Is ‘Mother!’ Actually Worth The Pain?
mother! is not fucking around. This is a film that well and truly earns its exclamation mark.
Suicide Squad is a Sugar Rush and Sugar Crash All at Once
Suicide Squad is a feature length trailer. It’s structured like a videogame and plotted like a D&D campaign where everyone’s roleplaying chaotic evil. Anyway, I kinda liked it.
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…
Rick and Morty Season 1
The Simpsons recently turned to Rejected’s Don Hertzfeldt to provide the couch gag for their twenty-sixth season premiere (yep, they’ve really been going that long). Hertzfeldt provided a compellingly weird piece of sci-fi satire, biting the hand that feeds and retching up a twisted nightmare (go watch it). While I didn’t watch the episode itself…
The Babadook (2014)
It’s a rare film that can balance the supernatural and the psychotic. It requires walking the razor’s edge of taut surrealism without toppling into ridiculousness or incoherency. A few films have succeeded – Repulsion, The Innocents, The Shining, Eraserhead. And now, The Babadook. A feature length adaptation of Aussie director Jennifer Kent’s 2005 short Monster,…
Double Feature: Barry Lyndon (1975) and Dogville (2003)
Lars von Trier identifies Barry Lyndon as an influence on his 1993 experimental film, Dogville; his choice to break his film up into chapters was inspired by Kubrick’s film, as was his use of a detached, ironical narrator (John Hurt). The films have other similarities – a three hour runtime and a protagonist (Ryan O’Neal…
Commentary: Mastering Meaning – The Futile Search for Answers in The Master
Epiphanies about art are few and far between. You remember them. So it goes with me and Grade 7 English, when we analysed George Orwell’s Animal Farm. As my teacher unpacked the meaning and symbolism of the novel, how it was an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism, how the exile…
Double Feature: The Shining (1980) – American and European Theatrical Cuts
You don’t have to look at a calendar to recognise that it’s Halloween: I don’t know about you, but the trickle of horror reviews and features on my WordPress Reader has become a flood over the last week or so. Any regular readers of ccpopculture know that horror is a regular feature here, but I…
Double Feature: Halloween (1978) and You’re Next (2013)
Halloween may not been the first masked killer movie (arriving four years after Leatherface), but the implacable Michael Myers’ shadow stretches long across the genre; establishing many significant tropes (the killer is invulnerable until he is unmasked. A perfunctory backstory that doesn’t disguise how the masked man – it’s always a man – stands in…
Under the Dome – “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
Under the Dome is a television series based on a Stephen King story. Many adaptations of King’s writing are a clear improvement (The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me)… alongside a score of forgettable failures (Cujo, The Stand, etc). I think his writing lends itself well to re-interpretations, as King frequently conceives outstanding concepts…
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