Jake Wilson

Jake Wilson reviews 'The Turning' directed by Robert Connelly, based on stories by Tim Winton

September 2013, no. 354 • 27 August 2013

Anthology films are expected to be uneven; in a way, the unevenness is the point. With no less than eighteen directors on board, this adaptation of Tim Winton’s short story collection The Turning (2004) resembles an epic round of the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, in which players separately draw parts of a human figure on a sheet of paper which is then unfolded to reveal the bizarre whole. ... (read more)

Jake Wilson reviews 'The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh: Indie sex, corporate lies, and digital videotape' by Andrew deWaard and R. Colin Tait

October 2013, no. 355 • 13 August 2013

In many ways, Steven Soderbergh could be described as an exemplary postmodern film-maker: smart, prolific, and pragmatic, at ease with Hollywood blockbusters and low-budget experiments alike. He knows enough about the nuts and bolts of technique to serve as his own cinematographer, and enough about the science of deal-making to sustain a parallel career as a producer (thirty films and counting, in ... (read more)

Jake Wilson reviews ‘''Our Kind of Movie'': The Films of Andy Warhol' by Douglas Crimp

April 2013, no. 350 • 26 March 2013

If you share my view that Andy Warhol (1928–87) ranks among the most important film-makers who ever lived, ‘Our Kind of Movie’ will be your kind of book. A sophisticated yet direct writer with firsthand knowledge of the 1960s queer underground, art critic Douglas Crimp is equipped to do justice to Warhol’s manifold gifts: the perverse wit, the ceaseless formal invention, and, not least, th ... (read more)

Jake Wilson reviews 'Jedda' by Jane Mills

October 2012, no. 345 • 25 September 2012

Can a work of art be a classic without being ‘great’ – or even, by some standards, particularly good? Jane Mills has no doubt about the canonical position of Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955) in Australian cinema, yet admits that her own response falls short of love. This ambivalence stems not only from Jedda’s technical flaws, but also from its message: though the film may not be a white supr ... (read more)

Carnage

March 2012, no. 339 • 01 March 2012

‘There is such and such a relationship between a man and a woman. They are living in such and such a place. And here come the intruders.’ So Roman Polanski, interviewed in 1969, described the conception of Cul de Sac (1966), his favourite among his films. ... (read more)

Jake Wilson reviews 'Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood 1979–1983' edited by Kevin Avery

February 2012, no. 338 • 21 January 2012

It is easy, too easy, to feel familiar with Clint Eastwood. However fully we realise that he is just another actor playing a role, part of us wants to believe that he speaks to colleagues in terse catchphrases and squints at friends and family with profound contempt. Almost invariably, his tough-guy image sets the terms for assessments of his work as a director – whether he’s seen as the Last ... (read more)

The Tall Man

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337 • 24 November 2011

One morning in 2004, an Aboriginal man named Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for swearing at a police officer; forty-five minutes later he lay dead on the floor of his cell. Something had gone badly wrong, though the white senior sergeant on duty, the towering Chris Hurley, denied he was in any way at fault. ... (read more)

A room of her own

June 2011, no. 332 • 24 May 2011

It takes fifteen minutes of screen time before Karen (Shai Pittman), the young Aboriginal heroine of Beck Cole’s Here I Am, finds a room of her own. Before this, we have seen her riding away from prison in a taxi, blissfully feeling the wind on her face; walking through dark Adelaide streets, clutching a box of treasured possessions; and prostituting herself to a stranger in a pub in exchange fo ... (read more)

Jake Wilson reviews 'Wake in Fright' by Tina Kaufman

March 2011, no. 329 • 14 April 2011

Kotcheff’s Wake Jake Wilson   Wake in Fright by Tina Kaufman Currency Press, $16.95 pb, 72 pp, 9780868198644   Eight years after its launch, the Australian Screen Classics series of monographs represents a valuable, ongoing contribution to local film culture – though the notion of a classic, taken too literally, can halt debate at the moment it ought to begin. That said, few cou ... (read more)

Brighton Rock

April 2011, no. 330 • 24 March 2011

Directed by John Boulting in 1947, the original film version of Graham Greene’s thriller Brighton Rock is as honourable an adaptation as anyone could want. The plot may be simplified, but the essentials are all there (Greene himself co-wrote the script), and so is the cheery, grimy atmosphere of a mid-century British seaside resort, captured on location. There are two unforgettable performances, ... (read more)