From Day of the Locust’s nightmarish vision of a perverse and corrupt Hollywood to Mulholland Drive’s dream of stardom turned nightmare, many films have explored the bizarre and disturbing underbelly of Hollywood. David Cronenberg’s latest film, Maps To The Stars explores this world through the director’s typically bizarre and unsettling vision. In Cronenberg’s nihilistic take on tinsel town, Hollywood is
Read morePride, which explores the hitherto unlikely partnership of striking coal miners and the gay rights movement in 1980’s Britain, is a highly enjoyable nineties-style feel-good British working class comedy/drama in the vein of The full Monty, Brassed Off and Billy Elliot. The film returns us to Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of the mid-80’s where economic rationalist policies were putting the squeeze
Read moreAlong with David Fincher, Chris Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Memento, Inception) has been the most exciting Hollywood filmmaker of the last decade. James Cameron may have made a bundle with Avatar but Fincher and Nolan have given us something darker, more cerebral and ultimately more satisfying. Consequently, Chris Nolan’s latest film, space epic Interstellar, has been the subject of
Read moreLanding somewhere between Fame, Black Swan and Full Metal Jacket, Whiplash is a gut-wrenching music drama, which, while flawed, is still one of the year’s most riveting films. In its best moments this is a searing examination of bullying, the forces that compel people toward objectionable even maniacal behaviour, the obsessive pursuit of success and the limits of emotional endurance.
Read moreForce Majeure is a refreshingly unusual Swedish film that dissects the institution of marriage to examine issues of guilt, blame, masculine identity and parental responsibility. Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) are an attractive 30-something Swedish couple with two young children. They appear to be the perfect family; they even clean their teeth together in front of the
Read moreJohn Doe: Vigilante is bound to divide audiences and evoke volatile reactions for both its subject matter and its film-making style. Taking perhaps too many thematic and plot cues from 90’s serial killer films such as Natural Born Killers and Seven, the film follows an Aussie vigilante killer calling himself John Doe who murders assorted criminals who he thinks have
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