A jagoff city boy heads deep into the Australian outback to seek his fortune, but finds only vice, macho posturing and ritualised drunken kangaroo massacres. That film is Ted Kotcheff’s sand-blasted nightmare from 1971, Wake In Fright, but its plot bares uncanny resemblance to the cheery PG-rated shenanigans of Kangaroo by director Kate Woods. Here, … Read more
Perhaps I’m just a worrywart, but in the hypothetical event I decided to raise a chimpanzee as a member of my family, I would be inclined to put some measures into place in case of an emergency. Even the friendliest pet dog can unexpectedly turn on its master – imagine what a primate weighing around 40 kilos in possession of a 1,300 … Read more
Named for the tiny Mariana island in the Philippine Sea that played host to the Irish national football team’s training camp ahead of the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Tokyo, Saipan is Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa’s fictionalised spin on a sporting travesty that still causes fierce debate: captain Roy Keane’s abrupt departure from the … Read more
If anyone was going to try to adapt Silent Hill 2, one of video gaming’s most spectacular artistic achievements, you could do worse than French stylist Christophe Gans, who directed 2006’s Silent Hill – a loose adaptation of the first game in the series. Much to fans’ chagrin, the film rewrote the game’s story, but it did maintain … Read more
When Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal) and David White (Josh O’Connor) meet over the top of a piano in a Boston college bar, the spark between them is instant. One is a talented vocal student, the other a composition major preoccupied with recording and cataloguing the folk music of rural communities. Their shared passion for song is what brings them … Read more
Many – myself included – were thrown through a bit of a loop when Brit golden boy Ben Wheatley presented his 2013 fourth feature, A Field in England, to an unsuspecting and sober public. Film critics tend to favour cosy narratives when it comes to generalising about the careers of the artists that they love, and following a trio of … Read more
LEAGUE CITY, Texas (KTRK) — A woman accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of beauty products from Ulta Beauty stores in several counties is now part of a larger discussion about how police use artificial intelligence. Carmen Fernandez was recently arrested by the League City Police Department and charged with organized retail … Read more
Expectations are a fickle thing. Take last year’s 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle’s long-awaited follow-up: expectations, courtesy of years of build-up and its riveting marketing campaign, were running high only for the film to prove somewhat middling, flashes of brilliance muted by a nonclimactic third act and its cringey, divisive cliffhanger. Compare that to Nia … Read more
This is a film about the constant sense of being slightly out of step with where you are standing, rendered with remarkable restraint. State of Statelessness is an anthology comprising four tales by the Drung Collective, a group of filmmakers working within the Tibetan diaspora. Each story is shaped by the same unresolved grief – for a distant land occupied and … Read more
In Anaconda, Jack Black and Paul Rudd play two friends who decide to travel to Brazil to make an indie remake of the trash-classic 1997 Jennifer Lopez/Ice Cube snake movie—and end up with a fun, silly adventure that works as long as you set your expectations accordingly. Again, set your expectations accordingly. Objectively, this new … Read more