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The film business is built around giving consumers what they want. But even today, with the internet tracking our every choice and using the profile created to generate content ever-more targeted to our deepest wants and needs – and yet, still no Married… with Children reunion  – “giving consumers what they want” largely boils down to making films in various well-defined commercial genres. And in 2017, a lot of those genres didn’t pay off. As the year comes to a close there’s been plenty of must-read “years best” movie lists online – see my co-blogger Rochelle’s list here , my co-author Mel Campbell’s list here , Rochelle’s co-podcaster Lee Zachariah’s list here for starters – and while it’s no real surprise to see many of the same films turning up on many of the many many lists internet-wide, what has been noticeable is that many of the films have been roughly the same kind of film. Usually this would inspire a range of hot takes along the lines of “2017 was t...

If this article painted a grim picture of the state of Australian film criticism at the start of the year, things have only gotten worse: everywhere you turn reviewers have been fired, others have been replaced by critics already working elsewhere, and the “new screen focused review show” the ABC promised turned out to be Screen Time , a chatty panel show that featured a grand total of zero full time film critics. It’s been clear for a while now that the future of film reviewing – and much of the media in general - is global. A handful of big name players will dominate the global market, small-time local outlets will pick up the crumbs left over, and those in between will increasingly find themselves squeezed out. That’s already the case with film reviewing. The USA and UK have a handful of big name critics whose opinions are sought out world-wide; it’s a very long drop to the local level, where “influencers” are wined and dined (well, free popcorn’d and coke’d) at ...

by Rochelle Siemienowicz I detest making Best-and-Worst lists. It seems like such a crude schoolboy's approach to films; like collecting and pinning beetles to a board and killing them in the process. So let's call this a loose list of eleven films (not five, not ten, but eleven, just to be contrary) that I loved in 2017. These films delighted, surprised or impressed me in some way. They leave a trace or linger in my memory long after I saw them.  Here they are, in no particular order. 1. Faces, Places (Agnes Varda & JR) I raved about this playful, wise and life-affirming documentary on the August episode of Hell is for Hyphenates . It's a deeply egalitarian celebration of the value of ordinary people in unfashionable places. I can't get enough of Agnes Varda. 2. Raw (Julia Ducournau) A sensitive and sophisticated cannibal coming-of-age tale, my review of this fresh, French, female horror is here on SBS Movies . 3. Get Out (Jordan Peele) Combining horror, comedy ...

As titles go, The Last Jedi suggests a finality rare in modern franchise film-making. The Last Jedi : so we're only a few movies into their takeover of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars franchise and Disney are axing one of the series’ core concepts? That’s gutsy story-telling. And then the film ends on the opposite note, with a major character literally saying out loud that anyone who expected this story to be about “the last Jedi” is wrong. Guess misleading titles are part of the Star Wars tradition too. This misdirection sums up the entire film: claim big narrative-shattering developments, deliver as little real change as possible. It's hard not to see The Last Jedi as the first Star Wars movie to fully embrace the idea that these movies don’t need to have a traditional story. The original series was about a struggle for the Galaxy that was also a family drama; the prequels explained how evil rose to power in the first place. Even The Force Awakens was about a variety of biggis...