New in Theaters:
The Snowtown Murders

For a film about John Bunting, one of the most infamous serial killers in Australia’s history, The Snowtown Murders comes at its subject stealthily and almost wholly without sensationalism. Creating a slow-burning portrait of its depressed South Australian suburban milieu and the layers upon layers of dysfunction found therein, Justin Kurzel’s assured feature debut approaches its themes with care. Even when the story shifts more towards Bunting’s murderous exploits, the tone remains even. It’s as though what’s happening is no surprise at all, just the natural outgrowth of this toxic brew of poverty, rage and sickening abuse...


The Snowtown Murders is playing now in limited release, and is worth seeking out in particular for Daniel Henshall's stunning performance as Bunting. You can read my full review at Film Journal International.

New in Theaters:

The Secret World of Arriety

This smart, winsome fairy tale is not quite Hiyao Miyazaki, but it still might be the best animated film that (some few) will see all year; of course, it’s almost always a weak slate to start with... 

The Secret World of Arriety is playing now. You can read my article about it and the current state of animated film in general at Short Ends and Leader.

New in Theaters:
Last Days Here

The addict's story is that of patience stretched, opportunities wasted, trust betrayed, and promise unrealized. That story is the one told with raw power by Don Argott and Demian Fenton's killer new documentary, which follows down-at-heel cult heavy metal icon Bobby Liebling as he seethes and flails at those around him, as though challenging them to give up. It's a film that you almost can't bear to watch, as time and again the sandcastles of expectations are built up, only to be washed away. The pain of disappointment realized is almost as potent as the canned frustration that lingers in the film's very air. Everybody around this wire-thin, muppet-haired 54-year-old rocker is killing themselves try to get him back on his feet, while he's just busy killing himself...


Last Days Here is playing now in limited release. You can read my full review at filmcritic.com.

New in Film:
Five Oscars the Academy Got Wrong

Although just about everything has changed about the film business in the past couple of decades – the rise of CGI and 3D technology, the precipitous decline in the influence of marquee stars, the curious appeal of Adam Sandler – the Academy Awards continue to grind on as though nothing has changed. This year managed to be neither: a safe host thrown in at the (somewhat) last minute and a welcome shrugging-off of many of the trips down nostalgia lane that have cluttered up so many of these things. Certainly, there was bloviation laid on thick and pompous but at least the ceremonies didn’t bother (except for the odd iPad reference) trying to be relevant as a piece of television. Which it never has been. The curious part is really that so many of us watch the thing...


You can read "5 Oscars the Academy Got Wrong" at Short Ends and Leader.

New in Books:
The Orphan Master's Son

Christopher Hitchens once referred to North Korea as a “slave state”, and there is little that has been revealed since about the curiously stunted upper half of that peninsula which would belie this definition. The night-and-day surveillance, the famines, the mind games and brainwashing, the at-gunpoint groupthink; it all conjures an image of a people who are bound to their overlords in every sense of the word. All of the Korean characters in Adam Johnson’s hyperbolic and icily rapturous novel are indeed slaves to the world-encompassing propaganda from the leadership’s impregnable underground bunkers. It’s like atmosphere, they don’t seem able to live without it. More terrifyingly, it’s not even clear that they would necessarily want to... 


The Orphan Master's Son is on sale now; check it out. You can read my full review at PopMatters.

New in Theaters:
The Forgiveness of Blood

Most teenagers assume that their life is inherently unfair: those chores are too much given the meagre allowance, their parents always take their siblings' sides in arguments, and so on. In the case of Nik, an Albanian teen who's confined to the house after his father either sparks or gets swept up in a bloodfeud with a nearby family, he may actually have a case for life treating him unfairly. Not that filmmaker Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace) turns this astutely calibrated, quietly wrenching drama into any kind of moping lament for Nik's situation. Instead, Marston's wide-angle take on Nik's predicament gives his choppy frustrations that much more heft -- he might be angry like a child, but no more so than the supposed adults who surround him...


The Forgiveness of Blood is playing now in limited release, make a point of seeking it out. You can read my full review at filmcritic.com.

New(ish) in Books:
The Best Non-Fiction of 2011

The first installment of the PopMatters annual "Best of" books feature launches today, chronicling what the site's writers thought were the most memorable titles of the year. I contributed the introduction and a few of the individual writeups. In short, it was as good a year as most, in that there was plenty of dross, but fortunately more than enough phenomenal works to celebrate that there was not even enough time to contemplate the lesser titles that didn't make the cut. 


Here are a few of the non-fiction books that made me green with envy in 2011 (some I wrote up in the article, some not):

• The Age of the Warrior by Robert Fisk
• The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem
• Civilization by Niall Ferguson
• Malcolm X by Manning Marable
• Townie by Andre Dubus III
• What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes

You can read the complete piece here.