Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Jake Wilson

Jake Wilson is a freelance writer who lives in Melbourne and reviews films regularly for The Age. Formerly the Melbourne correspondent for Urban Cinefile and a co-editor of Senses of Cinema, he has contributed to a range of print and online publications, including Kill Your Darlings, RealTime, Bright Lights Film Journal, and Meanjin. Some of his film writings are archived on his personal website.

Jake Wilson reviews 'Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film 2002–2012' by Geoffrey O'Brien

December 2013–January 2014, no. 357 01 December 2013
As film critics go, Geoffrey O’Brien is a lover, not a fighter: unconcerned with starting quarrels or settling scores, he simply aims to share his pleasure in what he has seen. Perhaps his remarkably good temper stems from the fact that he is not a full-time critic, but an example of that nearly extinct species, the all-round man of letters. He is editor-in-chief of the Library Of America series ... (read more)

Fallout

November 2013, no. 356 31 October 2013
Nevil Shute’s apocalyptic 1957 novel On The Beach and Stanley Kramer’s 1959 movie adaptation hold a continued fascination, particularly for Melburnians – even if we have grown weary of the famous quip, attributed to Ava Gardner, about the city being the ideal place to film the end of the world. Largely setting aside such parochial concerns, Lawrence Johnston’s documentary Fallout offers a ... (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 27 September 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 '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)
Page 3 of 4