Author: Tim Kroenert
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 04 December 2014
1 Comment
Try watching slasher parody Scream 4 with your eyes closed and see how much sense it makes. On the other hand, Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas and Kevin Smith's Clerks, with stories driven by strong characters and dialogue, offer up cinematic pleasures even a blind person can appreciate. Welcome to the world of America's Blind Film Critic, Tommy Edison.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 27 November 2014
The 'intervention dilemma' is a perennial consideration for journalists and those who pay them and ought to be dictated by robust personal and institutional ethics. Louis Bloom is an example of what happens when ethics are stripped away and replaced with the bottom line. He raises himself from petty thief to the rank of nightcrawler — a cameraman who specialises in shooting the aftermath of accidents and crimes, and selling the footage to news networks.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 20 November 2014
2 Comments
The three recently reunited sisters are immersed in whispered conversation, during the second day of mourning at the house. In the next room, older men in ceremonial garb chant a mourning ritual. Suddenly, the sisters get the giggles, only to be angrily shushed by one of the men in the next room. But grief can't be stage managed, and it seems only natural that the process should be guided by normal human interaction.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 13 November 2014
New Zealand filmmaker Robertson’s latest feature has been described as a cross between modern antipodean classics Once Were Warriors and Shine. Like Warriors, Dark Horse considers masculinity, violence and spirituality in the lives of urban Maoris. Like Shine, it offers a moving portrait of a character whose mental illness appears to be the dark reflection of esoteric, obsessive genius.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 06 November 2014
2 Comments
Bob dutifully attends Mass but never takes communion. He's a fundamentally decent working man, as generous as he is taciturn. He is not the kind of man to, say, turn a blind eye to the plight of an injured dog. But Bob has sinful secrets that he feels alienate him even from God.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 30 October 2014
1 Comment
Orphan Abdul loves Fatemeh, but her father is demanding a prohibitive dowry for her hand. The financial wrangling between Abdul's guardian Mahboba and Fatemah's father Nik, and all this implies about the ways in which young women's futures can be sold and traded as part of an archaic cultural norm, seems crass and is more than a little disturbing to witness.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 23 October 2014
1 Comment
In 1996, US journalist Gary Webb claimed in the San Jose Mercury News that the CIA and US State Department had supported the smuggling of crack cocaine into the US, as a way to help fund Contra rebels against the revolutionary government of Nicaragua during the Reagan era. This 'dark alliance', Webb claimed, contributed significantly to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles, and fuelled the War on Drugs that Regan himself famously escalated.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 16 October 2014
3 Comments
Mothers-of-four Kris and Sandra had wed before a contingent of family and friends, only to be later advised by post that their marriage was void. Paul and Jeffrey refused to embrace an alternative form of legal recognition of their relationship that would render them as 'second-class citizens'. Their conservative lawyer Ted Olson argues that marriage is a fundamentally conservative institution that would only be strengthened by extending it to same-sex couples.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 09 October 2014
5 Comments
'If we strapped a bunch of Men's Rights Advocates to beds and downloaded their nightmares, I don't think we'd come up with stuff half as ridiculous as this plot,' wrote one blogger. Dogged by charges of misogyny since the release of her novel (and now film) Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn nonetheless maintains her right to create interesting, complicated female villains.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 02 October 2014
2 Comments
It is almost impossible to sympathise with Aidan and his flailing ‘dream’. He decides to take the kids’ education into his own hands. He calls this ‘home schooling’, but it pretty much consists of taking them for trips into the desert or conning the salesman at a luxury car dealership into letting them take a car for a spin, while spouting trite platitudes about life, death and the getting of wisdom.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 31 July 2014
2 Comments
The German port city of Hamburg was the place where Mohammed Atta and his collaborators planned the September 11 attacks. A sense of hyper-vigilance stems from this fatal embarrassment and pervades the current events. Betrayal is weighed against betrayal, and ethics and morality are calculated using the sliding scale of a greater good that is dubbed, not without irony, as 'making the world a safer place'. But safer for whom?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 24 July 2014
3 Comments
Some years ago my then next-door neighbour attempted suicide. Had it not been for the fortuitous arrival of his teenage son, and the heroic actions of another neighbour, the incident would have had a tragic outcome. For an individual to die alone at home amid the crowd of suburbia is one of the sadder, and sadly common, scenarios of modern Western existence. Italian-born British filmmaker Pasolini explores this phenomenon in Still Life.
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