Eden feels kinda pointless. Maybe that’s the point. Following an aspiring garage DJ, Paul (Félix de Givry), a slender surrogate for director Mia Hansen-Løve’s brother and co-writer Sven, the film’s first half largely eschews the typical party aesthetics – the neon-streaked dancefloor, the incandescent beaches – for overcast streets and rumpled apartments, like something out…
Great Christmas films are always about family. Whether it’s the traditional soppy Santa Claus tale à la Miracle on 34th Street, Will Ferrel trying to reunite with his dad in Elf or John McClane blasting through Eurotrash terrorists to get back to his wife in Die Hard, at these films’ core remains a deeply conservative…
Hark! Another Christmas movie about the redemption of a dysfunctional family—and another lump of coal in my Christmas stocking. Love the Coopers is a woeful attempt at ‘collage’ cinema (multiple sugary plotlines populated by dull caricatures—an oeuvre seemingly popularised by 2003’s Love Actually). If you’re looking for a bit of seasonal cheer, you’re better off…
Creed is a Rocky film, just with a different stance and technique. Like its titular character, Creed is aware of its legacy and honours it while at the same time wanting to make a name for itself. Writer-director Ryan Coogler – best known for Fruitvale Station – demonstrates both a clear admiration for the series and the confidence…
It’s fitting that Kiwi splatter-comedy Deathgasm introduces its characters with notepad-scribble-flourishes. You see, this film – which combines death metal fanaticism with crude humour and imaginative gore – feels like the product of a couple Year 10 boys giggling at the back of science class, cobbling together ideas in the margins alongside deeply-etched pentagrams and…
Have you ever struck out on a date because of a careless word or a clumsy gesture? Writer-director, Hong Sang-soo, ponders this quandary in Right Now, Wrong Then, a romantic-drama that plays out like a low-key Groundhog Day. The film benefits from strong performances in the lead roles and, despite some ponderous pacing, the central…
Intellectually and artistically, Tehran Taxi is intimidatingly dense. The third in a very loose trilogy from Jahar Panahi – following the Iranian director’s twenty-year ban from filmmaking in 2010 – we spend the entirety of the film in Panahi’s taxi, observing his passenger’s conversations about cinema, censorship and justice through a handful of digital cameras…
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…
Argentinian film The Secret in Their Eyes has been idling sloshing around my watchlist for a couple years now, buoyed by strong word of mouth and an Oscar win for Best Foreign Language Film. But I decided to hold off after hearing of the impending American remake starring the likes of Julia Roberts, Chiwetel Ejiofor…
It’s easy, and not entirely inaccurate, to regard Knight of Cups as the apotheosis of “Malickian.” Terrence Malick’s latest film, centring on the idle thoughts and innumerable conquests of Christian Bale’s Hollywood A-lister (think Coppola’s Somewhere – Los Angeles as purgatory), has all the easily-parodied tropes that have come to define the director’s work. The…
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