Film

After going out of her way to make herself seem as unappealing as possible in the misguided Tammy, Melissa McCarthy opts for the opposite effect in The Boss, prettying herself up considerably (at least physically) to play a power-hungry mogul who, against our better judgement, we can’t hate as much as we should due to…

Based on the live stage play by Alex Lykos that has toured around the country since 2006, Alex & Eve is a romantic comedy about a Greek Orthodox boy and a Lebanese Muslim girl who, against all odds, fall in love. This Aussie feature shows off the many cultures that live and breathe in Oz…

Hello folks. Well, we did it. If you we’re on my team and rooting for a new box office contender, you’ve got one in the sequel to Snow White and The Huntsman. Although it’s not breaking any big records, The Huntsman Winter’s War overtook both Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to take the top spot….

In the last decade Disney has slowly but surely been churning out live action versions of some of its classic films and stories. There’s been 101 Dalmations, Alice In Wonderland, Maleficent, and Cinderella to name a few. Now to add to that list is The Jungle Book, an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic story as…

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s the best fairytale retelling of them all? The Huntsman: Winter’s War might not be – but at least it’s an improvement on Snow White & the Huntsman. Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as Eric/The Huntsman who’s given more depth and yes, a sad story in which most of his…

Sylvester Stallone has been playing Rocky Balboa for forty years. It’s a credit to the almost-70-year-old actor that he has found a way to breathe new life into the iconic character in Creed, the seventh film in the Rocky franchise. In fact, his efforts even earned him an Oscar nomination this year, the third of…

Hello fellow cinephiles. Look, I didn’t quite get the margins right with Labyrinth Of Lies or Sherpa  as contenders for the number one spot, but boy did Zootopia pick up its game – shifting My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 to third spot. There haven’t been many other changes we know about, so expect some downsizing. The major one is from Batman v Superman:…

If Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) was never diagnosed with terminal cancer, she may never have come out. With 20 years of service for the New Jersey State Police, being a woman was hard enough.  Now, she wants to make sure her pension goes to her spouse, Stacie Andree (Ellen Page), so she can stay in…

It was NRL luminary Jack Gibson who said, “In football, if you are standing still, you’re going backwards fast“. These words are lived by Heath Davis’s lapsed hero Barry Kelly (played by Steve Le Marquand) and extend to the broader film in the suburban melancholy and missed opportunities of Australian redemption tale, Broke. Broke begins…

If you haven’t heard, we have a new film that’s doing extremely well at the box office and smashing records left, right and center. That’s none other than, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.  Even though the reviews have had a mixed reception that hasn’t stopped a  plethora of people and popcorn from sitting in on DC’s…

Australia has played the crest to the wave of ‘indie horror’ films settling amongst international audiences. Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook was received as one of the best horror films of the decade, and the minimalist-horror ethos settles well with Australian roots in Outback Gothic; something that’s quite present in Joseph Sims-Dennett‘s Observance. The film follows…

In their quest for total global dominance, Disney has scored another hit, this time with their new animated flick Zootopia. The family film pulled in AU$4.2 million in its opening week. Having played for 3 weeks in the States, Zootopia is sitting on a $US633 million worldwide gross and enjoyed the biggest opening ever for…

The strong, funny and perhaps a little clumsy panda is back on the screen to entertain the audience once again in Kung Fu Panda 3. Produced by DreamWorks Animation in a first time collaboration with China’s Oriental DreamWorks, the Kung Fu Panda franchise is back with its third installment on the screen after a 3…

Directed by Luca Guadagnino, A Bigger Splash is an erotic thriller that sees rockstar-on-leave Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) idyllic life with her boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts) on an isolated Italian island threaten to implode when Lane’s former-producer (Ralph Fiennes) and his daughter (Dakota Johnson) make an unexpected visit. The story here is actually based on an older Italian-French…

New in films that unexpectedly leave you completely satisfied and slightly breathless: Victoria, a two-hour, one-shot, action-drama from Director Sebastian Schipper. It’s a film that takes you all over the late-night streets of Berlin as the sun slowly creeps up and the fallout from a chance encounter continues to get more and more intense until…

Over the last few years the horror community have been fortunate enough to have select titles presented to them that prove their genre is still alive and well.  Like The Babadook and It Follows before it, The Witch is a chill-inducing creeper of a film that is likely to stay with you long after you’ve left…

Or, as I like to call it, Special-K. Terrence Malick and his editors have modeled their film on the time and space bending properties of a psychoactive trip. One second you’re in a swanky Los Angeles apartment, the next on the ruins of a burnt-down gas station.  Sometimes it’s Rick’s (Christian Bale) voice whispering contemplative…

At first glance, it seems a little odd to see Batman headlining the follow up to 2013’s Man of Steel. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is an undeniably clunky title but, having seen it, it feels surprisingly fitting. It’s far more of a Batman film than it is a Superman one. There’s a lot going on here and while…

Set in the Wild West, Jane Got a Gun centres around Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman), her outlaw husband Bill (Noah Emmerich) and Jane’s ex-lover Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton).  Bill finds himself in a bit of trouble from an outlaw gang and their leader Colin (Ewan McGregor) wants him dead.  In a desperate effort to save…

The Daughter brings together an incredible Australian cast with Director and Writer Simon Stone, who penned the Belvoir adaptation and marks his screen debut debut here, as did Cowell with Guthrie. The 1884 Norwegian play has been transformed here into an Australian family drama (though the duck, naturally, remains present), set on the NSW South Coast, focusing on a family and…

British comedy The Lady in the Van followed up a successful debut last week with a very noteworthy second week. The Maggie Smith led film surpassed Deadpool with AU$1.65 million to take top spot. Deadpool however only trailed slightly earning AU$1.60 million. The Merc with a Mouth overtook Iron Man to become the third most…

Disney hits the mark again with Zootopia (directed by Byron Howard & Rich Moore).  Surprisingly different from the other Disney films that leave you crying and happy at the same time, Zootopia is mostly a feel good film. It centers on Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) who sticks to her dream of becoming a…

A sequel the 2013 magician-thriller, Now You See Me 2 has a new trailer. It remains a great shame that they didn’t just name the film Now You Don’t  – but this new trailer provides a  bit more context for what the film is about beyond providing an excuse for Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson to break the…

American nationalism is back on-screen once again in full display in the action sequel to Olympus Has Fallen. On a minor note, Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and others from the previous film are back as well. But seriously, the first film, by director Antoine Fuqua of Training Day fame, was a…

Not that it wasn’t already, but by the end it’s fifth season HBO’s phenom of a TV show Game of Thrones had shot straight up to the front of the list for most talked about television shows of all time. Memes, references, and general fandom surrounding the show become embedded in pop culture all around…

Ghostland isn’t your average documentary. It echoes the story of The God’s Must Be Crazy in both a whimsical and crushing way. Ju / ‘Hoansi Bushmen are a tribe in Namibia. After hunting laws came into place their way of life was changed. Without the ability to hunt they had to survive off bushland berries…

Operator is a film with a lot to say and a lot more on its mind. It’s a romantic drama that’s sure to resonate as a cautionary tale for SXSW audiences. The film examines the relationship between Joe (Martin Starr), a programmer working on cutting-edge digital customer service software and his wife Emily (Mae Whitman), a hotel concierge who moonlights in a…

Producer J.J Abrams is a big fan of mystery, so the frugal promotional campaign leading up to 10 Cloverfield Lane, a film that is conceptually linked to shaky-cam monster classic Cloverfield, really wasn’t all that surprising. A trailer was randomly sprung upon us featuring serial scene-stealer John Goodman getting smacked over the head with a…

Deadpool has been on top for four weeks now, earning another AU$2.5 million. In the States the foul mouthed X-Man also became only the third R rated movie to ever cross the US$300 million mark. I did make a glaring omission in my report last week. I was lead to believe that Maggie Smith’s The…

Offensive. Repulsive. Shocking. Unapologetic. These words are always associated with a film starring Sasha Baron Cohen as the lead. Films such as Borat, Bruno and The Dictator have brought levels of laughter due shock and wit, and with his latest film, Grimsby, it is no exception. If you hated any of those movies, punch out…