Film

Though I am Vietnamese, because I was raised in Australia for all of my life, I never really experienced much of Vietnamese culture. However, there were some films that I had watched that had always stuck with me, and those were the works of Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung. Showing the true beauty in the…

Three years after we were wowed and bamboozled by The Lego Movie and that damn “Everything Is Awesome” song has now finally gotten out of our heads, it’s time to revisit one of its popular characters in his own standalone film. The Lego Batman Movie takes our dark, broody and narcissistic Dark Knight and puts…

A Bad Idea Gone Wrong is Jason Headley’s full feature length debut and I must say, Headley gives a simple concept a fantastic tune up. With this Comedy/Drama, two down on their luck thieves, Marlon (Matt Jones) and Leo (Will Rogers) land their next heist opportunity, a fancy mansion home while the owners are away….

A dark, moving yet warming adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s classic novel Une vie is eloquently created in to a period arthouse picture by director Stéphane Brizé (The Measure of a Man), as a young woman comes to grasp the turmoil that unfolds around her in 19th-century France. The aesthetic of the film is created perfectly by…

To go back and transpose Power Rangers into a blockbuster teen superhero film in this day and age seems like an odd choice. Though the original TV series quickly became a cult hit, time hasn’t been so kind to the franchise, even if it has strangely persisted for over two decades (it’s 24th season is…

One day Hollywood might be able to come up with a new science fiction movie that has us discovering a fluffy cute adorable friendly alien. One day Hollywood might be able to come up with a group of characters who actually have character development, prior to being ruthlessly dispatched. One day Hollywood might be able…

It appears there’s no stopping the mighty King Kong, as Kong: Skull Island topped the box office for the second week in a row, earning $3.13m. The number of screens this film is available (nationally) has dropped from 523 last week to 395 this week, so we might see this one slip a little after…

A story that originated in 1740 now considered one of the most beloved and beautiful of fairytales that has been remade/rebooted/retold a countless number of times, Beauty And The Beast is considered a tale as old as time. Of late Disney has been having a bit of a renaissance if you will, remaking number of…

Breathtaking and magical, Monsieur Chocolat (directed by Roschdy Zem) is one to watch if you want to experience a Parisian night. Immerse yourself in the world of 19th-century French circus and follow the biopic story of Chocolat (Omar Sy). He journeys from a performer acting as the “cannibal” to a more respected position as a…

With La La Land having recently dominated the Oscars, its story about 2 hopefuls trying to make it in Hollywood uncomfortably lingered in the back of my mind while watching California Dreams. Both La La Land and California Dreams share a similar premise of “dreams are built on sacrifice”, however the films attack their subject…

Long Strange Trip is a documentary about the Grateful Dead that feels just like being at one of the band’s concerts. It is a sprawling, swirling psychedelic affair that lives up to its name as it celebrates a band that has notched up over 50 years in the music business as the reigning kings of…

Hot on the heels of winning the SXSW Audience Award for the “Visions” programming, we sat down with Aussie actor Josh Lawson, Director Josh Greenbaum and Australia’s own 007 George Lazenby to talk about the film Becoming Bond, which premiered at the festival last week. This pseudo-documentary tells the story of Lazenby, the only Australian…

I have to admit, I don’t watch a lot of documentaries, but I’ve loved the ones I’ve seen. Some of them haven’t felt like documentaries at all, mainly because the stories behind them are a little too one-sided or hard to believe. Films like Super Size Me and Bowling for Columbine have been accused of being false, manipulative…

Stop and take a moment to think about what you were doing at the age of 27 or what you will do if it’s yet to come. If you’re a musician it is likely that you are dead but if you were working at NASA during the Apollo era then you had a hand in…

Horror films aren’t like they used to be. Gone are the days of chainsaw wielding psychos with mummy issues and hockey mask wearing killers…. with mummy issues (I’ve stumbled upon something here). Indeed, the genre has become less about horny teenagers getting gutted in creative ways and more about utilising tropes to symbolise prevalent issues…

Loving is a film that shares a few things in common with A United Kingdom. They are both based on true stories and at the centre of each film you have a married, interracial couple who just want to live together as husband wife and leave the politics out of the bedroom. Loving is a…

When I was nineteen I spent three straight days without sleeping. I had just moved to Tokyo and couldn’t cope with the light pollution or the sounds from the trains that ran behind my flat. I would spend the nights listening to relaxing music and watch films during the day. On the third morning at…

Hollywood blockbuster Kong: Skull Island, has just beaten Aussie Hugh to the top spot, in its first weekend at the box office. Kong: Skull Island took in $4.71m, and stars Tom Hiddleston and last year’s Best Actress Oscar winner, Brie Larson. Logan still did considerably well, sitting at no. 2 on the box office ladder and…

Based on award winning Greek-Australian author Christos Tsiolkas’ short story Porn 1, Adult is an unflinching portrayal of the adult film industry and the mark its key figures leave on their loved ones. Set in a time long ago when the humble VHS was still a thing, Writer/Director Jamieson Pierce’s short centres on elderly Greek…

There’s no doubt about it, Netflix are on a path to global domination. With a slew of well received original TV programming to their name already, the streaming giant have now turned their attention to taking on the film industry and the Hollywood studio system. The exceptional biopic The Most Hated Woman in America is…

Bonnie is young and worldly, holds a job as an architect and lives in NYC. She has good friends, a pretty good social life and is in a stable relationship with a man who is equally as upwardly mobile, enjoying the same perks as anyone with a career in a city able to hold the…

A delightfully nasty horror movie that draws on real-life inspiration, Lake Bodom hopes to be more than just a Friday The 13th-type slasher, in large part to its true crime connection, but ultimately can’t overcome its conventionality – not that there’s anything wrong with that. What still remains one of Europe’s greatest unsolved mysteries, the…

Porn is a big business. In just six years the planet has watched over a million years’ worth of videos and 100 billion pages are visited and streamed annually. But is there a dark side to the industry? Ovidie, a French journalist and former porn-star attempts to answer this question in her documentary film, Pornocracy,…

A strong taste of the old is present in Planetarium, as Natalie Portman leads a dual-language spoken film about not only the ghosts of the supernatural around us, but also those which come from within before the dawning of a new war era. Directed and written by French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central) the film follows two…

As Donald Trump continues promoting his idea of building a wall between the US and Mexico it’s heartening to see that there are some people taking a different approach. Through The Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film is a documentary about a land art installation that attempted to reinforce the notion that borders are an…

It’s hard not to feel a large sense of relief after reaching the end of Mark Webber‘s latest directorial piece that is Flesh and Blood. Not because the film was a tough watch (which in a way, it is), but rather because you are given the chance to leave the cinema and return to what…

Best known for his contribution to Japanese horror, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa brings an interesting take on a ghost story. Daguerrotype (Le Secret de la Chambre Noire) follows a Parisian named Jean (Tahar Rahim) who is hired to be an assistant to the elusive photographer Stéphane (Olivier Gourmet). With Jean’s help, they create heart-stopping daguerreotypes, an old form of permanent…

When Mara (Jessica Kaye) returns to her childhood home of Belize bringing her lover Aaron (Daniel Ahearn) with the hope to reconnect with her estranged father and brother who live there. After landing, she is met with the heart-breaking news that her father has just passed away, shortly before his 70th birthday. Mara is distraught but does…

From writer, photographer and filmmaker Theo Anthony, Rat Film is a documentary that hooks you in and deserves a pedestal. The feature-length film focuses on rats and their lives as a way to explore Baltimore’s urban history and how humans interact with their world. It is clever yet confronting to see rats up close and…

If there was one thing Jiro Dreams of Sushi did, it was set a precedent that documentaries can be about literally anything. The evidence is in cable broadcasting and the phenomena of reality TV series. There are entire channels dedicated to reality TV programs, filling endless time slots with narratives on cat trainers or house…