Poor Things (2023) - Movie Review

Yorgos Lanthimos is a mad genius of filmmaking. Having managed to make a rather unexpected emergence into the mainstream off of The Favourite, which took his usually osmium-thick storytelling style and made it accessible to a larger audience, his latest feature is as much a departure from that as The Favourite was from The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. DP Robbie Ryan is still offering a peephole-view into a world that is wildly different from what we charitably consider to be ‘reality’, and writer Tony McNamara is still finding new and deliciously colourful ways to describe the most vulgar shit, but what Lanthimos has brought them together for this time around is something truly special.

Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022) - Movie Review

 

Last year, I looked at a film called Shithouse (or Freshman Year, as it rather lamely got retitled for its Australian release) as part of my work for FilmInk. I was quite floored by it, as it felt like a genuine expression of what the world looks like through the eyes of an introvert, and it was one of the biggest surprises I got from a film that year. Naturally, when discovering that director/writer/star Cooper Raiff already had a follow-up in the works, I knew I had to take a look at it before the end of the year. With the attachment of names like Dakota Johnson as co-star and producer, I went into this expecting more of the same that Shithouse delivered, but with something of a higher budget. But that’s not what I got. What I got was a film that exceeded how much I fell for Shithouse, but by going in the complete opposite direction.

Why I'm Not Reviewing Music (2021)

Yep. We’re doing this again. And I’ll be honest, the decision to make this into my second official boycott is a fairly recent one. Even with all the controversy this film has garnered over the past couple months, I was still willing to at least let the film stand on its own terms and not just the marketing or the… interesting takes of the writer/director on social media. I mean, I went to bat for Cuties last year on the basis of its own garbage marketing; for all I know, this could be another example of a good film cast under a poor light.

But the more I thought about it, and the more I really took in everything that was leading up to this release… I just couldn’t do it. Even if I went for the cheapest theatrical session I could find, I still don’t feel right gambling my money on the prospect of this being decent. And since I made a big point of reviewing more films than ever in 2020, I figure it’d be worth getting into those signs so I can try and make a decent case for why this is going to be a major exception to my usual ‘watch anything I can get my hands on’ methodology.

The Night Clerk (2020) - Movie Review

This is something I’m likely going to get into more detail with a review I can already see approaching early next year, but just to get it out in the open: I don’t have an inherent problem with non-autistic people playing those on the spectrum. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Asa Butterfield, and Ben Affleck aren’t on the spectrum (far as I know, at least), and yet their respective depictions in Mary & Max, X+Y, and The Accountant still resonated with me.

Being able to depict something that close to my heart in a truly empathetic way means the world to me, regardless of the status of the actor doing it, and while I get the problem with the lack of IRL autistic representation in these movies (it’s been happening for so long, it’s become the norm to the detriment of working autistic actors), that on its own isn’t the issue. It just adds salt to the wound when the film’s understanding of the condition is already as fucked as it is in films like The Night Clerk.

The Predator (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: While on a mission, sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) sees an alien ship craft-land on Earth. After he is shuffled off to a military prison bus to keep him quiet about his discovery, biologist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) examines the body retrieved from the ship... and it escapes from the facility. Quinn will have to team up with Casey as well as the other soldiers on the bus in order to stop this Predator from turning the human race into game.

The Accountant (2016) - Movie Review

Some of my long(er)-time readers may have noticed that I am not one to shy away from certain aspects of mental disorders. Specifically, when it comes to how modern-day cinema portrays said disorders. As someone who freely admits to using movie-watching as a form of personal therapy (less risky to lash out at a piece of fiction than at an actual person), seeing films use mental conditions that I personally relate to can be a big part of that. Some films do an incredible job with them like Inside Out, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children and X+Y, and some can make a complete dog’s breakfast out of it like Mommy, Love Is Now and the more recent headache of Vaxxed. Today, we have another addition to that canon, except this is something that I don’t think exists in that great a number out there in the larger cinematic world. And quite frankly, we need more films like this.

Vaxxed: From Cover-Up To Catastrophe (2016) - Movie Review

Despite every reason why I shouldn’t, I have been anxiously awaiting the day that I can finally discuss this film in my usual rambling fashion. Over the last several months, I’ve been looking at release dates and interest groups involving this film and anti-vaxxing in general, just waiting for when the film would be released here in Australia. I mean, if God’s Not Dead 2 not only get a cinematic release but a distressingly wide release at that, surely something like this warrants similar treatment. Alas, due to the phenomenally terrible press it’s gotten, it seems that there are some things that even we won’t screen… well, for an extended amount of time. After some digging, I found that the film has been screened all of once as part of the Castlemaine CLIFF film festival. Since I’ve reviewed films here before with only one local screening to their name, and any release no matter how small meets my ad-hoc requirements for a review, it has now fallen under my purview. This may be the only time that I seek out a film purely for discussion purposes, as the whole anti-vaxxer movement has become quite toxic of late, so hopefully this will clear the air a bit.

X+Y (A Brilliant Young Mind) (2015) - Movie Review

When a person is discovered to have what is considered above-average intelligence, there is a certain expectation that they will fulfill their potential. Now, to a degree, this is understandable: Knowing how many truly stupid people exist in the world, it really would be a shame if someone with genuine intellect would just let it go to waste. But then, there’s the side effects that that kind of expectation can have on the person in question. I remember my last day of Year 10 excruciatingly well, as probably one of the best and one of the worst of my entire school career. Somehow, and I still don’t know how, I managed to top the class in my English School Certificate. The next year, I was “heavily advised” to go into the Advanced class, despite my best wishes. This would end up culminating in my HSC two years later, which officially broke me because not only was it clearly beyond my abilities, but that I was expected to pass it by my teachers. Sure, hindsight is a miracle worker and let me understand that all that work really doesn’t mean jack shit later on in life, but in a vacuum it is a horrific experience. Keep that idea of the supposed responsibility to one’s own intelligence as we get into today’s subject.

Mommy (2015) - Movie Review

Everyone, to some degree, has a mental disorder that either has been dialed down and given a populace-friendly acronym or is undiagnosed but still more common than the person in question may realise. I myself have been handed a series of diagnoses over my lifetime, and may still have some waiting in the wings, but it’s not exactly something I treat that seriously. My thoughts about the debates going on about people on the autistic spectrum (which encompasses a metric crap-ton of labels) is along the same lines as my attitude to the ongoing LGBTQ debates: Admitting to such things isn’t automatically brave. It is rather unnerving that we live in a society where openly saying that you are one thing or another is something to be commended for, rather than just being a mundane part of the human experience. I come from a family that is very pro-autism awareness since my own diagnosis, and even though I applaud their enthusiasm on the subject, there’s only so many articles being shared on Facebook about who is and who isn’t an Aspie that I can take. Then films like this come along and remind me that, as much as I like to think otherwise, some people still need serious education on the subject.