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Mel Campbell

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Mel Campbell is a freelance cultural critic, author and commentator from Melbourne, Australia. Mel co-hosted The Rereaders podcast (2016-18), was a Melbourne International Film Festival preview panellist (2012-14), was national film editor at The Thousands (2008-13), and co-founded pop-culture website The Enthusiast (2008-14). Mel's writing on film, television, fashion, literature and media has appeared at Screenhub, Junkee, The Guardian, Metro, The Age, The Big Issue, Crikey, i-D and many more. She is currently a columnist at Overland literary journal and teaches in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. She has co-written two romantic comedy novels with fellow film critic Anthony Morris: Nailed It! (2019) and The Hot Guy (2017); her first book was the nonfiction investigation Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit (2013). She tweets at @incrediblemelk and her personal website is The Look: reviews and essays about film, 온라인카지노추천, clothes and history.

Publications:

Reviews

Movies 온라인카지노추천 Shows
The Fabulous Four (2024) 25% 2/5 “At times this film felt like the corpse of a breezy Mamma Mia-style musical murdered by some high-up studio suit. Like, why else would you cast such a deep bench of musical talent, and then throw it away?” – ScreenHub Aug 1, 2024 Full Review Master Gardener (2022) 71% 4/5 “This film simmers with the horticultural potential for violence, just as a seed waits for the right conditions to explode into a plant … But I found it strangely – touchingly – optimistic.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Below (2019) 100% “Below is both a conduit for cathartic politicised humour and a commentary on Australia’s regressive asylum policies.” – Metro Magazine (AU) Jun 30, 2023 Full Review Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023) 99% 4.5/5 “Fox’s quick wit illuminates this remarkable documentary … The effect is uncannily vivid and playful, like being in the passenger seat of the time-travelling DeLorean.” – ScreenHub May 25, 2023 Full Review Women Talking (2022) 90% 4.5/5 “Perhaps this film is best described as a parable: a rich moral teaching tool in the form of a story. … I loved it, and have thought so much about it. I hope others also allow it to speak to them.” – ScreenHub Feb 16, 2023 Full Review Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022) 94% 4.5/5 “The pleasure of this film isn’t really in identifying with Nancy’s sexual awakening … It’s the way Leo and Nancy anticipate and evade each other’s judgments, as the power balance shifts back and forth between them.” – ScreenHub Aug 29, 2022 Full Review Persuasion (2022) 30% “The idea that the film does not actually like its heroine is the most interesting thing about this adaptation … But ultimately, [its] other creative choices left me annoyed.” – ScreenHub Aug 29, 2022 Full Review Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022) 86% 3.5/5 “The storytelling remains seductive, but the characters are noticeably older. They seem sleeker and more complacent, too … But maybe we’ve had enough upheaval in the past three years that this elegant fantasy past has become even more narcotic.” – ScreenHub Aug 29, 2022 Full Review The Lost City (2022) 79% 3.5/5 “A story about the vicarious pleasures of romance fiction, and about the folly of either dismissing them as stupid or of taking them too seriously … The obviousness of the genre machinery isn’t really a flaw – it’s part of the fun.” – ScreenHub Aug 29, 2022 Full Review The Greenhouse (2021) 83% 3/5 “I found myself exasperated by this film’s focus on atmosphere at the expense of developing characters and ideas so they deliver a satisfying emotional payoff.” – ScreenHub Aug 28, 2022 Full Review Shane (2022) 100% 3.5/5 “A celebration rather than an examination of Warne’s place in Australian culture, made for people who already like Warnie and want to like him more.” – ScreenHub Aug 28, 2022 Full Review Dune (2021) 83% “The way Villeneuve repeats ceremonial motifs throughout the film is itself ceremonious. ... Instead of explaining its feudal, courtly world, it immerses the viewer in that world's formalist visual language.” – The Look Dec 5, 2021 Full Review Last Night in Soho (2021) 75% “A frustratingly inarticulate film, in which a director who has previously mobilised cinematic language seems happy to play aimlessly with nostalgic fantasies of his own.” – The Look Nov 20, 2021 Full Review William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996) 74% 5/5 “Luhrmann's style simply defibrillates Shakespeare's text. ... For me, it's the overblown carnality that makes it such a perfect adaptation of the source material, and that still leaps from the screen today.” – ScreenHub Nov 9, 2021 Full Review Long Story Short (2021) 52% 3.5/5 “Even the delightful Spall can't overcome a flaccid script that ultimately shies from risk.” – ScreenHub Jun 18, 2021 Full Review I Met a Girl (2020) 3.5/5 “Ultimately, I Met A Girl never really succeeds in the project of bringing the viewer inside Devon's head.” – ScreenHub May 25, 2021 Full Review June Again (2021) 100% 4/5 “Captures something satisfying amid the bittersweet knowledge of life's impermanence: that self-knowledge and care for others make it worth living.” – ScreenHub May 25, 2021 Full Review Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (2021) 68% 3.5/5 “Peter Rabbit 2 wanders further from its charming source material. Instead, it's an intermittently unpleasant franchise film about the unpleasantness of franchise storytelling.” – ScreenHub Mar 25, 2021 Full Review The Dry (2021) 90% 3.5/5 “The Dry frustrated me because it felt like an each-way bet: it has a go at both moody psychodrama and mystery narrative, but not emphatically enough to really satisfy on either ground. ... I found myself wishing for more...” – ScreenHub Jan 8, 2021 Full Review Baby Done (2020) 93% 4/5 “Delightful ... former Harry Potter star Lewis never outshines popular stand-up comedian Matafeo, who effortlessly carries the film's dramatic moments as well as its comic ones.” – ScreenHub Oct 27, 2020 Full Review I Am Woman (2019) 66% 3/5 “I Am Woman is at its best when it's energised by a profound affection for its subject ... Yet it suffers from a dull, cliché-sodden script which insists on squashing Reddy's career into a predictable biopic narrative arc.” – ScreenHub Aug 28, 2020 Full Review Babyteeth (2019) 94% 4/5 “What I enjoyed about Babyteeth is how determinedly it works to undercut familiar genre tropes and to make its characters complex rather than likeable.” – ScreenHub Jul 23, 2020 Full Review Relic (2020) 91% 4/5 “An assured cinematic exercise in dread [that] will resonate with anyone who's witnessed human frailty at confrontingly close quarters.” – ScreenHub Jul 10, 2020 Full Review Da 5 Bloods (2020) 92% 3.5/5 “Da 5 Bloods is engaging because it's animated by complex, emotionally charged politics. It's a provocation, shot through with genuine pathos: a movie about the past that will always speak about what's going on.” – ScreenHub Jun 16, 2020 Full Review Dark Whispers - Volume 1 (2019) 83% 3/5 “While not everything here will be to everyone's taste, the anthology is bursting with ideas and energetic visual approaches.” – ScreenHub May 15, 2020 Full Review
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