You Won't Be Alone (2022) - Movie Review

Whenever a film’s discourse involves comparisons between it and the works of Terence Malick, that’s a pretty big red flag that I shouldn’t be watching it. We don’t exactly have the best working relationship, let’s say.

But… well, it’s been nearly five years since that review. A lot has changed about my approach to film critique since then. I used to think quite poorly of ‘artsy-fartsy’ films, and I freely admit that I was one of many budding critics that overused the word ‘pretentious’ until it ceased to have any meaning. Nowadays, the more out-there features tend to be the ones I gravitate towards the most, and with how much I pontificate on the human condition in these reviews, I probably stopped calling things pretentious just so I could avoid being a complete hypocrite.

With all that in mind, I get the feeling that I’m getting closer to the point where I can actually start understanding Malick being lauded as one of the all-time great filmmakers. So I basically went into this film with that main comparison in mind and with a willingness to hear it out. Yeah, it might be a bit slow for my tastes, but who knows? Maybe it’ll finally click for me.

Or maybe it’ll just re-affirm that, even as a chronic navel-gazer, I still have limits.

Stockholm (2019) - Movie Review

Stockholm Syndrome, much like PSTD, schizophrenia and autism, is a term that has been so consistently overused in the popular consciousness that you’d be forgiven for completely forgetting what its original meaning even was. Hell, it even makes for one of the most under-discussed on the flip-side, both in actual psychiatric academia and in how there are far too many romantic films out there that require that condition to make any bloody sense, yet never get brought up in the narrative proper.

Considering all this, this film about the incident that gave the condition its popular name could serve as a refresher for those who use it too willingly to describe real-world scenarios today. Shame it doesn’t really turn out that way, or turn out much of any way by film’s end.

Bright (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: In an alternate present, humans have co-existed with elves, orcs and fairies since the beginning of time. Police officer Daryl Ward (Will Smith) has been paired up with rookie Orc cop Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton) against his wishes, and the rest of the force isn’t too happy with having Jakoby either. On a routine call, they find a magic wand, one of the most powerful artifacts in their world. With the help of elf Tikka (Lucy Fry), Ward and Jakoby set out to stop Leilah (Noomi Rapace) from using the wand to bring back The Dark Lord and return the world into a state of mystical war like it was 2000 years earlier.

Rupture (2016) - Movie Review

It may have taken over a year for it to happen, but I think I’ve finally found a good thing to come out of last year’s Fifty Shades Of Grey adaptation: It brought further attention to another, far better film exploring S&M because we desperately wanted an alternative. Specifically, 2002’s Secretary, a film that seriously deserves getting some form of mainstream attention even if it’s through a tangential connection to a rather weak offering. With a mixture of genuine understanding and realistic characters, even considering the scope of their… actions, let’s say, it managed to give a very reasonable, sympathetic and frequently funny depiction of that type of lifestyle. It’s the kind of film that I personally have all the respect for because it managed to show kindness to an area of sexuality that, up until that point, had mainly been used for cheap jokes and even cheaper exploitation (Body Of Evidence, anyone?).

So, after making a film about a famous photographer which also delved into certain elements of fringe culture, writer/director Steven Shainberg has been quiet for the last ten years. Then news hit of his latest film being released in Australia, in a sci-fi film festival no less, and I made my way down to Randwick faster than most of the horses that made the area famous. But is the trip worth it, cinematically at least?