All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (2023) - Movie Review

I fractured my arm earlier this year. It was the first broken bone I’d had since high school, and while it wasn’t as bizarrely timed as those particular incidents (first ever broken bone was on my first day of Year 7, and the second and third happened a year later almost to the day), there was still some weirdness to it since it involved a literal legs-out-from-under-me pratfall in public due to a slippery floor. Even on accident, I just can’t help but make a public spectacle of myself.

At any rate, I went to the hospital to get it checked out, they confirmed it was indeed fractured… and then I got prescribed Oxycodone (or OxyContin, as it's more widely known) to deal with the pain. I usually don’t even bother with pain meds (and this isn’t some macho ‘I feel no pain’ nonsense talking; I just don’t really notice if they’re working or not), but since that first night after the break had me in utter sleepless agony, I figured it was worth trying. The main effect I remember it having, aside from the dulling of the pain as it should’ve done, was this woozy, drowsy sensation that lasted for a good few hours. It was… nice. Pleasant.

What wasn’t so pleasant was the isolation of being stuck inside, in pain, and feeling generally useless because I wasn’t able to get household chores done. Not to get too into it, but had I not accidentally thrown out that very Oxy prescription at one point, that isolation might have led me to do something very stupid. As I got into with Talk To Me, I have something of an addictive personality, along with hedonistic tendencies, and while I haven’t tried to get any more Oxy since then (and likely never will), there’s still a part of me that wonders what might’ve happened had I not thrown out that bottle. Would I still be taking it now? How close would I get to becoming part of that terrifying statistic?

You Can Go Now! (2023) - Movie Review

Much like with when I looked at The Witch Of Kings Cross back in 2021, this is a documentary about an Aussie artist that I didn’t know anything about beforehand. I consider myself an ally of the First Peoples of this country, and have (and will continue to) voice such opinions in my work, but I freely admit that there are sizeable gaps in my knowledge of the history. Specifically, when it comes to Black art. So, when it came time for me to draft up a list of films I wanted to make sure I got to before the end of the year, I knew that I had to include this look at one of Australia’s most prominent Black artists: Richard Bell. And while it gave me a better impression of who Richie is and his place within Australian art history, it also felt spread a bit thin.

This Much I Know To Be True (2022) - Movie Review

Teaming up once again with director Andrew Dominik (and I mean in front of the camera, since he also contributed to Dominik’s… interesting Marilyn Monroe biopic), This Much I Know To Be True serves as a follow-up to the 2016 documentary One More Time With Feeling. Where that film captured Cave at his most outwardly melancholic, wrestling with his grief over the death of his son, this shows him in a much better place.

Mister Organ (2022) - Movie Review

 

“This is the weirdest film I’ve seen all year.”

That was my immediate reaction to this New Zealand doco once the credits started rolling, but thinking back on it, it doesn’t seem that strange. It’s the story of a man who, by director David Farrier’s own admission, is fucking boring, and it starts out looking at the titular Mr. Organ and his involvement in a bout of aggressive car-clamping outside of an antiques shop in Auckland, New Zealand. But as both Farrier and the audience are drawn deeper into Organ’s endless supply of shaggy dog stories and bewilderingly frequent court appearances, the effect created is beyond surreal.

Moonage Daydream (2022) - Movie Review

Like with any other genre, documentaries tend to stick to a formula, especially biographical ones: Go through the subject’s life in chronological order, from childhood to the early days to their initial brush with fame to their eventual solidification as someone worth making a documentary about. Include interviews with people revolving around that person, whether they knew them personally or looked up to them as a fan, show some behind-the-scenes footage of the person hard at work in their field of choice, maybe throw in some historical context to bring out the real worth of their efforts in the larger scheme of things; chances are you’ve seen something just like that at least once before.

Moonage Daydream isn’t a typical documentary. Coming from Brett Morgen, the mastermind behind Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck, it’d be a shock if it were. In fact, when Morgen offers up is so atypical, I’d almost question if this really qualifies as a ‘documentary’ in the strictest definition. While it most certainly offers a look into the life and works of David Bowie, this is more focused on aesthetics than historical documents. Mood rather than facts. It bends the conventions of film around its subject, rather than cutting the latter up to conform to the former. And in the result of this Technicolor smog cloud, Morgen offers up something that offers a far better understanding of Bowie than a simpler documentary would ever be able to grasp at.

Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) - Movie Review

More people should know Questlove by name. As the co-bandleader of The Roots alongside Black Thought, who have spent several years as the house band for The Tonight Show, he’s arguably more visible now than he and his crew have ever been before. But beyond their reliability as a musical act, these guys deserve all the credit in the world for being the greatest hip-hop band (not group, band) of all time. And Questlove is a big part of that, as not only did his production work help define the group’s jam-jazz aesthetic, but his drum work makes for some of the hardest shit ever put on wax, even considering how percussion-focused a lot of hip-hop is. And with his feature-length debut here as director, he is also shining a light on a unfairly underrated aspect of Black music and culture, with a retrospective of 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival.

The Sparks Brothers (2021) - Movie Review

I know next to nothing about the band Sparks. My mother played This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us once, and Weird Al Yankovic did a style parody of them with Virus Alert off of Straight Outta Lynwood (incidentally my favourite Weird Al album); that’s pretty much it. But knowing that director Edgar Wright has already got a winner this year in Last Night In Soho, and his ingrained fandom sensibilities certainly make him a good fit for this kind of documentary, I’m certainly interested in learning more. I mean, I’m basically the kind of filmgoer this was seemingly designed for: A casual observer who might have heard about the band before, but probably doesn’t realise just how much influence Ron and Russell Mael have had on the music landscape worldwide. And while it definitely does its job, that comes with a few caveats.

The Witch Of Kings Cross (2021) - Movie Review

Time for a bit of local colour. This is an Aussie documentary by Sonia Bible about Rosaleen Norton, an artist and provocateur whom the media had dubbed ‘The Witch Of Kings Cross’. Kings Cross itself is quite an infamous stretch of the Sydney landscape, so it really says something when Norton’s exploits were enough for that kind of honorific. And as someone who knew sweet F.A. about her going into this, I found myself fascinated by what this doco had to offer.

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020) - Movie Review

We need to laugh in the face of death. It’s something we all have waiting for us wherever the road happens to stop, and it’s the kind of terrible but inevitable event that humour was designed for. Comedy is many things to many different people, but for me, it’s how we deal with the worst that life has to offer, up to and including its end. It’s a way of coming to terms with what we must come to terms with, and learning to take things on the chin so we can carry on with however much of our lives we have left. It’s the kind of morbid cheek that I have spent most of my own life embracing in one form or another, and it’s why this documentary really stuck a chord with me.

Evolution: The Genius Equation (2020) - Movie Review

There are few cinematic ambitions greater than wanting to make an audience better through the inclusion of a filmmaker’s work in their media diet. And writer/producer/director/cinematographer/editor Paulina Amador wishes to do such with this documentary; to transform viewers into more hyper-inquisitive beings, akin to interviewee Jason Padgee who purportedly became a maths whiz after a chance head injury. And to her credit, that is the effect created… in that it induces a celestial-sized headache trying to watch it.

Slim & I (2020) - Movie Review

I only have one concrete memory of Aussie music icon Slim Dusty, and as embarrassing as it may seem, I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one in my generation who remembers him for this. It was when he did a duet with the Wiggles on I Love To Have A Dance With Dorothy, a kid-friendly reworking of his drinking song Duncan. Wiggly Wiggly World was in pretty heavy rotation for me as a kid, and to this day, it’s one of the main things I remember from my childhood. Even listening to it today, it gets my toes tapping… and fills me with a slight melancholy, as the singer tragically passed away from cancer when I was only eight years old. And yet that one core recollection I have of him, singing about mates joining together in dance, oddly fits with the depiction of him given in this documentary about him and his wife Joy McKean.

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare On Elm Street (2020) - Movie Review

Before getting into this particular film, I feel like I need to give some background context for myself, as this is a documentary centred on a film I have some history with. A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is one of the first movies I ever reviewed. Back when I was still trying to make YouTube my career, I chose this as my second review subject. My take on it was… rough. It was done back when I was still well-ingrained in the ‘angry critic’ style that was big at the time, and honestly, looking back at my strained attempts to discuss the gay aspects of the film make me cringe so hard that, at some point, I actually took it down from my YouTube channel.

The Amazing Johnathan Documentary (2020) - Movie Review

The discourse surrounding films tends to isolate documentaries from basically every other kind of production. Sure, there are mockumentary hybrids that blur that line, but overall, people expect a degree of facticity from documentaries that isn’t normally expected (or at least expected as much) of fiction or even fictionalised versions of real events. Considering how the nature of filmmaking involves a certain element of constructing reality in its very process, that facticity isn’t always guaranteed or even aimed for. But every so often, a documentary takes this idea on-board and basically turns into its own statement on what makes a documentary qualify as such.

Citizen K (2020) - Movie Review

Alex Gibney is one of the strongest documentarians working today. He’s basically the embodiment of the more investigative, journalistic side of the art form, diving head-long into incredibly intricate and invariably depressing subjects, managing to unearth gold more times than not. We last caught up with him with the 2015 Scientology documentary Going Clear, a film so effective that I still can’t listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without feeling slightly ill. And with his latest, he’s getting into a topic that might be even dicier than going through David Miscavige’s dirty laundry: Putin’s Russia.

Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé (2019) - Movie Review

With how many new and returning faces have dotted the cinematic landscape over the past decade, pinning down any singular filmmaker as being the definitive artist of the 2010’s sounds like a headache and a half. In the realm of popular music, however, that question is far simpler. Sure, there are a few contenders for that crown on the pop stage like Taylor Swift, but none of them can hold a candle to the breadth of musical talent and utter ubiquity than one Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

Her paradigm shift into becoming an album artist in 2013 somehow managed to upgrade her already-enviable place in the spotlight, pushing her beyond her girl group/showbiz upbringing origins and revealing her as one of pop’s most singular artists. But the moment that truly confirmed her place in pop history was her performance at Coachella 2018, the setting for Beyoncé’s step into the director’s chair to capture this truly important moment. And man, does she bring a whole new shine to the event.

Wrinkles The Clown (2019) - Movie Review

It can be difficult to think of a time when clowns weren’t terrifying. Between Pennywise from It in its many variations, the even greater variations of the Joker, not to mention those weird clown sightings that kept popping up in 2016, our culture seems to be hardwired to view these harlequins are something to be afraid of. And in Internet circles, there’s a particular clown that keeps being brought up: Wrinkles The Clown, a Florida-based scary clown for hire that parents can call to scare their naughty kids straight.

Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2019) - Movie Review

Hype is the epitome of what social currency looks like. It has zero tangible or even practical value on its own, but it has the power to create so much momentum that it can turn otherwise unassuming media into a colossal event. It is one of the few things I’ve encountered that can completely alter how I approach a given film, whether it’s a recently-released tentpole blockbuster that has everyone and their mother talking on social media, or an older classic that makes me consider how it was received at the time vs. how it is received divorced from its contemporaneous marketing. Sometimes, it leads to moments that can define an entire year, and sometimes, it becomes a disaster that defines an entire generation. This documentary, directed by Jim & Andy’s Chris Smith, covers something that wholly belongs in the latter category.

Hail Satan? (2019) - Movie Review

In my time perusing social media and the many places where the unseen masses congregate to share their views, I have realised a fairly simple equation: The more that a person points the finger at someone for being a Satanist, the less they actually know about what Satanism actually is. Anyone in the mood for a good laugh (and still has the strength of will to use Twitter) should go and check the Church of Satan’s Twitter account, where there are daily iterations of people taking the time to lash out at the Church, while not using a fraction of that time to do some basic Q&A reading so that they know what they’re angry against.

It’s one of those aspects of the modern understanding of religion that always tickles me, and it’s what immediately drew me to checking this documentary out. A chronicle of the Satanic Temple, the more politically-minded side of Satanist doctrine that is more interested in activism than metaphysics, the depiction we are given is one that takes into account the common misconceptions about the movement and, with a devilishly cheeky grin, dispels a lot of the more frequent myths surrounding it.

Amazing Grace (2019) - Movie Review

It’s not every day you go to church for a séance, but that’s what this film has set itself up to be. Released for audience consumption after the tragic death of its main subject, this documentary is the live recording of Aretha’s album of the same name, a work that remains the most commercially successful live gospel album of all time and a substantial part of the Aretha catalogue. Between its lightning-in-a-bottle framing, its backing by the likes of Spike Lee’s 40 Acres And A Mule Filmworks, and its direction by legendary filmmaker Sydney Pollack, this looks to be one hell of a concert flick. And that it is but, for reasons I’ll get to, I can’t shake the feeling that something is missing from all this.

Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019) - Movie Review

In terms of the archetypal rock star, the one that women want, men want to be, and everyone else starts learning their tastes quickly in response to, I can’t think of a better example of Australia’s own crop in that regard than one Michael Hutchence, AKA the lead singer of INXS. And in this tell-all documentary directed and co-edited by Richard Lowenstein, who put together the group’s best-remembered music videos, the narrative of Michael’s life is wrapped around that image.