DVD & Blu-Ray

“Laggies” are immature people who trail behind as their friends mature, get jobs, get married and have children. It’s also the name of a rom-com and family dramedy from director, Lynn Shelton (Your Sister’s Sister) and writer/novelist, Andrea Seigel.The story is implausible and forgetful but the film is redeemed by its pleasant-enough execution and the…

Another installment in the Halo franchise has once again satisfied revelers of the Halo story. Much like a piece of the Halo ring floating in space, this feature is also an element that can be part of the Halo universe or a story all of its own. Considered the “origin story” of the one of…

+1 or Plus One is the sci-fi horror brainchild of Dennis Iliadis. Though its original release flashed by us at the 2013 SXSW festival, Illiadis felt the production was rushed for festival screening and has since tweaked it for international release. The story takes a rapid-fire spin on horror films and the concept of identity….

As the first episode of Mom begins, titular parent Christy (Anna Faris) – a waitress at a middle-to-high-end restaurant – is crying to her customers, battling tears as she reads the night’s specials and suffering through having to sing “Happy Birthday” to elderly patrons. Although the studio audience would have you believe it’s one of the…

Melissa McCarthy is Tammy and she is having a bad day. On her way to work, she hits a deer and wrecks her car. Because she is late, her boss Keith (Falcone) fires her. She arrives home to find her husband Greg (Faxon) having a romantic meal with neighbour Missi (Collette). She leaves Greg to…

Emily (Ebony Nave) is a teenage girl who is a victim of ‘the system’, shunted from one foster home to another, finding solace only in drugs, alcohol and the dark recesses of the city nightclubs she frequents. She is also self harms as a release from her pain. This is a young girl going nowhere…

The below review (film only) was originally published alongside the film’s theatrical release.  Writing a review for Gone Girl without spoiling the film in some way feels nearly impossible. So before I continue, I’d like to take this moment to issue a public service announcement: if you have neither read the book, nor seen the…

The Culture High takes one side of a polarising, public debate. It argues that marijuana should be legalised. This crowd-funded documentary is from the makers of The Union: The Business Behind Getting High and takes up where the latter one left off by giving a detailed but rather weighted perspective. Director Brett Harvey shocks us…

Boardwalk Empire has always been one of the few series on television that approaches the element of surprise from an artistic standpoint. The Emmy winning show played this hand very strongly throughout it’s five-season run, taking it from just a super stylish, superbly curated gangster period drama to something much, much more and memorable than…

Girls isn’t a glamorous show and in many ways that’s what makes it feel so brutally honest and real. In the third season the characters are the most fully developed and realised versions of themselves to date. It’s also one that is full of the kinds of stories and things that will challenge, enthral, frustrate…

The film Imaginaerum is like opening the doors of perception and entering a music video by Finnish metal band, Nightwish. The movie is based on their seventh studio album and concept record. Imaginaerum seems to have the same trappings as most rock operas once they are adapted for the screen. That is that while the visuals…

The Way Of The Wicked is the film version of a dead-end. At first glance it offers some promise as it’s a story about a satanic, teenage boy who has telekinetic powers. But it’s not long before the proceedings go from haunting to staid and the drama becomes predictable and forgettable. The story begins with…

Imagine The Inbetweeners if they were an aspiring jangly rock quintet living in Manchester in 1990. The result would be Spike Island.The film tells the story of a gang of lads who just want to get off with girls, be in a band and meet their idols, The Stone Roses at the latter band’s Spike…

When you realise South Park is on its eighteenth season, it kind of boggles the mind. Not just because it makes you feel old – but because (at least in my case) you realise that you’ve actually been watching it for the last eighteen years. A show that started out full of little more than…

“Do you suffer from optimism?”  The Wipers Times asks in its distinctly and irreverently British portrayal of the First World War and ‘The Wipers Times’, a satirical newspaper created in the trenches.  Contrasting the humour of the paper with the ugly reality of fighting in Ypres and the Somme, this unique BBC film captures the…

By Nazia Hafiz Cheerleading’s become more than some spirited encouragement from a bunch of pretty young things, waving their pom poms at football sidelines. Founders of the art form come sport, Varsity, have transformed cheerleading into the highly disciplined and competitive exercise it is today, and just to prove a point, have released a no…

Based off the acclaimed webisode series written and directed by Kit Williamson, Eastsiders, follows the ups and downs of gay couple Cal and Thom’s relationship, which has been rocked by Thom’s recent infidelity. The dark comedy set and filmed in Silverlake California chooses to shy away from the couple’s orientation as a major plot driver,…

Billy Kent’s latest offering HairBrained, is a take on the college admission coming-of-age tale. It stars Brendan Fraser as self-confessed ‘late bloomer’, Leo Searly and Alex Wolff (from Nickelodeon’s Naked Brothers Band) as child prodigy Eli Pettifog. The title refers to Eli’s extraordinary mass of hair that he claims, “protects his brain.” It is a…

A loose remake of the French action film District 13, Brick Mansions is likely to be known as nothing more than the last completed film of Paul Walker. With his work in the Fast and Furious franchise, and lesser known features like Running Scared, Walker was arguably proving himself as a charismatic action star and something…

Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd star in the zany They Came Together, a romantic-comedy parody where, of course, “New York is like a third character.” The film was made by the same writer/director team, David Wain and Michael Showalter,that created Wet Hot American Summer and features many of the same actors,yet it doesn’t quite reach…

Better known for his intense stare and inaudible grunts as Khal Drogo on the original Game of Thrones series, Jason Momoa proves there’s more to him than meets the eye with his work in Road To Paloma. As the film’s lead he provides his most emotive performance yet, as the director he displays his strength at…

Perfect Sisters has some good features but that doesn’t mean it’s free from flaws. The film is based on a real life story, a case involving two Canadian sisters who performed matricide. But despite being based on a true crime story, this film is often unbelievable, flippant and lacking in emotion and tension. The movie…

Between Us first found success as an off-Broadway play but it fails as a film. The story focuses on two key episodes in two pairs of couple’s lives and exposes the flawed relationships between themselves and with each other. It is supposed to be an arty, intense and cerebral drama but instead it feels like…

Taped is a Dutch thriller that is gripping from the very first frame to the last. Brutal and breathless, it’s not hard to see why director Diedrik Van Rooijen has been chosen to helm the remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds. There are certainly elements of the Hitchcock style in Taped. The film…

There’s finally peace in Northern Ireland, but some people have not buried the past.  This is the premise behind first-time director Nathan Todd’s A Belfast Story. Colm Meaney (The Commitments, Layer Cake, Con Air) plays hardened detective James, who, like many of his generation in Northern Ireland, are living in times of “peace”.  In his…

The latest in a series of fantastic historical telemovies from the ABC, Carlotta is a crowd pleasing – and emotional – retelling of the life of Australia’s most famous transgender pioneer. Richard Byron (Jessica Marais) is an unhappy kid from working class Balmain, when as a teenager he finds work in a Kings Cross department…

The Angriest Man In Brooklyn could be dubbed “The Diary Of A Mad Man”. The film is a straight-to-DVD release directed by Phil Alden Robinson and stars comedian, Robin Williams as one obnoxious lawyer. After being told he has 90 minutes left to live the irate curmudgeon engages in a frenzied, amazing race around New…

Grassroots is the ‘most of this is true’ story of Grant Cogswell’s politically inexperienced and rather kooky attempt to run for Seattle City Council in 2001. Based off the novel Zioncheck for President written by his level headed buddy and campaign manager Phil Campbell, focus is cast on the lively political power struggle between the…

Given the success in recent years of ridiculous Z-Grade giant animal films such as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and giant animal disaster films likeSharknado, the straight-to-DVD market has been flooded with similar titles. The latest is Dracano. As in Dragon Volcano. Get it? Yep, that’s what we’re dealing with here. Dracano introduces us to Professor Simon Lowell (Corin Nemec), who has…

I think we would all agree that the following conditions must be met for a film to be considered a success: it must be entertaining, have a comprehensible plot and be populated with interesting characters. But sometimes a film comes along that fails to meet even one of those conditions.Outpost 3: Rise of the Spetsnaz is…