Author: Peter Gray

A decade after redefining modern zombie cinema with Train to Busan, filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho returns to familiar infected territory with Colony, a frenetic, blood-soaked thriller that trades speeding trains for a towering Seoul skyscraper. While it never quite reaches the emotional highs or cultural impact of its predecessor, it remains an entertaining and inventive genre…

Few filmmakers have done more to redefine the zombie genre than Yeon Sang-ho. Nearly a decade after Train to Busan transformed a familiar horror concept into a razor-sharp reflection of modern society, the South Korean filmmaker returns to the infected with Colony, an ambitious new thriller that asks a far more unsettling question: what if…

As someone who lost their father at a young age, Honeyjoon connected with me almost immediately. Not because it tries to manufacture tears or deliver grand speeches about grief, but because it understands something far messier: losing someone doesn’t necessarily bring people together. Sometimes it creates distance. Sometimes it leaves people speaking entirely different emotional…

Grief is rarely a straight line, and neither is Honeyjoon. Equal parts heartfelt, hilarious and unexpectedly romantic, the film follows June and her Persian-British mother, Lela, as they journey to the breathtaking Azores Islands to mark the anniversary of a devastating loss. What begins as an act of remembrance soon becomes something far messier, funnier…

Fifteen years after The Social Network became one of the defining films of the modern era, Aaron Sorkin is heading back into the world of Facebook. This time, however, the story isn’t about the platform’s creation – it’s about the moment its carefully curated image began to fracture. Sony Pictures has released the first trailer…

Heartbreak is universal. So too is the tendency to tell ourselves we’re ready to move on when we’re anything but. In General Admission, writer Sarah Adina channels one of the most vulnerable chapters of her own life into a sharply observed comedy about a woman who attends a support group hoping to heal, only to…

Prime Video has unveiled the official trailer for Elle, the upcoming Legally Blonde prequel series that explores the formative years of the iconic Elle Woods. The eight-episode first season will premiere July 1st on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide. In a vote of confidence ahead of its debut, the streamer…

With How To Talk Australians, comedian and actor Danielle Walker joins a proudly eccentric comedy that turns the Australian national character into both the joke and the punchline. Expanding on the viral web series that amassed more than 12 million views, the film follows a group of Indian call centre workers who find themselves stranded…

As one half of the delightfully deadpan police duo who cross paths with the stranded travellers in How to Talk Australians, Rick Davies brings a uniquely Australian flavour to the film’s affectionate send-up of life Down Under. Though his screen time may be limited, his outback police officer leaves a memorable impression, embodying the kind…

With more than 12 million views behind its viral web series, How to Talk Australians makes the leap to the big screen with a warm-hearted and sharply observed comedy about culture, identity and the misunderstandings that often bring people together. As Shani, an ambitious student from the Delhi College of Linguistics whose carefully planned Australian…

In Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg returns to the skies, but not simply to repeat the wonder of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the terror of War of the Worlds. This is not an action-centric spectacle, and anyone expecting a relentless alien invasion thriller may be surprised, perhaps even disappointed. Instead, Spielberg has crafted…

David Wain has never been a filmmaker interested in subtlety. From Wet Hot American Summer to Role Models and Wanderlust, his comedy thrives on committing fully to absurd ideas and pushing them well beyond the point of reason. With Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, he may have delivered his most gloriously ridiculous film…

Ira Sachs has long been a filmmaker more interested in emotional truth than conventional storytelling. His films often ask audiences to meet them on their own wavelength rather than the other way around, and The Man I Love continues that tradition. The problem is that, for much of its running time, it feels as though…

Dario Russo’s The Fox is the kind of film that feels impossible to predict from one scene to the next. Part dark fairytale, part relationship satire, part small-town Australian absurdist comedy, it unfolds with the confidence of a filmmaker who is less interested in playing by conventional rules than seeing just how much strangeness an…

In an industry built on trends, commerce, and relentless reinvention, threeASFOUR: FULL CIRCLE shines a spotlight on a fashion collective that has spent more than two decades refusing to play by those rules. Directed by Sean Ono Lennon and Brian C. Gonzalez, the documentary follows avant-garde New York design trio Gabi Asfour, Angela Donhauser, and…

“All this shit actually happened.” That opening declaration lands with a sting, immediately setting the tone for Stacey Sargeant’s sharp, funny, and quietly infuriating short film Stand Clear ’ the Closing Doors. It’s a deliberately blunt replacement for the more familiar “based on a true story,” and it perfectly captures the film’s mentality: exhausted, self-aware,…

Grief, closure, and control collide in Holo, a quietly unsettling sci-fi short from Alexander DeSouza that feels unnervingly close to our present reality. Built around a deceptively simple concept – a company offering artificial encounters with the dead through performance and facial technology – the film quickly reveals itself to be something far more intimate,…

There’s an undeniably sharp hook at the centre of Deepfake – a near-future (or arguably present-day) world where friendship, identity and self-worth can be outsourced with the tap of an app. It’s a premise that feels both heightened and uncomfortably familiar, tapping into a culture where validation is currency and the lives we curate online…

A very specific kind of panic defines Last Minute – the kind born from a pre-internet world, where deadlines couldn’t be solved with a quick search and “doing homework” often became a family-wide emergency. Set in 1989, the short leans into that pressure with warmth, humour, and an undercurrent of genuine affection for a time…

What begins as a simple story about a kid leaving his homework until the very last minute becomes something far more poignant in Last Minute. Set in 1989, before smartphones, Google, and instant answers, writer-director Michael Cusumano‘s charming short follows a single mother racing against the clock to help her son complete a major school…

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…

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…

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,…