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The golden rule of commercially successful narrative art is that the writer has to push their characters into insoluble situations, and have them find their escape. Those escapes are the watermark of quality.
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Black Rabbit
Posted in Film, Netflix, Real Men with tags Abel Ferrara, Black Rabbit, book-review, books, Catholic, Fiction, Jason Bateman, Jude Law, Martin Scorsese, Netflix, New York, reviews, writing on January 22, 2026 by Jarrod Boyle
Black Rabbit
Posted in Film, Netflix, Real Men with tags Abel Ferrara, Anora, Benny Safdie, Black Rabbit, Jason Bateman, Jude Law, Netflix, New York, Sean Baker on January 16, 2026 by Jarrod Boyle
The eponymous Black Rabbit is a restaurant, a ‘nightclub for grownups’, to quote protagonist Jake Friedkin. While the business is a hit, proprietor Jake (played by Jude Law) is painfully over-extended.
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Maestro
Posted in Film, Netflix with tags Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Edna St Vincent Millay, Ely Cathedral, Hollywood, Killers of the Flower Moon, Leonard Bernstein, LGBTQI+, Maestro, Mahler, Martin Scorsese, Netflix, Tar on January 1, 2024 by Jarrod Boyle
Watching a narrative film made in Hollywood is a lot like riding a skateboard downhill; you look to find your point of balance and once that’s established, gravity will do the rest. That said, I found Maestro a difficult film to find my balance on.
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Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story
Posted in Netflix, Observation, True Crime with tags American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, Jeffrey Dahmer, Netflix on October 23, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is one of those things that fits in the, ‘Good, but I don’t like it’ category of film and television, which at the very least, pushes it beyond the odious definition of film and television as entertainment.
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Limp Bizkit: The Last Great Band of the Nineties?
Posted in Music, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Big Day Out, Dave Blaustein, Fred Durst, Iggy Pop, Jimi Hendrix, Limp Bizkit, Netflix, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Trainwreck: Woodstock '99, Wes Borland on October 16, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
I’d never had much interest in Limp Bizkit until I saw the Netflix documentary, Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99. Nu-metal didn’t do a lot for me, and there was something that felt just a little bit entitled about Fred Durst.
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Ex Machina
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Blade Runner, Netflix, Parasite, Stan, Turing Test on August 24, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
I tend to peruse my Netflix and Stan accounts with dismay. Firstly, they clash with the portrait I paint of myself socially, as someone who ‘doesn’t watch television.’ Secondly, I find that I’ll open an account with a streaming service because I want to see something specific, like Parasite, for example, and then I’m confounded by the volume of crap I don’t want to see that comes with it.
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Bert Kreischer and the Mechanics of Subversion
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Ali Wong, AR15, Baby Cobra, Barack Obama, Bert Kreischer, bump stock, Glock, Hannah Gadsby, Hard Knock Wife, Homer Simpson, Las Vegas Shooting, Melbourne Arts Centre, Netflix, Sandy Hook, The Machine on June 29, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
I went to see Bert Kreischer last Saturday night. I realised, once he came onstage and took off his shirt, that I had seen him before: he tells the story of his student trip to Russia in the viral video ‘The Machine.’ Continue reading
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An Open Letter to Hannah Gadsby
Posted in Real Men, Statement of intention with tags gay pride, Hannah Gadsby, Henry Rollins, Mardi Gras, Nanette, Netflix, rainbow flag on August 4, 2018 by Jarrod Boyle
I just wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed your show, ‘Nanette.’ You don’t see a lot of genuinely incendiary stuff anymore. Incendiary and vital. Continue reading
Theme Park at its Darkest 