SUBTERRANEAN DEATH CULT

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED [REVIEW]

Posted on October 17, 2012 by H D Thompson

What if you felt a bit weird about yourself, like you were drifting on another plane to everyone else and there was no one to tether you down, would you jump at the chance to find that tether, or would you seek out the person and drift off together? This was what I got out of the surprisingly sweet Safety Not Guaranteed, which on the outside deals with people making fun of a crazy person but is actually about a chronic need to belong.

Time travel stories are always a little naff. They are one of those things like buddy comedies that have been done to death over the years. Luckily, someone decided to add a new dimension to the time travel mould – the psyche behind the traveller. Mark Duplass is the weirdo in the bush, Kenneth, who puts an ad in the newspaper seeking a partner for time travel (“Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed.”) and Jake Johnson is a reporter, Geoff, with his interns Darius (Aubrey Plaza) and Arnau (Karan Soni), investigating the seemingly humorous story. As things progress, we realise things are not as they seem. Continue reading →

Posted in Film, Reviews | Tagged Aubrey Plaza, Derek Connelly, Jake Johnson, Karan Soni, Mark Duplass, Safety Not Guaranteed, Time Travel | Leave a comment

LOOPER [REVIEW]

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Elizabeth Flux

It’s 2044 and Joe crouches in a Kansas field practising his French as he waits for a man from the future to appear. He checks his pocket watch and slowly stands, gun ready. Time travel hasn’t been invented yet, but in thirty years it will be. Dangerous and unpredictable there is no dinosaur tourism, no retroactive killing of Hitler, and no confusing be-your-own-parent geneology. It’s outlawed, highly illegal and used only in secret by the mob.

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Posted in Film, Reviews | Tagged Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordpn-Levitt, Looper, paul dano, Rian Johnson, Time Travel | 1 Comment

LORE [REVIEW]

Posted on September 29, 2012 by H D Thompson

It was always going to be a hard slog for director Cate Shortland to make a film about Nazi guilt, but for me this film couldn’t have been more perfect. The holocaust was a bad thing, a very, very bad thing… but what if you didn’t think so? What if as a child you were raised to believe something, something you didn’t know any other way of thinking about, does that make you the enemy? In Lore, we are presented with a family of Nazi children whose parents have been shipped off to prison as Hitler has died and the war is ending. The children are left alone at the leadership of the eldest, Lore, and she must take her siblings on a long, arduous walk across Germany to their grandmother’s house in Hamburg.

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Posted in Film, Reviews | Tagged Cate Shortland, Lore, Nazi | Leave a comment

RUBY SPARKS [REVIEW]

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Adam vanLangenberg

Calvin Weir-Fields is a genius, just don’t say that to his face. At the tender age of 19 he wrote a novel which quickly became a best-seller, establishing him as an Author Of Note™. Unfortunately for Calvin and his many fans, he hasn’t been able to replicate his creative spark in the last ten years.

Fortunately for Calvin, his therapist (Elliott Gould, otherwise known as Ross and Monica’s dad) gives him an assignment. Write something. Write something bad.

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Posted in Film, Reviews | Tagged annette bening, antonio banderas, chris messina, elliott gould, paul dano, ruby sparks, toni trucks, zoe kazan | 1 Comment

ON THE ROAD [REVIEW]

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Elizabeth Flux

It’s a sunny day and a group of men are laughing on the back of a truck as it rockets past what looks like endless dust and barren land. They pass a bottle around and sing about jailbait sweethearts; one man stands and attempts to pee over the side of the moving vehicle. It winds and bumps and he falls, mid-stream. It’s messy. In the midst of it sits Sal (Sam Riley), weather beaten and dirty as the rest of his companions, and being mocked about the state of his shoes.

On the Road is a book held close to many hearts both literally* and figuratively. It’s an amalgamation of escapism, harsh reality, obsession, manipulation, lust, rule-breaking, freedom, apathy, empathy and selfishness. It taps into a longing we have for a life that is free without losing grip on the pitfalls that would accompany it. Relationships decay, character flaws are not shied away from, and the protagonist is not anyone extraordinary. It speaks to us of a reckless abandon that few obtain and most dream about, or only achieve a few times in their lives. It’s life, meaning and looking for a place to belong.

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