Film Review: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Over the course of nearly twenty years, Wes Anderson has cultivated a distinct and idiosyncratic body of work that has made his one of the most easily and readily identifiable voices in American cinema. So much so that, from the very first frame of Moonrise Kingdom, it is obvious that only one man could be behind the camera.

Film Review: The Raid (2011)

Pictured: A machete fight. Not pictured: Redemption.

The Raid is a film that consists largely, in fact almost solely of people fighting. This is both its biggest weakness and its greatest triumph, depending entirely on what it is that the viewer wants from the film. If you are looking for a film full of memorable characters, crackling dialogue and emotion that extends beyond, "Ow, I have just had my spine broken and I'm pretty upset about it oh I'm dead," then the film will probably leave you wanting. If, on the other hand, you want to see a film that offers non-stop visceral excitement with minimum fuss but maximum fun, then The Raid is absolutely the film for you.

The Weirdest Timeline: The Complicated Nature of Community's Fourth Season Renewal

Back in November, I wrote about NBC's decision to hold the second half of Community's third season back until a later date, one which, at the time, was undetermined.The aim of that article was to establish why the news was not necessarily a sign that the cultishly adored sitcom was in imminent danger of being cancelled, and that everyone should calm the fuck down already.

Rethinking Matthew McConaughey

I feel bad for using this ridiculous image as the main one for the article, but if he's going to continue to make artistically interesting choices, then I might no longer get to make fun of him anymore, DAMMIT!

If you're anything like me - and why wouldn't you want to be? I'm grrrrrreat. And a cartoon tiger, apparently - then you probably don't think all that much of Matthew McConaughey, if you think of him at all. For the best part of the last twenty years, he's been a blandly charming presence in a succession of slightly rubbish dramas and extremely rubbish romantic comedies, most of which, if their posters are to be believed, seem to revolve around him leaning on things:

I choose to believe that the level of commitment he brings to any given role can be determined by the angle at which he leans and how few clothes he is wearing on the poster. So we see that he is putting a lot of effort into Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, could give a shit about Failure to Launch, and is super-committed to his work in Surfer, Dude.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 6 - Education

In our sixth episode, very much the Return of the Jedi of the SRS Saga, myself and Joe discuss Education in films. Along the way, we talk about whether or not high school movies are better than college movies because they are more universal, Joe explains to me what the hell Soul Man is, I run through the many ways in which being a Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher can prove to be a poor career choice, and we argue about the merits and benefits of going to film school. To round things off, we bring back our (apparently) regular feature of listing a Top Ten related to the subject. This time, we list our "best" educators in film history. Also, I reveal how Wonder Boys is the lynchpin film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

You can stream the episode using the link below, or subscribe to it on iTunes. Listen, rate and review, thanks. 

Film Review: Albert Nobbs (2011)

Glenn Close first played the character of Albert Nobbs - a woman pretending to be a male waiter in order to scrape together a living in working-class Dublin - on stage in 1982, and has spent much of the last thirty years trying to bring the story to the screen. Considering the amount of time and effort involved, the release of the film must be something of a personal triumph for Close, who not only stars but also produced the film and, along with John Banville, co-wrote the screenplay. Yet, despite being such a passion project for Close, the resulting film is so devoid of any life or passion that it seems hardly credible that someone would spend so much time trying to get it made in the first place.

Film Review: Damsels In Distress (2011)

It's been fourteen years since Whit Stillman's last film, The Last Days of Disco, was released, but it almost feels like he never went away, since his latest film picks up where his first three films left off. Damsels In Distress finds Stillman blending together tangential, free-floating conversations, dialogue so dry it's a wonder his cast don't die of dehydration from delivering their lines, and a crisp, carefully constructed visual style with such consummate ease that, were it not for the fact that most of the cast were teenagers when he last made a film, you could assume that Damsels was shot right after Last Days of Disco, rather than a decade and a half later.