Film & TV

Body Blow embraces sleaze, sweat and the unapologetic pulp of erotic thrillers of the past: Sydney Film Festival Review

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…

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Interview: Dean Francis on resurrecting the erotic thriller through a queer lens with Body Blow; “It became a matter of finding the right story that could support those stylistic ambitions.”

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,…

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Sara Bareilles: Good Grief is less a documentary about recording an album than it is a portrait of what it means to keep creating – and keep loving – after loss: Tribeca Film Festival Review

Seven years after releasing the Grammy-winning Amidst the Chaos, Sara Bareilles returns to the studio not simply to make another record, but to process a life irrevocably altered by grief, transition, and time. In director Josh Alexander’s deeply moving documentary Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, the creation of an album becomes something far more intimate: a…

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Interview: Josh Alexander on the healing power of art in Sara Bareilles: Good Grief; “Grief has to be witnessed.”

Seven years after her last studio album, Sara Bareilles returns to the recording studio surrounded by the friends and collaborators she trusts most. What begins as the creation of a new record soon reveals itself as something far more profound. In Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, director Josh Alexander captures an artist confronting loss in real…

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Fault is a fierce and cathartic examination of trauma and survival: Tribeca Film Festival Review

Set against the intensely competitive backdrop of professional tennis, Fault is less interested in the sport itself than the emotional and psychological battles raging beneath the surface. Written and directed by Misha Calvert, this powerful short film delivers an unflinching exploration of abuse, trauma, and the vastly different ways survivors learn to cope with their…

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Kids Like Me is a documentary about support systems and creativity, all wrapped inside the framework of a charming homemade whodunit: Tribeca Film Festival Review

A summer night around a dinner table becomes the launchpad for a murder mystery in Kids Like Me, as 12-year-old Oliver enthusiastically assigns character roles to friends and family with the confidence of a seasoned director. “You’re the jealous mistress, you’re the corrupt cop…” he declares, transforming an ordinary gathering into a sprawling whodunit powered…

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Interview: Phoebe Tonkin and Brenton Thwaites on destiny and navigating pandemic romance in Two Years Later

Phoebe Tonkin and Brenton Thwaites know a thing or two about on-screen chemistry, but Two Years Later asks a deceptively simple question: what happens when timing gets in the way of true connection? The Paramount+ romantic drama follows Emily and Ryan, whose promising flirtation is cut short by the COVID pandemic, only for fate to…

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Win a double in-season pass to Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day starring Emily Blunt

Thanks to Universal Pictures, we have 5 double digital in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Steven Spielberg‘s new original sci-fi event feature Disclosure Day, in Australian theatres from June 11th, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Colin Firth, and Eve Hewson. If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it…

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Interview: Anthony Frith on his documentary Mockbuster and the reality of making a film for The Asylum

Most aspiring filmmakers spend years imagining the moment someone finally says “yes.” For Australian filmmaker Anthony Frith, that moment came courtesy of The Asylum, the notorious studio behind Sharknado and countless mockbusters. What followed was an offer to direct a dinosaur adventure in suburban Adelaide with just six days to shoot it. On paper, Mockbuster…

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Mockbuster reveals a filmmaking machine that is simultaneously absurd, exhausting, and strangely admirable: Sydney Film Festival Review

For decades, The Asylum has occupied a peculiar corner of the film industry. The studio responsible for titles like Sharknado, Transmorphers, and countless other opportunistic genre knockoffs has built an empire on speed, thrift, and a keen understanding of audience curiosity. Their films are rarely mistaken for prestige cinema, but they endure because they know…

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Film Review: Masters of the Universe; knowingly cartoonish fantasy adventure is powered by Nicholas Galitzine’s charm

Masters of the Universe has never been a franchise built on subtlety. It is swords, sorcery, muscles, monsters, skull-faced villains, cosmic castles, absurd character names and declarations of power shouted toward the heavens. The smartest thing Travis Knight’s live-action reboot does is understand that trying to sand down that ridiculousness would be a mistake. Instead,…

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Netflix launches “Watch Your Favourite Books” hub for avid readers and BookTok fans

If your ever-growing “to be read” pile is competing with your streaming watchlist, Netflix has a new feature designed to bridge the gap between the two. Launching globally on June 2, Watch Your Favourite Books is a dedicated destination within Netflix that curates the platform’s extensive collection of literary adaptations, helping viewers discover films and…

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Interview: Masters of the Universe director Travis Knight on the film’s “extreme sincerity”; “We take it sincerely – even when we’re doing something that is objectively silly.”

The toys that once fuelled Masters of the Universe director Travis Knight’s imagination as a child have now become the foundation for one of the year’s most ambitious fantasy spectacles. In Knight’s live-action reimagining, Prince Adam returns to Eternia after 15 years away to find his kingdom shattered under Skeletor’s rule, forcing him to embrace…

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Win a double in-season pass to the comedy that will cross every line – Scary Movie

Thanks to Paramount Pictures Australia, we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see every line crossed in Scary Movie, in Australian cinemas June 4th, 2026, starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Damon Wayans Jr., Gregg Wayans, Kim Wayans, Benny Zielke, Cameron Scott Roberts, Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott, Dave Sheridan, Heidi…

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Film Review: Power Ballad is warm, wistful, and powered by a genuinely terrific soundtrack

John Carney has spent much of his career proving that music in film works best when it feels lived-in rather than manufactured. From Once to Sing Street and Begin Again, his stories understand how songs can become emotional lifelines, time capsules, or the language people use when words fail them. With Power Ballad, Carney once…

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How movies brought me back to myself: A personal essay on how cinema saved my life

There’s a certain exhaustion that comes with modern film discourse. Open any social media app after a major release and you’ll inevitably see somebody proclaiming a film the “best movie ever made” or the “worst thing ever created” within approximately six minutes of leaving the cinema. Every reaction has become immediate hyperbole. Every opinion has…

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Film Review: Backrooms is genuinely unnerving, visually hypnotic, and far stranger than most studio horror ever dare to become

Kane Parsons’ Backrooms understands something many horror films about internet mythology completely miss: the fear was never just the monster. It was the feeling. The wrongness. The sense that you’ve stepped somewhere familiar that suddenly no longer obeys reality. Expanding a concept as abstract and collaborative as the Backrooms into a feature-length narrative was always…

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Virgin Australia lands exciting new collaboration with Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5

Virgin Australia is bringing a little infinity – and beyond – to the skies. Ahead of the release of Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 on June 18th, Virgin Australia has unveiled a brand-new themed Boeing 737-800 decked out with some of animation’s most beloved faces, including Woody, Jessie and Buzz Lightyear. It’s the airline’s…

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Interview: Kane Parsons on transforming the familiar into something deeply alien in Backrooms

A doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, but what lies beyond it in Backrooms is far more unnerving than a simple descent into another space. Expanding on the internet-born phenomenon that has fascinated audiences for years, filmmaker Kane Parsons transforms familiar environments into something deeply alien – endless corridors of fluorescent-lit emptiness…

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Win a double in-season pass to see Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas in Power Ballad

Thanks to Madman Films, we have 10 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas in the feel-good story about music, self-respect, friendship, and the price of ambition, Power Ballad, in Australian cinemas from May 28th, 2026. When Rick (Paul Rudd), a past-his-prime wedding singer, meets fading boy-band star Danny (Nick Jonas)…

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Opinion: Why Jackass is secretly one of the queerest franchises ever made

For all the moral panic that surrounded Jackass in the early 2000s – the think pieces about stupidity, the copycat fears, the handwringing over masculinity run amok – the franchise has quietly aged into something far more fascinating than anyone could have predicted. Rewatch it now – which you may well do in the lead-up…

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Everything you can watch on Prime Video this June!

June on Prime Video arrives with a packed slate spanning live sport, romance, fantasy, horror and prestige drama. Leading the month is every match of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 streaming live, exclusive and free for Australian audiences from June 13, while BookTok-fuelled romance adaptations Every Year After and Your Fault: London promise…

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The Spanish and Latin American Film Festival unveils full program for 2026

The 2026 HSBC Spanish & Latin American Film Festival is ready to sweep Australian audiences away on a vibrant cinematic journey this winter, returning with a line-up bursting with passion, rhythm, heartbreak, suspense and soul. Running across Palace Cinemas, Palace Nova and Luna Palace Cinemas from June to July, the festival’s 29th edition brings together…

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Film Review: Passenger is a road trip to nowhere

André Øvredal has proven himself capable of delivering horror with atmosphere and restraint. Whether it was the creeping dread of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, the gothic ambition of The Last Voyage of the Demeter, or the gateway scares of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, his work usually contains at least a few…

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Interview: Josh Heuston on Off Campus and the comfort of truly being seen; “The ultimate form of chemistry is comfortability.”

For Josh Heuston, romance is less about grand gestures than the rare comfort of being fully seen. It’s a sentiment that feels fitting for Off Campus, the buzzy new Prime Video college drama that has quickly become the internet’s latest obsession. Based on the bestselling book series, the show blends the heightened emotion of a…

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Film Review: Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu; fans-only adventure mistakes familiarity for momentum

For a franchise built on cinematic awe, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives with surprisingly small ambitions. Expanded from the enormously successful Disney+ series The Mandalorian, the film technically delivers everything fans have come to expect: dusty space-western imagery, blaster-heavy action, adorable Grogu reaction shots, and endless lore connective tissue. What it struggles to…

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Interview: Lamorne Morris and Karen Rodriguez on grounding the heightened world of Spider-Noir: “Play the story, and add your own version to it.”

In the world of Spider-Noir, shadows stretch longer, dialogue crackles with old-Hollywood rhythm, and even the city itself feels suspended somewhere between pulp detective fiction and comic-book mythology. But for stars Lamorne Morris and Karen Rodriguez, grounding that heightened world meant focusing less on stylisation and more on humanity. Based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man…

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Interview: Spider-Noir showrunner Oren Uziel on building a story that’s equal parts hard-boiled noir, comic-book pulp and melancholy character study

Ben Reilly’s version of Spider-Man has already lived through the kind of disillusionment most superhero stories spend entire trilogies building toward. By the time Spider-Noir begins, the idealism is gone, the city has worn him down, and what remains is a weary private investigator muttering lines like, “With no power, comes no responsibility” – a…

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Film Review: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War; confident thriller works as both a continuation for fans of the series and a satisfying standalone for newcomers

There’s always a risk when a successful streaming series makes the leap to a feature film that it will feel like an extended episode rather than a cinematic evolution. Fortunately, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War threads that needle with confidence, delivering a slick, character-driven thriller that works both as a continuation for fans and…

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Film Review: Finding Emily; refreshingly sincere romantic comedy is a reminder of the joy of watching two people fall in love

Romantic comedies live and die by chemistry, sincerity and the audience’s willingness to believe two people are destined to collide at exactly the right moment. Finding Emily, the charming new feature from director Alicia MacDonald, understands that formula completely. Rather than trying to reinvent the genre, the film leans into what has always made these…

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