Author: Peter Gray

Seasoned film critic and editor. Gives a great interview. Penchant for horror. Unashamed fan of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jason Momoa. Contact: [email protected]

Interview: Alex Winter, Billie Lourd and the Adulthood cast on what they learnt about themselves making the black comedy

Adulthood, directed by Alex Winter, stars Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario as a duo of siblings who uncover a dead body in the basement of their parents’ house.  Understandably, the situation spirals comically out of control, leading the two to resort to desperate, drastic measures to keep things under wraps. Now available on VOD in…

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Good help is hard to find in the first trailer for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

One of the biggest box office hits of the 1990s, and one that instilled a certain paranoia among live-in caretakers and homeowners, Curtis Hanson’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was a terrifying cautionary tale for would-be nannies and the families hoping to hire them.  Starring Annabella Sciorra and Matt McCoy as a loving couple…

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There’s a monster inside us all in the first trailer for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!

Guillermo has his Frankenstein.  Gyllenhaal has her Bride. From Maggie Gyllenhaal (Academy Award-nominated writer/director of The Lost Daughter) and starring Academy Award nominee Jessie Buckley and Academy Award winner Christian Bale comes The Bride! A bold, iconoclastic take on one of the world’s most compelling stories. A lonely Frankenstein (Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to…

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It all counts for Teresa Palmer and Joe Dempsie in the trailer for Addition

Grace Lisa Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer) counts everything – the letters in her name, to the poppy seeds on her orange cake. She counts because numbers hold the world together. But when a chance encounter with Seamus (Joe Dempsie) turns her world upside down, Grace’s meticulously ordered life starts to unravel. A film about accepting who you are and celebrating the…

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Perspective changes everything in the new trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt

Following its premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where star Julia Roberts has been praised for her performance – some calling it one of the best of her career – the new trailer for Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt has been released. From the visionary director of Call Me By Your Name and Queer,…

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Theatre Review: The Lovers; A Shakespeare classic is given the new generational pop treatment

Think of it as Shakespeare for the TikTok generation, The Lovers, courtesy of lyricist Laura Murphy, injects the same type of energy Baz Luhrmann laced his Romeo & Juliet telling with across the Midsummer Night’s Dream narrative, reimagining the classic chaos of the original love story with a serious pop sensibility. The core story itself…

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Film Review: One Battle After Another is one of the most significant films you’ll see this year

An acquired taste in cinema, but one that proves important regardless of how you personally react to his esoteric, boundary-pushing temperament, Paul Thomas Anderson has been responsible for some of the most important and, arguably, brilliant films across cinema the last four decades; Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Licorice Pizza,…

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New Farm Queer Film Festival announces 2025 program

Five Star Cinemas are proud to announce the program for the 4th annual New Farm Queer Film Festival (NFQFF). Running from October 2nd – 12th at Brisbane’s New Farm Cinemas, the festival will present premiere screenings of award-winning titles from Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and Locarno, and brand-new restorations. The festival will open with the QLD…

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Win a double in-season to the horror sequel The Strangers: Chapter 2

The Strangers are back to finish what they started. She survived the first night.  But the real terror is just beginning. Thanks to Kismet Movies, to celebrate the release of The Strangers: Chapter 2, in Australian cinemas from September 25th, 2025, we have three digital double in-seasons to giveaway. THE STRANGERS are back – more brutal…

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Poetic License; Maude Apatow proves herself as a comedic director with hilarious, charming debut feature: Toronto International Film Festival Review

When it was revealed that Maude Apatow (daughter of filmmaker Judd Apatow and actress Leslie Mann) had helmed her first feature film, and one that starred the likes of Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Nico Parker (daughter of actress Thandiwe Newton and filmmaker Ol Parker) to boot, the “nepo baby”…

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Frankenstein; Guillermo del Toro injects new life into a familiar tale: Toronto International Film Festival Review

Though it’s been a story told countless times before, you can’t help but still be monstrously excited at the prospect of Guillermo del Toro adapting Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein.  His name above the title just feels correct, and not just because the director has been talking about helming his version of the story for close…

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Film Review: Swiped; Lily James elevates conventional biopic detailing the foundation of the dating app

Whilst the story behind how Whitney Wolfe Herd both co-founded Tinder and its eventual competition, Bumble, is exciting and full of suitable intrigue, Swiped, with its understandable embellishments, never quite graduates beyond surface level interest.  It’s an entertaining film, without question, with another committed Lily James performance at its core, but The Social Network this…

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The Jewish International Film Festival returns with 50 films across six major Australian cities

The Jewish International Film Festival (JIFF) returns from 19th October through to the 21st December 2025, presenting 50 new films, documentaries, shorts and a television series. Screening in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra and Perth, the festival brings together the best Jewish-themed stories from around the world. Together they span history and contemporary life, the…

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Eleanor the Great; Scarlett Johansson directs bittersweet, moving drama: Toronto International Film Festival Review

One of the most poignant lines of Eleanor the Great is “Talk about the things that make you sad,” and it’s with such a notion that Scarlett Johansson‘s affecting dramedy takes it on as a throughline.  A film that so easily could have been about deception becomes something far greater and more profound, transforming itself…

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Couture; Angelina Jolie delivers understated, career-best work in delicate fashion-centric drama: Toronto International Film Festival Review

There’s a quiet sense of artistic rage that lingers under the surface of Alice Winocour‘s delicate Couture, a small drama that looks at the intersecting lives of a trio of women in Paris, all working in one capacity or another around the fashion industry.  Creation and the unexpected interruptions that can derail one’s own process…

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Buckle up for the first look at the star-studded Australian comedy Zombie Plane

Comedy, action, horror and nostalgic pop culture have fused together for the experience that is Zombie Plane, a wild new Australian feature that has everyone from Sophie Monk and Chuck Norris, to Sir Bob Geldof and Vanilla Ice teaming up as they have to save themselves from a plane overrun by zombies. Directed by Lav…

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Sydney Sweeney makes herself at home in first trailer for the thriller The Housemaid

After proving he’s just as adept at helming fear as he is farce, director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, A Simple Favour) takes on another thrillingly entertaining best-selling novel for The Housemaid, a film that plunges audiences into a twisted world where perfection is an illusion, and nothing is as it seems. Starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda…

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Paul Rudd and Jack Black like big snakes and they cannot lie in first trailer for Anaconda

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Amazon… Doug (Jack Black) and Griff (Paul Rudd) have been best friends since they were kids, and have always dreamed of remaking their all-time favourite movie: the cinematic “classic” Anaconda. When a midlife crisis pushes them to finally go for it, they head deep…

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Film Review: Not even Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie can save A Big Bold Beautiful Journey from its own escapist ambition

Director Kogonada (After Yang) and screenwriter Seth Reiss (The Menu) ask a lot of their audience with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.  It’s a hopeful romance of sorts that intends to utilise its magical realism to sweep viewers away into its odyssey of fantastical nature, with the added bonus of proven charm inhabitants Colin Farrell…

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Film Review: The Bad Guys 2; zany sequel delights as it celebrates its heist movie inspirations

There’s been no shortage of sequels thus far across cinema screens in 2025. And, for the most part, they’ve all proven themselves worthy of existence (Freakier Friday), been a satisfactory entrant in their franchise (The Final Reckoning), or, at least, gone for broke in their attempt to distance from their predecessor (M3GAN 2.0). So where…

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Interview: Ryan Corr on bonding with joeys and immersing himself in the spiritual energy of Alice Springs for Kangaroo

Kangaroo is a heart-warming family comedy about ex TV personality Chris Masterman (Ryan Corr), who becomes stranded in an Outback town outside Alice Springs. There, he teams up with 12-year-old Indigenous girl Charlie (Lily Whiteley). The pair form an unlikely friendship and work together to rescue and rehabilitate orphaned joeys in the remote but stunning…

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Interview: Kate Woods on returning to Australian feature filmmaking with Kangaroo; “It’s my happy place.”

Kangaroo is a heart-warming family comedy about ex TV personality Chris Masterman, who becomes stranded in an Outback town outside Alice Springs. There, he teams up with 12-year-old Indigenous girl Charlie. The pair form an unlikely friendship and work together to rescue and rehabilitate orphaned joeys in the remote but stunning Outback community – an…

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Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery; Neo-Gothic-inspired sequel is as divisive as it is exciting: Toronto International Film Festival Review

Skilled filmmaker and whodunnit expert Rian Johnson has, once again, subverted the expectation of what should constitute a Knives Out mystery.  Whereas the first film in this now continuing franchise was a tight riddle and the sequel (Glass Onion) indulged in its vacation villainy, Wake Up Dead Man takes its cues from such gothic fiction…

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Dust to Dreams; Idris Elba directs rich short film that serves as a meditation on music and reconciliation: Toronto International Film Festival Review

Selected for the Toronto International Film Festival’s Short Cuts program, Dust to Dreams, courtesy of actor Idris Elba flexing his directorial muscle once more, is a soft meditation on on love, music, and reconciliation, set against the backdrop of Lagos, Nigeria. There’s such a rich tapestry of narrative and the emotional outlay that comes from…

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Interview: Director Andy Hines and stars Matt Walsh and Rhys Darby on their small town Canadian thriller Little Lorraine

Inspired by Adam Baldwin’s song “Lighthouse in Little Lorraine”, and based upon on a true story of a cocaine smuggling ring that ran through the eponymous small Nova Scotian town in the 80s, Little Lorraine is a harrowing dramatic thriller that served as one of the prime Canadian spotlight titles at this year’s Toronto International…

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Interview: Miranda Tapsell and Gwilym Lee on the family drama and romance of Top End Bub

A TV series follow-up to the 2019 box office smash hit Top End Wedding, Top End Bub is a heart-warming eight-part series that sees Miranda Tapsell (Love Child, The Sapphires, The Artful Dodger) and Gwilym Lee (Bohemian Rhapsody, The Great) reprise their roles as Lauren and Ned. The couple are living their best lives in the city, which is…

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The Smashing Machine; Dwayne Johnson is a revelation in brutal, emotional biopic: Toronto International Film Festival Review

Despite his absolute monstrous size at the time of his career and just how brutal he proved in the ring of mixed martial arts, Mark Kerr was – and still is – a figure that defied the expectations many would presumably put upon him from a personal standpoint.  Softly spoken, with an emotional sense that…

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Eternity is a shining example of the romantic comedy: Toronto International Film Festival Review

There’s something rather amusing about what constitutes an “A24” movie.  There’s an expectation placed upon the studio as of late regarding the type of film it releases into theatres, and within its own genre, the A24 comedy has rarely been as wholesome as what Eternity projects.  Between the the darker fare of Sorry, Baby and…

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Interview: Paul Greengrass on directing The Lost Bus; “(It’s) the story of our world today.”

A white-knuckle ride through one of America’s deadliest wildfires, The Lost Bus is the real-life story of a wayward school bus driver and a dedicated teacher who battled the elements to save 22 children from a terrifying inferno. Starring Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey and Academy Award nominee America Ferrera, The Lost Bus – a…

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Interview: Shabana Azeez on embracing vulnerability and career specificity for the queer animation of Lesbian Space Princess

She’s a lesbian.  She’s in space.  She’s also a princess.  And she’s voiced by Shabana Azeez. After surviving the bachelor party weekend from beyond hell in Birdeater, and navigating the ins and outs of the medical world in HBO’s relentless new series The Pitt, Australian actress Shabana Azeez is, once again, throwing herself in a…

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