Interview with ‘Ruben Guthrie’ Director Brendan Cowell

Growing up in this fair country of ours, it doesn’t take too long to realise that the phrase “Australian drinking culture” is a tautology. We Aussies love our booze; we forge friendships over a couple beers, we pick up at the club after a suite of shots, we share a glass of wine with our…

Dear White People (2014)

As its title suggests, Dear White People is a statement as much as a film, tackling modern-day race relations. Justin Simien’s debut feature stages its satirical drama in Winchester University, a fictional American college where residential colleges are divided – and, ultimately, fractured – along race lines. Early on I fretted that its insistence on…

Space Dandy – Season 1

It’s an empirical fact that Cowboy Bebop is one of the greatest anime series ever made. It’s also an empirical fact that one of its greatest episodes has essentially nothing to do with the show’s emphasis on its protagonists’ futile attempts to escape their dark pasts, nor of its core of existential loneliness: I’m speaking,…

God’s Pocket (2014)

“I don’t see nothin’ but what I’m lookin’ at.” This line – or variations thereof – is repeated in John Slattery’s God’s Pocket, as ordinary folk reassure one another that they have no interest in the other’s minor misdeeds. It’s also a reasonable description of my reaction to the film; it’s not bad, but it…

Masters of Sex

If you’re not already, you should be watching Masters of Sex, the second-best new show of the year (after Hannibal). The show follows the scientific research of Bill Masters (Michael Sheen) and his assistant Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) into human sexuality. Set in the fifties, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Mad Men,…