Film

I have written extensively about film and television for Metro and Screen Education.

Click on the links to read the full articles.


"At the end of Scarface, having killed his best friend Manny, Tony goes down in a blaze of gunfire. As his body floats in a pool, the camera focuses on the statue behind, bearing the inscription ‘The World is Yours’. At the end of The Social Network, in a scene no less poignant for its bloodlessness, Mark sits alone in the legal offices after his opponents have gone home in front of his laptop, having sent Erica a ‘friend’ request on Facebook. We watch as he obsessively refreshes the screen to see if she has accepted him. Words on the screen tell us that ‘Mark Zuckerberg is the world’s youngest billionaire’, and the message is clear – for all his power and influence, he is still no closer to the person who motivated his ambitions in the first place."
Friendship pending: Success, Spite and Solitude in The Social Network - Screen Education Issue 61 (Autumn 2011)

"Watching Redfern Now, the realisation hits that, perhaps for the first time in a television drama, White Australia is 'other', and the token characters are the non-indigenous ones - the table is finally turned. There is interaction between the outside world and that community, and there is mobility and fluidity, but for once the focus is on the indigenous denizens of this universe, and the richness of the characters is on full display."
Block power: Redfern Now - Metro Issue 175 (2013)

"Poppy seems empathetic enough - a good listener, an even better talker, kindly and a little hyperactive. But initially we might wonder where the dramatic tension is to be found in such a film ... The notion of what 'good' means as a lived experience in ordinary situations is rarely considered as the central concern of a feature film, perhaps because it can seem prosaic. Nice characters can seem to be lacking in gravitas or cool."
Honest to goodness: Finding virtue in Happy-Go-Lucky - Screen Education Issue 65 (Autumn 2012)

"The beauty of Spurlock's premise is that his film contains the empirical evidence, in the form of his bloated person, that is needed to prosecute his argument."
Thought for Food: Documenting agricultural decline around the world - Screen Education Issue 66 (Winter 2012)

"Lars von Trier never makes life easy for his women protagonists. If they’re not afflicted with extremes of low self-esteem, anxiety, physical impairment or cruel associates, they’re in the path of a planet headed for earth. Literally. And so it is with Melancholia, an intensely allegorical film that defies simple explanation."
Review: Melancholia - artshub, 2011


Where I do not have PDFs of the original published versions, the articles are presented in Word.