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Jordan Prosser
Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker, and performer from Naarm/Melbourne, and a graduate of the VCA School of Film & Television. In 2022, he won the Peter Carey Short Story Award. His debut novel, Big Time, was published in 2024.
When you wake up from a nightmare, it can feel so vivid, so real – so relevant. But over the following minutes and hours, your brain undertakes the important task of synthesising what your subconscious has subjected you to; it interprets symbols, recognises familiar anxieties, and likely suggests that you refrain from boring everyone you encounter that day with a blow-by-blow account of it all. ... (read more)
I worked front-of-house at the Melbourne Recital Centre for the better part of my twenties, sitting in on hundreds of classical music performances during that time. The highlight for me was a performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra of Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa. I was to accompany a number of VIPs who would be seated onstage for the duration of the performance, just behind the orchestra, fac ... (read more)
People’s taste in satire can be as acquired and specific as their taste in art overall; some favour scalpel-like precision (the television of Armando Iannucci), while others prefer more of a sledgehammer approach (the films of Adam McKay). Your appreciation for Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness will vary depending on your tolerance for sweeping observational class satire (and the onscreen d ... (read more)
When did nice become an insult, and simple such a burden? Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) is a nice man, leading a simple life on the fictional island of Inisherin, just off the coast of Ireland. The year is 1923. Even as a civil war rages across the water, for Pádraic all is well in the world so long as he gets to meet his lifelong friend, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), at the pub at 2 ... (read more)
After the uneven space operatics of Ad Astra (2019), American writer–director James Gray returns to Earth – specifically to Queens, New York, 1980 – with Armageddon Time, a burnished, contemplative, and astutely observed autobiographical coming-of-age tale. This is a rapidly escalating micro-trend in cinema; it seems that every auteur with enough critical clout will soon be expected to churn ... (read more)
For the casual moviegoer unconcerned by matters of auteurship, it can still come as something of a shock to learn that the person behind the original Mad Max trilogy (1979–85), as well as its decade-defining follow-up, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), also brought us the madcap animal antics of Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and the all-singing, all-dancing penguin colony of Happy Feet (2006) and Happy ... (read more)
Crafting a biopic is a near-impossible act of curation; of the hundreds of thousands of hours that make up a person’s life, which two and a half will accurately sum up their entire existence? Some recent attempts, like the excellent Steve Jobs (2015) or the Judy Garland biopic Judy (2019), limit their slice of life to a handful of defining moments and allow the viewer to extrapolate from there, ... (read more)
The films of Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Ex Machina, Annihilation) all share a distinct feeling of descent – an almost gravitational pull towards madness, towards decay, towards a loss of self. His new film, the ingeniously titled but only half-realised Men, continues this tradition.
It stars Jessie Buckley (devastatingly good in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, an ... (read more)
Some directors leave their fingerprints on a finished product through a trademark visual style, a particular musical taste, or a recurring ensemble of actors. Others embody the notion that when something’s truly well made, the handiwork is invisible. Such is the case with Asghar Farhadi, two-time Oscar-winning writer and director of A Separation (2011) and The Salesman (2016), who continues to r ... (read more)