Blog

2. Technology, specifically the railroad and the telegraph, is shrinking the West into a place where bandits can no longer freely operate. The Bunch are trying to make one last score so they can afford to retire, but the brutality central to their existence is catching up with them. They seek to make one last […]

‘I reckon Terry Real got it wrong. ‘When I saw Taxi Driver, I thought that scene doesn’t make viewers laugh the first time they see it. I think it’s more uneasy like he looks clearly unstable and like his muttering and posture I thought was meant to reveal isolation and paranoia if I did laugh […]

2. I thought it was time to pay him a visit and see if he could freak me out like he used to. To be frank, it felt a little colour by numbers. I think this is the problem with commercial publishing, and producing books to sell requires an author gives their reader want they […]

I love J.G. Ballard. I’m not talking about the J.G. Ballard who wrote Empire of the Sun, transformed into a family-friendly classic by the king of cheese, Steven Spielberg. I’m talking about the J.G. Ballard who, for whatever devious reason, used his own name for the protagonist of the outrageous, profoundly shocking Crash, made into […]

‘You’ll love the new Blade Runner – unless you’re a woman.’ There was much ‘feminist’ criticism of Blade Runner 2049. I found it almost as astonishing as the pissweak rejoinder from its director, Denis Villeneuve in Vanity Fair, November 25, 2017: “Blade Runner is not about tomorrow; it’s about today. And I’m sorry, but the world is not kind on […]

The internet is like having a giant bilge pipe mounted above the armchair in your lounge room with all kinds of garbage gushing out of it. There is hardly a moment to take stock and discriminate amongst the torrent of what’s raining down upon you. I think the reason it’s become a ubiquitous feature of […]

The End 2. The oldest of them stepped forward and struck me on the chest with an open palm. Confident and aggressive. ‘We saw you walking up the beach,’ he said, smiling. ‘Oh yeah,’ I replied, ‘And I saw you.’ The others stood relaxed, their hands empty. ‘Are you travelling alone? Or are you with […]

The End 1. ‘Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.’ – Yukio Mishima. You imagine certain things when you see a beach like this. A deserted stretch of unblemished sand with a scattered enfilade of palm trees balanced between the water and […]

The Substance is a sensational film – as good as it gets. It has been a long time since I’ve encountered something like it. After watching The Night Porter and a few Brian De Palma films of late, I’d been lamenting that ‘they just didn’t make those sorts of films anymore.’ Apparently, I was wrong. […]

Part of what makes The Talented Mr Ripley so effective is the casting of Matt Damon in the lead. Most of us have been in his position; awkward, insecure and in awe of someone like Dickie Greenleaf, played by the never better Jude Law. Dickie is someone who has it all, and that gives him […]