Author: Peter Gray

Maggie Gyllenhaal isn’t interested in playing it safe. At the global trailer launch for The Bride!, the writer-director-producer spoke with infectious passion about her radical reimagining of one of cinema’s most iconic monsters, revealing a film that’s punk, romantic, mythic, deeply personal, and unapologetically loud. Here’s everything we learned about The Bride! and the bold…

Madison Beer has spent much of her career being underestimated, written off as an influencer-adjacent pop star, praised faintly for singles but rarely credited for her artistry as a whole. Locket, her third album, should finally put that misconception to rest. It’s a deeply introspective, emotionally cohesive body of work that rewards close listening, offering…

With What I Like About You arriving on Netflix Australia this coming Monday, 19th January, the early-2000s sitcom has a chance at a second life – one it arguably always deserved. In its original run from 2002 to 2006, the show rarely received the cultural spotlight afforded to its peers, yet it quietly delivered something…

When Scream arrived in 1996, the slasher genre wasn’t just tired, it was on life support. The once-mighty franchises of the ’70s and ’80s had collapsed under the weight of diminishing returns, self-parody, and cultural irrelevance. Friday the 13th had become a punchline. A Nightmare on Elm Street had turned Freddy Krueger into a merchandising…

Returning to a world that once redefined cinematic terror, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple doesn’t simply extend the legacy of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s vision – it interrogates it. Under Nia DaCosta’s direction, the film pivots away from the familiar terror of the infected and toward something colder and more unsettling: the ways…

Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple takes the world Danny Boyle and Alex Garland built and flips it on its head, and the result is both shocking and mesmerizing. While it shares some of the DNA of its predecessor, this is very much DaCosta’s film: audacious, unflinching, and surprisingly beautiful. The story expands…

Sarah Snook’s extraordinary career is coming full circle this February, with the acclaimed actor returning home to headline a special In Conversation event at the 2026 AACTA Festival – and to receive one of the Australian screen industry’s highest honours. The Succession star will be awarded the prestigious AACTA Trailblazer Award at the 2026 AACTA…

Fresh from redefining modern horror with Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin returns with a daring new vision – one that takes on a legend as old as fear itself. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy isn’t interested in polite nostalgia. It’s a reinvention: darker, stranger, and far more unsettling than audiences might be ready for. And if…

Warner Bros. Pictures is bringing a little Hollywood magic home, announcing that two of Australia’s most celebrated talents, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, will return to Sydney to launch Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” in spectacular fashion. The film will open with a special Opening Night Celebration at the State Theatre on Thursday, February 12th, marking…

On a Brisbane soundstage transformed into open ocean, Killer Whale is quietly revealing itself to be far more than a creature feature. What the producers and creative team are building here is a film that blends old-school practical filmmaking, contemporary visual effects, and a pointed generational perspective – one aimed squarely at an audience rarely…

Grow is the type of film that sneaks up on you. On paper, a family-friendly film about competitive pumpkin growing doesn’t exactly scream “essential viewing”, but director John McPhail clearly understands that sincerity, when handled with confidence, can be quietly disarming. By the time the film settles into its rhythm, pumpkins aren’t just the subject,…

There’s something quietly radical about a family film that trusts gentleness over noise. Set in the self-proclaimed Pumpkin Capital of the World, Grow unfolds like a story many of us remember from childhood, one that invites laughter, warmth, and the comforting belief that people, at their core, are good. Stoic farmer Dinah Little (Golda Rosheuvel,…

When J.Lo arrived at the turn of the millennium, Jennifer Lopez was already famous – but fame and longevity are not the same thing. Released as her sophomore album, J.Lo carried a weighty question: was Lopez a genuine pop force, or merely a celebrity moment stretched into a record deal? Twenty-five years later, the answer…

In Hamnet, grief isn’t a rupture so much as a reorientation – a learning to carry love in a new, altered way. Chloé Zhao’s hushed, elemental adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel traces the aftershocks of unimaginable loss through Agnes and Will Shakespeare, as the death of their son Hamnet becomes both a private wound and…

Hamnet is a film that feels less like it’s being watched than lived alongside. It moves with the hush of grief, the ache of memory, the strange, half-lit space where love continues after loss has shattered its original shape. From its opening scroll –  a simple historical truth that “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” were once interchangeable…

Hollywood’s current nostalgia cycle has moved beyond prestige remakes and into something far more interesting: reclamation. The success of Anaconda’s meta-leaning revival – powered by the pairing of Jack Black and Paul Rudd – signals a new appetite for films that don’t apologise for their origins, but interrogate them. The ’90s were an era of…

When Willa Ford announced amanda, her first album in over two decades, it didn’t arrive with the bombast typically expected of a pop comeback. There was no algorithm-chasing single, no irony-soaked Y2K cosplay, no attempt to rewrite history as if the last 25 years hadn’t happened. Instead, what she offered was something far rarer in…

If Britney Spears were to perform in Australia, these are the stages that would make sense. When Britney Spears recently captioned an Instagram post with the words “I will never perform in the U.S. again…but I hope to be sitting on a stool…performing with my son…in the UK and AUSTRALIA very soon,” it was inevitable…

After we teased Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa’s long-awaited action-comedy team-up The Wrecking Crew last year with first-look images, Prime Video has now unveiled the film’s first full-length trailer – and it’s every bit the explosive good time we were hoping for. Set against the sun-soaked streets of Hawaii, the film finally unites two of…

Rose McGowan has been speaking again – quietly, painfully, and with a clarity that still cuts. On the latest episode of Paul C. Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast, the actress and activist reflected on the cost of telling the truth in an industry that rarely forgives women who do. Now 52, McGowan, one of…

Thanks to Sony Pictures Australia, we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson in the thrilling new action pic Mercy, in Australian theatres from January 22nd, 2026. In the near future, a detective (Chris Pratt) stands on trial accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to…

Thanks to Sony Pictures Australia, we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Ralph Fiennes in the epic sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, exclusively in Australian theatres from January 15th, 2026. Expanding upon the world created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland in 28 YEARS LATER – but turning that world…

Europa! Europa Film Festival is set to return for its fifth year in early 2026, expanding its footprint further than ever before. Alongside its established Melbourne and Sydney screenings, the festival will debut in Brisbane, Hobart and Auckland, bringing a month-long celebration of European cinema to new audiences across the region. Running from 19th February…

When Hostel was released theatrically in 2006 (it technically debuted in 2005 at the Toronto International Film Festival), it arrived like a blunt instrument. Audiences recoiled, critics argued, and the term “torture porn” entered the mainstream horror lexicon almost overnight. Directed by Eli Roth and produced by Quentin Tarantino, Hostel quickly became a lightning rod…

The Alliance Française French Film Festival is gearing up for another major year, offering audiences an early taste of what’s to come in 2026 with the announcement of seven standout titles from its upcoming program. After drawing a record-breaking crowd of nearly 199,000 attendees in 2025, the festival – now firmly established as Australia’s largest…

Fans can rejoicify and return to the Emerald City as Wicked: For Good, the epic conclusion to the untold story of the witches of Oz, arrives on digital platforms today (January 6th). After debuting at #1 at the global box office and earning a thrillifying USD $223 million, the film surpassed Part One as the…

When Christy Martin exploded into the public consciousness in the 1990s, she didn’t just change the visibility of women’s boxing – she redefined what strength could look like when it refused to be contained. Christy revisits that seismic rise through the eyes of those tasked with bringing her story to the screen: Sydney Sweeney, whose…

In Christy, writer-director David Michôd turns his gaze away from the brittle myths of masculine bravado that have long defined his work, and towards a woman whose strength was forged in public, pressure and pain. The film charts the life of boxing trailblazer Christy Martin not as a sports legend alone, but as someone who…

Sydney Sweeney has really been doing a commendable job of proving that, as an actress, she’s so much more than what we see on Euphoria.  Whilst there have been the expected streaming filmic choices (a Netflix horror effort, an Amazon sex thriller) and a dip into the superhero subsect (farewell Madame Web, we hardly knew…

2025 has proven to be a year of cinematic surprises, a period where filmmakers pushed boundaries, challenged expectations, and delivered stories that linger long after the credits roll. From pulse-pounding thrillers that leave you breathless, to intimate dramas that pierce the heart with quiet, unflinching honesty, this year’s films navigated extremes – emotional, visual, and…