Close (2023) - Movie Review

I’m starting to think that Bros from last year had an even greater impact on me than I realised because, ever since watching that, I find myself becoming more acutely aware of how Gay stories are commodified and framed for mass consumption, especially when it comes to films. Sure, there are no shortage of good, heartfelt, and authentic stories out there, but there’s a certain… uncomfortable pattern that a lot of them seem to fall into. One that feels oddly in-line with films like A Dog’s Purpose, where the attempt to make an impact with the audience involves victimising the central character(s). Gay misery and tragedy get more mainstream traction than anything positive or life-affirming, and this isn’t the only case where minorities are turned into misery porn for majority audiences. And I’ll be honest, this is one of the worser examples I’ve seen of this mindset in action.

Benedetta (2022) - Movie Review

I have been eagerly looking forward to seeing this movie and reviewing it. Hell, I’ve been itching for the chance to talk about its director for quite some time. Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven has one of the most fascinating, if not outright legendary, filmographies of any cinema creative I’ve come across. After some modest successes in his native Holland over the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Verhoeven moved to the United States and had one hell of a hot streak. RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and Hollow Man, all one right after the other over the course of thirteen years. This is why I love auteur theory: So many of the idiosyncrasies in those films suddenly make a bit more sense once you realise they’re from the same mind.

And after a brief return to the Netherlands for 2006’s Black Book, he has since settled down in France where he put together the immensely uncomfortable (and I say that as someone who sat through Una and The Nightingale) Ella. For as much as I can appreciate the characterisation in that film, it also shows a darker side to Verhoeven’s iconic lack of taste that is not easy to sit through, and not exactly for the best of reasons. As someone with a serious admiration for the man’s work at his peak (Showgirls isn’t a so-bad-it’s-good movie, it’s a legitimately great film, and I will die on that hill), I was truly hoping that his latest wouldn’t be more of the same unpleasantness. And indeed, this is quite a different beast from the likes of Ella.

Parallel Mothers (2022) - Movie Review

Pedro Almodóvar has a new film out this year. And that name had damn-well better sound familiar to my readers, given how much I gushed over his last film Pain And Glory, my favourite film of 2019 and one of the best films about filmmaking of the entire 2010s. But with that same enthusiasm I showed not that long ago, there’s a good chance that I’m just setting up whatever he has next to fail. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this film is still very, very good, but take my minor gripes to follow with a grain of salt, as I may have already spoilt myself when it comes to this guy at his best.

The Eyes Of Tammy Faye (2022) - Movie Review

After two far-from ideal releases from Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films in the form of Ava and The 355, I damn-near used every last hope reserve I had left and aimed it directly at this film because I want something good to come out of Chastain as a name-brand producer. And truth be told, she seems to have finally found a production worth having her name on it, both as producer and as title star. Having been somewhat familiar with her work since seeing her in Zero Dark Thirty all those years ago, I’ve always thought of her as a good actor but never one that had a central mind-blowing performance to her credit. Until now, that is.

The Power Of The Dog (2021) - Movie Review

The chances of me being able to get into a Western are about as the same as the average person liking Bender’s cooking: Unless there’s something wild and possibly psychedelic is mixed in there, it’s probably not gonna happen. But this is another one of those films that I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about over the last month, and while I’m still going in with a mild disinterest in the genre as a whole, I’m at least willing to give it a chance on its own terms, rather than making it adhere to my own. It coming from a filmmaker as beloved as Jane Campion definitely helps with that, but just bear in mind that I’m not exactly the target audience for such stories. Or, at least, that’s what I thought going into this.

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.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) - Movie Review

I did not like the first Venom film. And as much as me even bringing that up again is just adding more fuel to the underlying “critics hate movies that audiences actually like” conversation… fucking hell, that entire line of thinking, predicated on insisting that film critics might as well be a completely different species than every other kind of filmgoer, is one of the most annoying parts of the larger conversation regarding cinema. I mean, it’s a superhero film made by one of the biggest studios working today; it doesn’t need to be defended like it’s this groundbreaking indie underdog. At any rate, we now have a sequel, and what is being presented here is not only a lot more likeable than what came before, it’s honestly a comic book idea that hasn’t really been done before on the big screen.

Fear Street Parts One, Two & Three (2021) - Movie Trilogy Review

The line separating television productions and cinematic productions is thinner now than it has ever been. There are several reasons for this: Increased production values for television, streaming services making both equally accessible, cinematic universes that operate under the same shared continuity as a TV series; the list goes on. Hell, it’s gotten to a point where I’d likely have more relevant material to work with if I reviewed more series on here rather than just sticking to films, but honestly, I tend to watch recent films but only get around to TV shows until well after they’ve ended so I can binge-watch in peace without having to deal with the hype train while it’s still on the tracks.

But then there are productions that blur the lines even further, like the subject of today’s review. A Netflix trilogy of films, all made by the same film crew back-to-back, and released within a week of each other; this is more miniseries than three contained films. As such, this review is going to be a bit different from my usual one-at-a-time methodology, as I’m going to look at all three in one go, highlight what separates them and, more importantly, what links them together.

Summerland (2021) - Movie Review

There’s too much going on here. While I find it somewhat fascinating that a story this simple can touch on so many different topics, that fascination turns into gawking rather quickly at how, by some bizarre anti-miracle, none of it ends up fitting together in a satisfying way.

Ammonite (2021) - Movie Review

For all the good things I’m about to put down on paper about this film, I have to admit that I can easily see this film rubbing some people the wrong way. This is an incredibly cold and detached film by design, depicting the budding relationship between palaeontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), a young woman who was basically thrust into Mary’s care without much say from either party. The sterile colour palette (if it can even be described as having one from the offset), the dreary seaside setting, the distance held between the characters and the cinematic perspective; it can be a bit much to get into right away.

The Prom (2020) - Movie Review

James Corden really, really, really needs a new agent. His choice of scripts is getting out of hand. The Emoji Movie, Peter Rabbit, Cats, even the British dub of Norm Of The North; whatever potential he may have had in Hollywood, he has pissed away entirely by contributing to some of the absolute worst movies of the 2010s, and dragging down the few good ones he gets (like being the biggest sticking point in the otherwise-excellent Smallfoot). He is a walking warning flare for any movie he’s attached to, but his presence within those movies is only a symptom of much larger problems with those productions. And the same is true for this one, to the point where watching this brought something… ugly out of me.

Ellie And Abbie (And Ellie's Dead Aunt) (2020) - Movie Review

These last twelve months have made me realise just how much the phrase “good intentions” annoys the hell out of me. Especially when it comes to movies, as it’s kind of a depressing experience to watch something that clearly has its heart in the right place… but the execution just isn’t there. I’ve covered quite a few movies that fall under this category, and I’ll likely be talking about some of them again when it comes time for the year-end lists, but honestly, I think this one hurts the most. It’s a coming-of-age LGBTQ rom-com, set in my hometown of Sydney, and I really, really wanted to champion this. But alas, this is just cringe, and not the good kind.

Sequin In A Blue Room (2020) - Movie Review

Here’s a rarity for you: An erotic thriller that’s actually good. Like, beyond any potential for Googling the raunchier clips to watch for ‘the articles’, this is a nice and effective mixture of the sensual and dangerous. And like with the better examples in the genre, it works because the two are ever-present within the narrative framework, here shown as a look into hook-up culture in the age of social media.

Happiest Season (2020) - Movie Review

It’s kind of impossible to get casting that’s better than this, especially for something as traditionally over-billed as a Christmas movie. On one side, Kristen Stewart, an actress with one of the most gratifying resurgences of the last decade, and a modern gay icon. And on the other, Mackenzie Davis, half of one of the greatest gay romances in all of fiction with Black Mirror's San Junipero. They've both been in some less-than-ideal features this year already (Underwater and Seberg for Stewart, The Turning and Irresistible for Davis), but all the same, a movie with them together as a couple has just got to be good. And thankfully, it very much is.

Freaky (2020) - Movie Review

Over the last handful of years, once he stopped contributing to the perpetually diminishing returns of the Paranormal Activity series, writer/director Christopher Landon has been establishing himself as one of the better horror-comedy filmmakers working today. We can argue about the merits of Scouts’ Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse until the actual apocalypse rolls up, but his recent trend of ‘___ but it’s a slasher flick’ high-concept features has proven quite effective, between the Groundhog Day flip in Happy Death Day and the booster shots of Back To The Future Part II in its sequel. And that trend carries with his latest, a slasher makeover of the classic body-swap comedy Freaky Friday.