I'm the first in line to decry the death of the traditional film review. I loathe the clickbait take-down culture that's replacing measured and contextualised film criticism and entertaining consumer-oriented newspaper and magazine film reviews. Sometimes it scares, the frenzied speed with which every new film must be evaluated through the lens of identity politics, often by writers who lack any other analytical tools with which to measure or experience cinema.
But lately I've been enjoying my own kind of non-traditional film writing, revelling in the overt subjectivity and freedom of writing memoir-infused film reviews. My own life and relationships have provided the starting point for essays about films that have touched deeply in one way or another. Perhaps this is a little self-indulgent, but to me it feels like an honest and thoughtful way to acknowledge the intertwining of my life and the many hours I spend watching films, and I try to bring my experience as a traditional reviewer into the discussion so there's a real sense of what the film itself is like - the way it's made and the themes it tackles.
These pieces have been published in Neighbourhood, a monthly arts and culture magazine delivered to inner-city suburbs in Sydney, with a complementary online site.
You can read the three memoir reviews I've written so far at the links below:
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