a director to watch. Drawing on the conventions of the increasingly-popular slasher film and rejecting the Star-Trek-esque optimism of the sci-fi films of that era, he created a chilling classic. But his potential as a director has dribbled away somewhat in the years since; while I don’t…
Critical Dissent: Debating A Most Violent Year with Stephen A Russell
A Most Violent Year, the third film from Oscar-nominated director J.C. Chandor, has received a generally positive reaction from the critical community, earning 90% on Rotten Tomatoes (if you care about that kinda thing) along with a Best Supporting Actress (Drama) Golden Globe nom for Jessica Chastain. I was certainly in the “generally positive” camp…
A Most Violent Year (2014)
On the surface, A Most Violent Year is markedly different from Chandor’s first two features – about Wall Street and the ocean, respectively – but it shares with them a disinterest in traditional dramaturgy; these films are political statements first, stories second. Margin Call was an excoriation of self-interested capitalism on the cusp of devastation,…
Miss Julie (2014)
I assume that the melodramatic machinations of Miss Julie played like gangbusters in 1890s Sweden, but a century later it all rings pretty false. Bergman acolyte Liv Ullmann sneaks in a reference to Cries and Whispers in the opening flashback and executes an excellent final shot, but otherwise can’t overcome the inherent staginess of the…
Interstellar (2014)
Where T.S. Eliot found fear in a handful of dust, Christopher Nolan finds it in huge clouds of the stuff. Dust storms are consuming America’s failing agrarian communities decades from now. Blight ravages the planet’s few remaining crops as that dust brings illness and despair. This is a pre-apocalyptic world, a wasteland upon which mankind…
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