Category: Articles

  • Silly, Slimy and Offensive: The Heart of Gross-Out Comedy

    Silly, Slimy and Offensive: The Heart of Gross-Out Comedy

    Flicking through the usual assortment of reality shows, cop shows, cartoons and current affairs programs that littered the airwaves last night, I fell upon a film that has always induced an inordinate amount of rage deep within my heart. This film is by all measures silly and at least mildly offensive, which is of course…

  • How Michael Bay taught me to stop hating Spielberg and start hating Michael Bay

    How Michael Bay taught me to stop hating Spielberg and start hating Michael Bay

    As a young film student just out of school, I once shared the usual contempt that all serious film connoisseurs were expected to display for Steven Spielberg. From young students to senior lecturers, everybody I knew agreed that Steven Spielberg was the leading auteur of a kind of ‘lesser’ cinema, centred on spectacle, devastation and…

  • A Melburnian Aussie in an American Grocery Store!

    A Melburnian Aussie in an American Grocery Store!

    You’ll have to excuse me for a moment while I make an incredibly tenuous connection between my 20km trek to Melbourne’s USA Foods grocery store and my relationship with cinema! No American will ever understand the complex relationship that a non-American cinephile has with American junk food. We all know about Twinky’s and In-N-Out burgers, but few of us have had…

  • Haiku Ode to Action Cinema: Poetry on Screen

    Haiku Ode to Action Cinema: Poetry on Screen

    Haiku gives respect Action films elevated Ten classic movies   RoboCop Resurrected man Visions of a life now gone The name is Murphy Terminator Tech-noir nightmare art Hell arrives from the future Harlan Ellison Predator Invisible beast Screaming souls in the jungle Ugly mother-fu… Out for Justice Seagal talks Brooklish Anybody seen Richie? Excess violence…