Improvisational comedy is fast becoming the norm. Whether it’s This is the End, Bad Neighbours or Anchorman 2, the construction is the same: narrative skeleton to keep the audience interested interspersed with some carefully-honed gags and a lot of loose improvisation, edited into something tighter. I’m not complaining, mind; I love the shooting-shit-with-your-mates vibe of…
Love is Strange resembles a gay version of Tokyo Story filtered through Woody Allen’s wry, New Yorker worldview except, unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as great as that sounds. After thirty nine years together, George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow) take the opportunity to legally recognise their relationship in matrimony. Legal acceptance doesn’t necessarily translate…
Blue Ruin feels like a feature-length version of the suspenseful, often silent showdowns found within understated thrillers. I’m thinking Coen Bros specifically – the climax of Blood Simple, or the hotel showdown between Chirgurh and Moss in No Country for Old Men. Executed right, these scenes practically define the cliché “on the edge of one’s…
When I was growing up, I used to imagine that I was the star in my own movie. That my adventures on the playground or walks home from school were shadowed by an unseen camera crew, recording my every experience for an enraptured audience. While the idea was ridiculous in its egotism – who would…
CLPPNG is a dark, often difficult record. It’s despair; it’s disgust; it’s the acrid sting of bile in the back of your throat. It wields its malignant soundscape — a swirl of hard-edged textures, a maelstrom of noise — not as an outcry of aggression (though there is anger here), but as a manifesto of…
Joe begins with violence; a man strikes his son, and shortly afterwards is beaten himself by unseen assailants. Violence begetting violence in a world defined by masculinity. Joe tells us of the struggle to be a man for fifteen year-old Gary (Tye Sheridan) and Joe (Nicolas Cage) alike, the latter taking a shine to the…
I’ve recently begun contributing to The Essential, a great new Australia film/music site. My first contribution was found in the middle of a Writer’s Roundtable asking the question “What is your favourite score/soundtrack and why?” The whole article is definitely recommended, with my colleagues producing some great responses, but my answer is included below: I…
The Fault in Our Stars is carefully constructed to tear plaintively at your heartstrings. It works best not as a weepy, but as a gentle evocation of romance through the subjective perspective of teenage protagonist, Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley). Hazel has cancer, yes, and the story is in many ways about that. It’s also about…
The notion of films adopting a “videogame aesthetic” is – or was – a common critical observation, wielded as pejorative or praise depending, seemingly, on the critic’s personal opinion of videogames. Since at least The Matrix – a film visually and conceptually indebted to contemporary videogames while inspiring the design of games to come – and even Tron before…
“The Mountain and the Viper” is a reminder that in George R.R. Martin’s unforgiving Game of Thrones universe, some things are inevitable… …bloodshed, for example. Or that whenever there’s a cursory shot of buff, shirtless men… …there’ll be a series of leering close-ups on naked women shortly afterwards. (Not that I’m especially complaining about getting…
ccpopculture 