Author: James Curnow
Backwater: A Japanese Pubescent Nightmare
Given the stagnant state of its numerous characters, Shinji Aoyama’s Backwater is certainly appropriately named, although the film is so loaded with references to various forms of effluence that at one point I had to double check that the film wasn’t called ‘Backwash’. That’s not necessarily a criticism, but it is a warning… this is…
School of Babel: A Filmic Appreciation of the Migrant Experience
Watching Julie Bertucelli’s documentary, School of Babel, one is left with the distinct impression that many of the world’s more significant problems would be better left in the hands of children… and it’s probably true. This simple, yet profoundly moving documentary details a year in the lives of a group of young students in a…
Predestination: Temporal Loops and Narrative Hoops
Last night I was fortunate enough to attend the Australian red-carpet premiere of the Spierig brothers’ new science fiction film, Predestination, as part of the opening night celebrations at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Held at the Melbourne Arts Centre, the night commenced with a typically charismatic introduction by MIFF patron, Geoffrey Rush, and ended…
Building Time Machines: From La Jetée to 12 Monkeys
In 1962, a brilliant cinephile with a passion for temporal distortion completed construction of his masterpiece – a time machine. His name was Chris Marker, and the machine was La Jetée. This invention, built almost entirely out of black and white photographs taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and a brief piece of footage captured by…
Clint Eastwood and the Western: A Film Primer
There are few figures quite as representative of American ideals of masculinity as Clint Eastwood. Since starring in Sergio Leone’s genre-perforating Western classic, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Eastwood’s career has largely been about the representation – and later the deconstruction – of what it means to be a man. This was, initially, a trajectory set…