In a city already bursting with energy, colour and larger-than-life personalities, it takes a particularly special creature to stand out. Enter Kaboom, a fluffy pink force of magical chaos who descends upon New York City in ChikaBoom!, a delightfully inventive animated short that combines heart, humour and a striking visual style. At its centre is…
Packing a full emotional spiral, character study, and sharp comedic pivot into under ten minutes is no small feat, yet General Admission pulls it off with an impressive control and confidence. Writer Sarah Adina and director Kaily Morgan Smith craft a deceptively simple setup – a woman attending a support group to reclaim her sense…
Addiction dramas are rarely designed to be “enjoyable,” and Cotton Fever understands that from its opening moments. Daniel Blake Schwartz’s debut feature is an emotionally heavy, deeply intimate portrait of people trapped in cycles of dependency, survival, and recovery, refusing to romanticise the realities of addiction or soften the damage it leaves behind. The result is…
In an age where a single unread message can trigger a full-blown existential crisis, Drew van Steenbergen‘s Buckets taps into a painfully familiar modern phenomenon. The sharply observed short follows a man whose life begins to unravel after a late-night dating app match leaves him waiting for a follow-up text, spiralling through anxiety, self-doubt, and…
In the age of dating apps, where a single delayed reply can send even the most rational person into a tailspin, Buckets captures a very specific form of modern anxiety with remarkable honesty, humour, and self-awareness. Writer-director-editor Drew van Steenbergen turns the camera on himself as a man who spirals over the course of 48…
It’s that time of the year again, and Summer Game Fest has rolled around to bring us all the latest video game announcements for the months and years ahead. While we miss E3, there’s no doubt the hype train keeps on rolling for us fans in June. So without further ado, let’s run through all…
With her feature debut Lucy Schulman, writer, director and star Ellie Sachs has crafted a charming, painfully relatable comedy about the dangers of building your identity around other people. Following a devastating breakup, Lucy returns home to live with her eccentric father and begins the messy process of figuring out who she is when she’s…
In one of the earliest moments of Lucy Schulman, Lucy (Ellie Sachs) reflects on her childhood obsession with mallards. While other kids loved trains or Barbies, she was fixated on the idea that these birds seemed to mate for life – and that when one died, the other often wasn’t far behind. To Lucy, that…
Looking at the premise of Carolina Caroline on the surface, it’s all too easy to compare it to something like Bonnie & Clyde. Sure, Adam Carter Rehmeier‘s focuses on a loved-up couple and their cross country crime spree, but Tom Dean‘s script is far deeper than that set-up. For starters, the initial “criminal” of the two, Kyle Gallner‘s Oliver, justifies his…
Modest Mouse is an American rock band formed in 1993 by lead singer Isaak Brock. Their output is prolific, with well over a dozen albums and EPs released. In their latest release, An Eraser and a Maze, Brock explores the theory of time existing simultaneously. Which, of course, is an oversimplification of the fifteen tracks…
Want to know how to raise the temperature of the Metro Theatre on a cold winter’s night in Sydney? Send in Wednesday and watch the room sizzle like a hot North Carolina summer! What you see is exactly what you get! Wednesday’s sold-out Sydney show packed the venue so tightly that no one was moving independently;…
Sheltering at the Sydney Opera House is a triple-bill from the acclaimed Bangarra Dance Theatre. Bangarra’s unique style of dance fuses traditional First Nations movement and narratives with contemporary dance to tell stories that resonate and challenge the audience. Sheltering acknowledges and honours the theatre’s history through the work Sheoak, while looking forward to the…
There was a time when erotic thrillers ruled video store shelves. Sleazy, sweaty and unapologetically pulpy, they thrived on dangerous attraction, moral compromise and characters making terrible decisions while bathed in neon light. Dean Francis‘s Body Blow isn’t simply paying tribute to that era – it dives headfirst into it, embracing every deliciously trashy convention…
Neon lights, sweaty dancefloors, dangerous attraction, and a hero caught between duty and desire – Body Blow proudly wears the DNA of the classic erotic thriller. Yet beneath its stylish noir exterior lies a deeply contemporary exploration of queer identity, masculinity, and the institutions that shape both. Ahead of the film’s Sydney Film Festival premiere,…
Seven years after releasing the Grammy-winning Amidst the Chaos, Sara Bareilles returns to the studio not simply to make another record, but to process a life irrevocably altered by grief, transition, and time. In director Josh Alexander’s deeply moving documentary Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, the creation of an album becomes something far more intimate: a…
Seven years after her last studio album, Sara Bareilles returns to the recording studio surrounded by the friends and collaborators she trusts most. What begins as the creation of a new record soon reveals itself as something far more profound. In Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, director Josh Alexander captures an artist confronting loss in real…
Set against the intensely competitive backdrop of professional tennis, Fault is less interested in the sport itself than the emotional and psychological battles raging beneath the surface. Written and directed by Misha Calvert, this powerful short film delivers an unflinching exploration of abuse, trauma, and the vastly different ways survivors learn to cope with their…
A summer night around a dinner table becomes the launchpad for a murder mystery in Kids Like Me, as 12-year-old Oliver enthusiastically assigns character roles to friends and family with the confidence of a seasoned director. “You’re the jealous mistress, you’re the corrupt cop…” he declares, transforming an ordinary gathering into a sprawling whodunit powered…
This week we have added 10 new tracks to our Discovery Playlist on Spotify and Apple Music, including one exclusive premiere. Our Track of the Week is “Art of Suggestion”, the intoxicating new single from Asha Jefferies. “Art of Suggestion” plays with the charged space before desire is confirmed — that electric blur of projection,…
As the release of their tenth studio album, The Wow! Signal looms large, Muse have just released the fifth single, “Nightshift Superstar”. The second song on the album is a funky, ethereal, disco-tastic piece that will no doubt delight, confuse, and intrigue fans. Kicking off with swirling synthesiser, it immediately transports us into an intergalactic…
Victorian Surf Coast indie-rock outfit Savage Honey are preparing to release their debut album Darling on Monday, 8 June, and today we are super pumped that we are able to give readers of the AU an exclusive early listen. Born from Torquay, Savage Honey have spent the past few years building a reputation for heartfelt,…
Phoebe Tonkin and Brenton Thwaites know a thing or two about on-screen chemistry, but Two Years Later asks a deceptively simple question: what happens when timing gets in the way of true connection? The Paramount+ romantic drama follows Emily and Ryan, whose promising flirtation is cut short by the COVID pandemic, only for fate to…
Thanks to Universal Pictures, we have 5 double digital in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Steven Spielberg‘s new original sci-fi event feature Disclosure Day, in Australian theatres from June 11th, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Colin Firth, and Eve Hewson. If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it…
Boorloo/Perth artist EDIE returns this week with her sophomore EP Garden of Edie, a dark, intoxicating and ultimately freeing electronic-pop release that captures the emotional turbulence of growing up in your twenties. Out today, the EP draws on biblical imagery — particularly the Garden of Eden — to explore loss, betrayal, temptation, self-discovery and the…
Most aspiring filmmakers spend years imagining the moment someone finally says “yes.” For Australian filmmaker Anthony Frith, that moment came courtesy of The Asylum, the notorious studio behind Sharknado and countless mockbusters. What followed was an offer to direct a dinosaur adventure in suburban Adelaide with just six days to shoot it. On paper, Mockbuster…
For decades, The Asylum has occupied a peculiar corner of the film industry. The studio responsible for titles like Sharknado, Transmorphers, and countless other opportunistic genre knockoffs has built an empire on speed, thrift, and a keen understanding of audience curiosity. Their films are rarely mistaken for prestige cinema, but they endure because they know…
Canberra-based songsmith Jack Biilmann is back with his soaring new single “Never Have It All”, and we’re thrilled to be premiering it today ahead of its official release tomorrow, Friday 5th June. A fabulous musician and songwriter we’ve had the pleasure of covering before — including premiering his single “Forbidden Fruit” back in April —…
Just a year after the release of seminal album Force, which saw The Pretty Littles touring with new music again for the first time in 5 years, the prolific Melbourne band are back with Mulga Wire. The new album is The Pretty Littles at their most authentic, following their instincts, writing and performing with their…
This month’s State of Play had a lot riding on it. With a plethora of live service games that have more often failed, Sony needed to hit this one out of the park. Fortunately, thanks to some solid third-party support, this State of Play has something for all types of gamers. Marvel’s Wolverine gives us…
I feel like I’ve mentioned it numerous times over the years, but I’ll mention it again; I’m a massive Bond fan. I’ll try not to let my bias get in the way, but as you could imagine, this is one of my most anticipated titles of the year. I watch the films regularly, have read…
