Returning to your childhood, especially when it comes to the movies and TV shows the defined it, can be a fraught activity. There is an excitement certainly, how can there not be, but there’s also a sense that this nostalgic excursion may not be quite the enjoyable embrace with Continue Reading
Movies
On 8th day of Christmas … I watched the film The Night Before
Much as we might love our parents and siblings and crazy Aunt Phyllis and her 20 cats, it’s often the families we create throughout our lives of close, trusted friends that come to define our adult lives most profoundly. That’s certainly the case in Jonathan Levine’s The Night Before, Continue Reading
I sense a disturbance in the LEGO, Luke: Final Star Wars trailer gets bricked up
There is nothing in this world that can’t be made better, or at least wonderfully and entertainingly different, by the addition of a LEGO version of its trailer. And this definitely applies to the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens which receives a LEGO-ised version of one of its Continue Reading
They’re back! Independence Day: Resurgence proves you can’t keep a bad alien race down
SNAPSHOT We always knew they were coming back. After Independence Day redefined the event movie genre, the next epic chapter delivers global spectacle on an unimaginable scale. Using recovered alien technology, the nations of Earth have collaborated on an immense defense program to protect the planet. But nothing can Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Inspired geeky Christmas sweater designs
Let’s hear it for Christmas sweaters! They go together like eggnog and a roaring fire, chestnuts and am open fire, and “Falalalalalala” and decking the halls! If you’re the sort of person who needs their sweaters, known in Australia as jumpers and most definitely not being worn at the Continue Reading
Movie review: The Peanuts Movie
Peanuts has always been more than just a comic strip. Not that being a comic strip per se is a bad thing; rather that the creation of Charles M. Schulz has always transcended the ephemeral, transitory nature of the medium and the small black and white panels that define it to Continue Reading
On 3rd day of Christmas … I admired The Art of Krampus
Let’s face it – if you had a choice between happy, jolly Santa Claus coming to pay you a visit, laden with toys, a hearty laugh and a longing for milk and cookies, and a cloven-hoofed demonic bringer of retribution and doom as payment for bad deeds done, you’d no doubt Continue Reading
Sisters: The Farce Awakens: Why Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s film is just like Star Wars
It appears, and you may be surprised by this, that Sisters, the new hilarious comedy from Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a small barely-on-the-radar movie opening soon, have a great deal in common. Yes, really. OK, not at all, but that’s not stopping Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I watched the film Get Santa
Christmas films, especially those with good old Santa’s name in the title, generally tend to follow the same well-worn path. Someone, oh let’s say Santa himself, gets into trouble, caught in a situation that a man of hundreds of years experience and worldly-wiseness has never encountered in all his Continue Reading
The vibrantly musical world of Alê Abreu’s Boy and the World (O Menino e o Mundo)
SNAPSHOT “Cuca’s cozy rural life is shattered when his father leaves for the city, prompting him to embark on a quest to reunite his family. The young boy’s journey unfolds like a tapestry, the animation taking on greater complexity as his small world expands. Entering civilization, industrial landscapes are Continue Reading