Top 100 Favourite Films: #60-51

#60: The Castle – White guilt as cultural understanding

Part of the Aussie culture is a very ingrained want to stay the hell away from itself. It’s a weird side effect of just how little of a fuck we collectively give, but cultural cringe plays a large part in the national mindset. It also plays a large part into what makes this film so good, as a lot of it banks on lovingly ribbing the white Aussie middle-class, exposing it as being far less sophisticated than it thinks it is. The people who see seasoning on chicken as something exotic, and plastic faux-French housing decorations as the height of class.

Big Eyes (2015) - Movie Review

It’s fan-boy time again, this time looking at the newest film from Tim Burton, one of my favourite directors. Of course, openly admitting to such things isn’t exactly the safest of prospects considering his more recent output like Alice In Wonderland and Dark Shadows, some of his older work like Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Sleepy Hollow or even just the fact that his style is just that recognisable that, quite frankly, an awful lot of people are getting sick of seeing it, especially given how influential it has become. But I couldn’t give a monkey’s about any of that: I grew up watching his films from Beetlejuice to Sweeney Todd, I’ve always dug his garish yet Gothic style and I genuinely think that his cinematic sensibilities helped make me the person I am today… although, to be fair, that might just give readers another reason to hate him for all I know. Not to say that all of his films follow his usual aesthetic, as today’s film will no doubt attest ; this is the first Burton film I can remember seeing that wasn’t playing at a mainstream cinema and after seeing it, I kind of get why.