Gold (2022) - Movie Review

Considering the summer heat is officially kicking in down here in Australia, I’m probably in the most ideal state of mind to engage with a film about a guy trying to survive in the desert. And considering this first came out near the end of January of this year (deep in the middle of the last summer), I’m willing to bet that that timing isn’t a coincidence. Trust me to be both timely and late to the party at the same time.

Neptune Frost (2022) - Movie Review

Well, this is going to be a challenge. A film that seems specifically engineered to defy easy descriptions or classifications, made by a Hip Hop artist who has made an entire career out of making such things. Saul Williams is one of the culture’s true original and unique talents, as it’s difficult even fathoming anyone else attempting half the shit he pulls on record. Like fellow slam poet and MC Sage Francis, he doesn’t so much engage in wordplay as he does word-bullying, deconstructing and then reconstructing the English language over the course of a few lines, let alone a verse. On top of that, his choice of production blends old-school Hip Hop, rock, electronica, industrial, and about a skrillion other things to create a sonic whirlwind that is as verbose as it is fascinating to engage with. And now he’s made a movie.

Blood Quantum (2020) - Movie Review

The zombie apocalypse sub-genre may be one of my personal favourites, but I’d be lying if I said that’s because of its originality. It’s a pretty reliable source of gorehound material, and there’s definitely something about the recurring scenario that speaks to my socially-isolated ways (and that’s before the pandemic made that way of life mandatory), but it’s quite a task to truly think outside the box with the stumbling or running dead these days. Some attempts like Warm Bodies just feel like bad experiments, and arguably the most creative zombie movie in recent years, Zombieland, is largely the result of poking at how overused its own tropes are. So for something to come out that really pushes the boat out is cause for celebration, far as I’m concerned, and this Shudder exclusive is one such effort.

The Furnace (2020) - Movie Review

Shitty things about a nation’s history are like ants on the sidewalk: You rarely find just one of them when you start looking, and before long, you find another, and another, and then holy shit, it’s crawling with the fuckers. And over the last few years’ worth of Australian films, we’ve certainly been making a point of unearthing our own past to basically throw a spear right through the collective nostalgia. Sweet Country, The Nightingale, and True History Of The Kelly Gang looked at the colonial side of things, Ride Like A Girl wound up unintentionally exposing its own duplicity within our horse-racing industry, even Below from earlier this year took a speculative look at our recent activity with off-shore detention centres. Today’s film follows in that tradition, managing to find a whole new avenue to convey how much the British put the ‘colon’ in ‘colonialism’, with a look at Afghan cameleers.

True History Of The Kelly Gang (2019) - Movie Review

After bringing Shakespeare to the big screen with Macbeth, and delivering a much-maligned but still admirable attempt at video game adaptation with Assassin’s Creed, director Justin Kurzel has reunited with screenwriter Shaun Grant to once again step into Australia’s dark history to bring us a film about the quintessential Aussie legend: The outlaw Ned Kelly. The two have already proven their salt as a team with Snowtown, and Shaun Grant’s writing did a great service to the cultural hiding featured in Jasper Jones, and true to form, their efforts here make for a powerful piece of cinema.

Frozen II (2019) - Movie Review

Discussing the worldwide phenomenon that is Frozen is… difficult. Mainly because, for pretty much every single day since its initial release, it’s been damn-near impossible to escape the bloody thing. Overplay is something that can sour a film to an immense degree, and between the moichendising, the sing-a-long screenings that continue to this day, and the ubiquity of Let It Go, it is all too easy to understand why a lot of people have grown plain sick of the whole thing.

For me personally, though… no amount of overplay can kill this thing. It remains one of the single greatest things Disney has ever produced, an astounding feat of sophisticated storytelling and mesmerising animation and music that, upon first watching, it basically became the subconscious watermark that every other animated film has to measure up to for me. Whether in comparison to the media juggernaut that is Frozen’s afterlife, or just the sheer brilliance of the film itself, making a feature-length follow-up to it was going to be a Herculean task. And man oh man, I don’t think anyone was expecting this to be the end result.

Mortal Engines (2018) - Movie Review

 

We don’t get movies like this anymore. Yes, it’s a large-scale piece of sci-fi action adventure cinema, a familiar form of popcorn fodder, but I’m talking more about the aesthetic. This kind of globe-spanning steampunk is a genuine rarity nowadays. And in the hands of Peter Jackson, giving his frequent collaborator Christian Rivers a thunderous directorial debut, his finesse in the realm of computer effects gives this film an absolutely fantastic visage.

Showing a world where cities have become gargantuan machines, roaming the scorched earth in hopes of materials to maintain their own existence (referred to in-universe as 'Municipal Darwinism'), the level of scale and detail here is staggering. Watching the colossal city of London chug along what was once the world we know is a disquieting experience… and not just because of the destruction in its wake.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) - Movie Review

I never thought I would get to this point but I think I’m starting to get burnt out on all these Marvel movies. I’ve mentioned before how much I love superhero and comic book inspired films, and I still stand by all of that, but as more time passes, I’m beginning to realize that my zeal to see these films in the cinema has severely diminished. Yeah, I’ve still seen all of the MCU to date, but I ended up getting to some of them like Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming far later than I would have expected. Whether it’s down to the sheer volume of releases per year, the fact that all of them are interconnected so that they all need to be seen to get the full experience, or just down to me discovering other sub-genres that interest me more, some part of my subconscious is hesitant to keep seeing these. Not that it should be; I mean, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 is still an astounding work, Homecoming gave us the first real Spider-Man movie and even Doctor Strange has some of the greatest effects work I’ve ever seen full stop.

 

So, yeah, maybe it’s less that I’m losing my love for these films and more that they are starting to feel more like work. No change there then, honestly. Anyway, enough waffle; time to get into this latest MCU offering that seems to be taking the franchise in a different direction. A very weird direction.