Author: Peter Gray

Happiness is an easy concept to romanticise. We spend so much of our lives imagining the job, relationship or milestone that will finally make everything fall into place, only to discover that fulfilment rarely arrives as neatly as expected. That uncomfortable distance between the life we picture and the one we actually inhabit sits at…

Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime understands that the most disturbing thing about To Catch a Predator was never necessarily what happened when Chris Hansen stepped out from behind that curtain. It was how effortlessly something ostensibly created in the name of public safety became entertainment; how quickly justice could be packaged, promoted and sold to an audience…

Robert Pattinson has rarely seemed interested in taking the most obvious route into a character. Across a career increasingly defined by peculiar, unpredictable and sometimes deeply uncomfortable performances, the actor has demonstrated a willingness to disappear into characters without necessarily explaining them. For Primetime, though, Pattinson initially wasn’t planning on disappearing into anyone at all….

To look at Ken Carter’s 90-foot ramp jutting into the Canadian skyline was to look at a monument to sheer impossibility. In The Stunt Driver, filmmaker Michael Dowse dives headfirst into the folklore of Canada’s most audacious stunt performer, who, battered by decades of broken bones, staked his survival on jumping a mile across the…

Ken “The Mad Canadian” Carter may willingly strap himself into vehicles designed to leave the ground, but don’t call him a daredevil. For Carter, the distinction matters. What he does isn’t supposed to be reckless. It requires engineering, preparation and an almost irrational faith that every calculation will keep him alive. It’s that increasingly fragile…

Young love and all the amazing, traumatic things that come with such are explored in Charlie Harper, Mac Eldridge and Tom Dean‘s emotional, non-linear romance dramedy, anchored by the moving performances – and palpable chemistry – of its leads, Emilia Jones and Nick Robinson. Centering around the two halves of its titular coupling (so no,…

Thanks to Warner Bros. Pictures, we have 5 double digital in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Tom Cruise in a role unlike any other in Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s original dark comedy Digger, in Australian theatres from October 1st, 2026. Academy Award winner Tom Cruise stars in Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s original film “Digger”….

At 155 minutes, and unfolding across three timelines that initially appear to have only the faintest connective tissue, La Bola Negra asks its audience to place an enormous amount of trust in directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi. For much of its first two hours, their sweeping queer epic can feel deliberately elusive, moving between…

Being encouraged to recognise your own brilliance can prove a cruel lesson when the person doing the encouraging preferred you when that brilliance remained safely beneath theirs. That uncomfortable contradiction sits at the centre of Niki Byrne’s The Julia Set, an academically minded coming-of-age drama that doesn’t rewrite the formula but finds enough intelligence and…

There’s something inherently dangerous about satire when the person holding the knife is willing to turn it back on themselves. That tension sits at the centre of Everybody Wants to F*ck Me, the provocative new film from writer-director Jonathan Schey, which arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival with Taron Egerton stepping into the uncomfortable…

Jonathan Schey’s Everybody Wants to F*ck Me is the kind of film that seems determined to make you laugh before making you question exactly why you’re laughing. What begins as a filthy comedy about modern dating gradually mutates into something darker, stranger and considerably more uncomfortable. Taron Egerton plays Adam, a London gallery worker who…

There’s an agonising distinction between wanting to live and wanting to have lived. Elsinore, Simon Stone’s deeply affecting account of the final chapter in Scottish actor Ian Charleson’s life, understands that difference intimately. Faced with a body increasingly betraying him, Charleson isn’t simply fighting for more time. He wants the time he has left to…

Films centred around degenerative illness are often walking an unenviable tonal tightrope. Push too hard towards inspiration and the characters can become vessels for an uplifting message; lean too heavily into suffering and their lives become defined entirely by their diagnosis. Onwards and Sideways understands that living with Parkinson’s can be frightening, exhausting, frustrating and,…

Onwards and Sideways may begin with a diagnosis, but its beating heart lies in everything that diagnosis cannot define. Oscar-nominated director John Madden’s tender, unexpectedly funny drama stars Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney as Tony and Emma, two strangers diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the same clinic on the same morning. What initially binds them…

Diagnosed with the same degenerative disease, at the same clinic, on the same day, Tony (Rhys Ifans) and Emma (Laura Linney) may suddenly find themselves bound by Parkinson’s, but Onwards and Sideways is far more interested in everything that makes their experiences entirely their own. For Oscar-nominated director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, Proof), that…

At a certain point in a long-term relationship, “When are you having kids?” seems to stop being considered an intrusive question and instead becomes accepted small talk. Marriage apparently isn’t enough of a milestone. Happiness isn’t enough of an answer. There must be a next step, and for Annie and Aaron, the wonderfully lived-in couple…

Rebel Wilson clearly has an enormous amount of affection for the girl groups that soundtracked her formative years. Spice Girls, All Saints, Destiny’s Child and The Pussycat Dolls all hover over Girl Group, a bright, loud and relentlessly enthusiastic musical comedy that wants to bottle the particular euphoria of watching a group of women harmonise,…

Technology may have finally achieved what decades of law enforcement couldn’t: put expert pickpocket Harry Lehman out of business. Nobody carries cash anymore. Phones can be tracked. Credit cards can be cancelled before you’ve even made it to the next subway stop. For the wonderfully weathered criminal at the centre of Noah Segan’s The Only…

History has a funny way of remembering partnerships as individual achievements. Ask who first reached the summit of Mount Everest and Edmund Hillary’s name will likely arrive before Tenzing Norgay’s, despite the two men standing together atop the world’s highest mountain on May 29th, 1953. Jennifer Peedom’s Tenzing seeks to redress that imbalance, shifting the…

The most inspired decision Zach Cregger makes with Resident Evil is also, on paper, one of the strangest: he doesn’t particularly seem interested in making a Resident Evil movie. At least not in the traditional adaptation sense. There’s no slavish recreation of a beloved game narrative, no parade of familiar characters waiting for applause, and…

It was almost inevitable that Frances Neagley would earn her own series. From the moment Maria Sten first appeared opposite Alan Ritchson’s human brick wall in Reacher, she proved one of the few characters capable of matching his intimidating competence without feeling like she had been engineered purely to keep up with him. She was…

Frances Neagley has never needed much introduction. Across Reacher, Maria Sten’s fiercely self-sufficient private investigator proved such a commanding presence that giving the character her own spotlight felt less like a gamble and more like an inevitability. But Neagley isn’t interested in simply replicating the formula of its parent series. Instead, it takes a character…

There’s an inherent challenge in spinning a supporting character off from a series as successful as Reacher. Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) has already proven herself a fan favourite, but the qualities that make a character compelling in concentrated doses don’t necessarily translate to carrying an entire series. For creator and showrunner Nick Wootton, the answer…

Frances Neagley may be the name above the door, but Neagley quickly expands its world beyond the formidable private investigator audiences came to know through Reacher. As a suspicious death from her past pulls Neagley (Maria Sten) into an increasingly dangerous investigation, she crosses paths with Keno (Jasper Jones) and Renee Birdwhistle (Adeline Rudolph), two…

For several seasons of Slow Horses, Sid Baker has existed almost like a ghost. Shot in the head during the first season and subsequently presumed dead, the capable MI5 agent disappeared from Slough House, leaving River Cartwright – and audiences – without any real sense of closure. But Sid wasn’t dead. She was simply living…

Martin McDonagh has long been fascinated by men who would sooner insult, maim or murder one another than admit they actually care. Friendship in his films is rarely expressed through anything resembling conventional affection; it arrives through arguments, threats, profanities and, occasionally, the reluctant acknowledgement that losing someone might hurt considerably more than expected. It…

If the modern media landscape increasingly feels like a race to see who can shout the loudest, frighten the most people, or manufacture the most irresistible headline, Ink is an electrifying reminder that none of this happened overnight. In adapting James Graham’s acclaimed stage play, director Danny Boyle traces such sensationalism back to the smoke-filled…

Charm can be its own form of menace in God Bless You, Mr Kopu, the feature debut of Tongan Kiwi writer-director Alex Liu, a darkly funny, increasingly sinister thriller that uses the seductive promise of success to explore power, race and belonging. Mafu (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a struggling Tongan immigrant whose fortunes seemingly change when…

Community theatre is an inherently strange little ecosystem. It’s a place where people with wildly different levels of talent, ambition and self-awareness come together and, for a few fleeting nights, treat a modest suburban stage as if they’re opening on Broadway. For some it’s a hobby. For others it’s a calling. And for the particularly…

Friendships don’t necessarily end with an argument or betrayal. Sometimes life simply starts pulling two people in different directions, and the fear of what might be lost along the way can prove just as painful. That anxiety sits at the emotional centre of DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island, a vibrant fantasy adventure that sends lifelong best…