Posts Tagged jmag
The Twilight Zone Season One: jmag review
Here’s a quick triple j magazine review of the amazing first season of The Twilight Zone, now out on blu-ray. I get a little evangelical here, but who can resist a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity? Not me.
TWILIGHT ZONE SEASON ONE
Creator: Rod Serling
Starring: Too many to name
Country: USA
Commentary tracks and deleted scenes seemed so entrancing when DVDs first appeared, huh? Man, the novelty wore off fast. Occasionally, though, pop culture archaeologists dig up something that makes it all worthwhile. The new Twilight Zone set, collecting the first season from 1959, is a time capsule: commentaries, lectures, old sponsor advertising, and creator Rod Serling’s original pitch to the TV networks. He sells his show like a pre-Mad Men Don Draper.
Unfortunately, those extras are only on the fancy blu-ray collection, but show itself is available on DVD. And it’s more than just a time capsule. It still feels alive today. Watching it will make you embarrassed for a lot of the TV we’ve made since.
The Twilight Zone took the burbling anxieties of the time – alienation, nostalgia, war – and turned them into 20-minute nightmares, week after week, aided by some of the best science fiction writers of the day. They created little morality plays with limited budgets, gorgeous black and white photography, and narration that sounds like poetry.
Other reviews this month: The Adjustment Bureau and Never Let Me Go in cinemas; the probably-better-than-the-original Let Me In on DVD.
Issue #48 on sale now.
The Messenger: jmag review
Here’s my apologetic review of The Messenger from the latest issue of triple j magazine. I somehow missed this entirely when it was playing in cinemas, and it turned out to be much more interesting than expected. (Also – just in case it kills you like it did me – hey, that’s Eli from Freaks and Geeks!)
THE MESSENGER
Director: Oren Moverman
Starring: Ben Foster, Samantha Morton, Woody Harrelson
Do you hate your job? Well, suck it up. In The Messenger, injured soldier Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is assigned to one of the worst jobs on earth: the Casualty Notification Team that informs the next of kin that a loved one has died in combat. They’re tough, tattooed soldiers who stick expressionlessly to a script. (Rule #1: no hugging.)
Will is taught the ropes by an eccentric mentor, played by Woody Harrelson as 50% laid-back charmer, 50% snorting bull. He’s good, but I was more amazed by Ben Foster’s jittery performance as Ben. Even when he sweetly connects with a new widow (Samantha Morton), he never seems less than dangerous. Director Oren Moverman was a writer first (including penning the Bob Dylan kinda-but-not-really biopic I’m Not There) and he doesn’t rely on battle flashbacks for instant drama. He just lets the characters tell their stories in long, painful takes.
If you skipped The Messenger because you were expecting another preachy anti-war weepy – it’s not. It’s unpredictable, moving, often mesmerising.
Other reviews this month: a rave for Aronofsky’s Black Swan, a boo for Romero’s Survival of the Dead, and a suspicious ‘huh?’ for Catfish.
Issue #47 on sale now.
Blue Valentine: jmag review
Here’s my review of Blue Valentine from the latest issue of triple j magazine. You want to know how shattered I was by this film? I didn’t cry while I was watching it. That’d be too easy. Almost any film can make me cry if the music swells just right. After Blue Valentine, though, I only started crying afterwards. In public.
BLUE VALENTINE
Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams
Be warned: Blue Valentine will make you want set fire to the concept of love and bury its ashes where they’ll never be found.
Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) are a young married couple struggling to keep their relationship from falling apart. These painful sequences are intercut with scenes of them first falling in love, six years earlier.
It sounds sappy, I know, but Blue Valentine makes magic by picking the exact perfect moments to cut back and forth. It also has some of the best sex scenes in years. I don’t mean the most arousing – jeez, settle down, perverts! I mean sex scenes that show you things about who the characters really are and what they really feel.
It’s a testament to Gosling and Williams’ acting that I believed every second they’re on screen. It’s always weird to praise actors for ‘honest’ performances. They’re acting! They’re pretending to be people they’re not! Blue Valentine felt true enough, though, to successfully break my heart.
Other reviews this month: Rare Exports and Somewhere in cinemas; Me and Orson Welles and Breaking Bad season three on DVD.
Issue #46 on sale now.
The American: jmag review
Here’s my review of Anton Corbijn’s new film, The American, from the latest triple j magazine. Sorry, Joy Division fans: I liked this a whole lot more than Control.
THE AMERICAN
Director: Anton Corbijn
Starring: George Clooney, Irina Björklund, Paolo Bonacelli
They say that that history repeats first as tragedy, then as farce. The American has it backwards. After an attempt on his life, hitman Jack (George Clooney) goes into hiding in a remote Italian village. Sound familiar? It’s almost a mirror of the black comedy In Bruges, but this time it’s deadly serious.
Anton Corbijn’s first feature was the Joy Division biopic Control and while it was very, very pretty, it was emotionally cold. This time, the iciness suits The American’s brutal antihero. He drinks wine with a local priest, prepares for an upcoming assassination, grows attached to a local prostitute – and, slowly, remembers he has a soul. Playing a man who’s almost entirely unreadable means Clooney has to fight down his usual sparkly-eyed charm, but he shines when his hitman’s shell starts to crack.
The American isn’t much of a thriller. It’s slow, thoughtful, and happily pretentious. If you pretend it’s a foreign film from the 1960s, though, you’ll be primed to enjoy its excellent slow-burn drama.
Other reviews this month: the Australian drama Summer Coda in cinemas, and Fringe season two and the baby-horror Grace on DVD.
Issue #45 on sale now.