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.

David Stratton: A Cinematic Life (2017) - Movie Review

Even in the world of Internet criticism and the democratisation of opinions about media, there is still one name and one name only who is the most important film critic in Australian history: David Stratton. The Oceanic answer to Roger Ebert, gaining mainstream attention through the Australian version of At The Movies with fellow critic Margaret Pomeranz, he basically embodies everything I both love and hate about the typical newspaper film critic. He has a very evident love for the medium and helped build up the Sydney Film Festival, but he also employs a lot of the faux-profundities and literary snootiness that I have railed on many times before. Still, regardless of all that, I find myself almost required to show respect where it’s due because of his importance to the industry. Have to admit, I wasn’t exactly anxious to check this film out, given how this is the sort of critic I usually try to avoid out in the wild, but considering how this year has been for Aussie cinema already, I reckon it’s worth being given its time in the sun on this blog.