Seasoned film critic and editor. Gives a great interview. Penchant for horror. Unashamed fan of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jason Momoa. Contact: [email protected]
Sexual assault is one of cinema’s most fraught subjects. Not because it can’t be depicted, but because it so often can be mishandled. Films either flinch away from its reality, overtly depict the act with an almost exploitative lens, aestheticise it into something palatable, or frame it through adult comprehension that dulls its true terror….
Run Amok announces the arrival of a filmmaker unafraid of discomfort. In her striking debut feature, writer-director NB Mager tackles one of the most fraught subjects in contemporary American life – the aftermath of a school tragedy – and does so with a form that feels almost provocatively unexpected. The premise is deceptively simple yet…
“The Skylab space station fell out of orbit in 1979. During its mission, it had been home to hundreds of scientific experiments. Most of the debris burned up on re-entry, but some of it crashed to Earth. NASA thought it had recovered every piece. They were wrong.” Pay attention. This shit is real. That’s how…
From the moment The Wrecking Crew was announced, it felt less like a standard studio project and more like an inevitability. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista – two of the most physically imposing stars working today – had already proven their onscreen chemistry as brothers in See. Fans could sense it. So could they. What…
After the Breakers rose – monstrous creatures that infect and twist their victims – men fell first, leaving women to lead the fight for survival. In this perilous new world, Willa’s mother is one of the war’s fiercest warriors, while her father, a battle-scarred veteran, hides with Willa on a remote island, training her in…
In Addition, Grace Lisa Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer) counts everything – numbers are the scaffolding of her meticulously ordered life. But when a chance encounter with Seamus (Joe Dempsie) turns her world upside down, Grace is forced to confront the chaos she’s long avoided. Directed by Marcelle Lunam and based on Toni Jordan’s bestselling novel, the…
Grace Lisa Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer) counts everything. Numbers are the quiet architecture holding her world together, until a chance encounter with Seamus (Joe Dempsie) begins to loosen the careful order she’s built around herself. Directed by Marcelle Lunam and adapted from Toni Jordan’s bestselling novel, Addition is a story about self-acceptance and recognising what truly…
Send Help announces itself as a survival thriller, but Sam Raimi’s latest is something far more subversive: a darkly comic, psychologically barbed dismantling of corporate masculinity and the systems that enable it. What begins as a familiar plane-crash setup quickly mutates into an unsettling power study, one that weaponizes genre expectations against the audience with…
The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts is getting ready to roll out the red carpet for the 2026 AACTA Awards, and this year’s celebration promises to be something special. Leading the night is one of Australia’s most loved entertainers, Celeste Barber, who will host the AACTA Awards with her trademark wit, warmth and…
Bedford Park announces Stephanie Ahn as a filmmaker unafraid of emotional exposure – sometimes to a fault, but more often to devastating effect. Set between the push and pull of cultural obligation and personal survival, the film traces Audrey, a Korean American woman shaped by sacrifice as a love language, and Eli, an ex-wrestler whose…
Ángel Manuel Soto’s The Wrecking Crew wastes no time establishing its swagger: a sun-drenched, bone-crunching action comedy set on the streets of Hawaii, where estranged half-brothers Jonny (Jason Momoa) and James (Dave Bautista) reunite after their father’s mysterious death, only to find themselves tangled in buried secrets and a family-shattering conspiracy. When our Peter Gray…
The Wrecking Crew knows exactly what kind of movie it wants to be, and it’s in that confidence that it reveals its greatest asset. Directed by Ángel Manuel Soto (Blue Beetle), this sun-drenched, bruising action comedy channels the spirit of 80s/90s-era buddy chaos, pairing Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista as estranged half-brothers pulled back together…
Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon is the kind of film that knows exactly who it’s for, and makes no attempt to dilute itself for anyone else. Set almost entirely over one night inside Sardi’s restaurant on the opening of Oklahoma! in 1943, the film unfolds less like a traditional biopic and more like a rueful, jazz-inflected…
There are films that fail loudly, and then there are films that fail quietly; misjudged, misunderstood, and filed away under “not good enough” before anyone really figures out what they were trying to do. Awake belongs firmly in the latter category. Released in 2007 with a barely-there theatrical campaign, Joby Harold’s sleek medical conspiracy thriller…
The Oscars always tell you what kind of year it’s been – and the 2026 nominations just screamed it in neon: big swings rewarded, sacred cows ignored, and one film outright rewriting the record books. Because this morning belonged to Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the blood-soaked, genre-bending juggernaut that didn’t just top the nomination leaderboard –…
There’s something weirdly refreshing about a horror movie that doesn’t posture, doesn’t smuggle in a lecture, and doesn’t pretend it’s “elevated” because someone mutters words of perceived depth between splatter sequences. Director Johannes Roberts understands the assignment with almost admirable single-mindedness with Primate: deliver a gory creature feature with a breezy, old-school sensibility and enough…
Australian systems change-makers and Indigenous storytellers Jack Manning Bancroft and Tyson Yunkaporta are inviting audiences to hit reset with Imagine, a bold, genre-defying animated feature landing in cinemas for special event screenings this January 26th across Australia. Co-created through the pandemic in an open, live Google Doc collaboration that brought together more than 400 contributors…
After years of waiting, Harry Styles is returning to the stage in 2026 with Together, Together – a seven-city residency tour hitting Amsterdam, London, São Paulo, Mexico City, New York, Melbourne, and Sydney, running from May 16th to December 13th, 2026. These will be his only live shows worldwide in 2026, with huge highlights including…
A brand-new trailer has dropped for Idiotka, a sharp and irreverent fashion comedy that skewers reality TV culture while keeping its heart firmly in the right place. The film, written and directed by Nastasya Popov, will hit select theaters in the United States from February 27th, 2026, via Utopia Distribution Led by Anna Baryshnikov as…
At the turn of the millennium, Victoria Beckham‘s debut solo album arrived carrying an unfair amount of baggage. By 2001, the post-Spice Girls landscape had already begun sorting its winners and footnotes, and “Posh Spice” was too often framed as an image-first participant in pop rather than a musician with something to prove. Listening back…
Mercy wants to be a slick, near-future morality play about the creeping dominance of artificial intelligence in modern life and, specifically, in the justice system. Instead, it plays like a film that can’t decide whether it fears technology, worships it, or just wants to use it as a convenient set of shiny props. Set around…
There’s something quietly poetic about watching Addition under the open sky. Premiering in Australia at Sydney’s Westpac OpenAir Cinema ahead of its national release on January 29th – following its successful run at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival – the film’s gentle intimacy feels amplified by its setting. Numbers may govern Grace Lisa Vandenburg’s…
Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho has never been interested in subtle allegory when reality itself is this confrontational. With The Secret Agent, his latest politically charged thriller set during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the director once again fuses genre storytelling with cultural memory, paranoia and moral urgency. In a conversation with our…
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is the type of film that doesn’t merely ask for attention, it commands it. Set against the suffocating backdrop of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1977, the film unfolds during Recife’s Carnaval, where colour, music and movement become both camouflage and provocation. What should be a time of collective release…
The Madison is finally starting to step out of the shadows, and Paramount+ is making sure fans of the Yellowstone universe are paying attention. The streamer has released a moody 30-second teaser that offers a tantalising glimpse of Taylor Sheridan’s latest expansion. The short preview leans heavily on atmosphere rather than plot, hinting at emotional…
Marty Supreme is exactly the kind of big, brash, slightly unhinged swing that feels tailor-made for co-writer/director Josh Safdie and for Timothée Chalamet at this precise moment in his career. A kinetic, sweaty, frequently overwhelming sports comedy-drama, the film barrels through 1950s New York and far beyond with the same single-minded obsession as its protagonist,…
Queer Screen has revealed the full program for the 33rd Mardi Gras Film Festival, returning to Sydney from 12th – 26th February, 2026 with two vibrant weeks of LGBTIQ+ cinema as part of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras celebrations. Screenings will take place across key city venues including Event Cinemas George Street and…
After more than a decade away from releasing a full-length studio album (the last being 2015’s Breathe In. Breathe Out.), Hilary Duff is rejuvenating her place in pop music with Luck…or Something – a record that feels less like a nostalgic throwback and more like a necessary evolution. Scheduled to arrive on February 20th, via…
Joe Carnahan’s The Rip arrives with the familiar Netflix sheen, but beneath that polish is something tougher, meaner, and far more cinematic than the algorithm usually allows. A pressure-cooker crime thriller steeped in mistrust and moral rot, the film leans hard into character before letting violence and paranoia take the wheel. It’s a throwback with…
It Was Just an Accident is a quietly devastating triumph, a film that proves how little spectacle is needed when moral tension, lived experience, and cinematic restraint are in perfect alignment. Working with an almost disarmingly simple premise, writer/director Jafar Panahi crafts a thriller that unfolds largely through conversation, hesitation, and silence. Yet the film…
