Film

Assuredly disturbing and revelling in its ability to flip the conventions of the serial killer genre, Ben Young‘s debut feature Hounds of Love is one for those that appreciate their stories without gloss. Counterbalancing its Christmas setting with a tale unflinching in its disturbing nature, this Australian thriller manages to escape the confinements of the “torture porn”…

Three British lads on holidays in Australia for a wedding face a dilemma that would put a damper on any getaway. One of the groomsmen has died (after a drunken romp through the Australian outback, it seems), and now the two remaining groomsmen and the groom, the dead bloke’s three best mates, make it their…

It should come as little surprise that the highly-anticipated “final” Wolverine film, Logan, should do so well in its premiere week. The film shot straight up to no. 1 at the box office and earneda massive  $7.85m in the process.  This is Hugh Jackman’s last foray as Logan/Wolverine, and it’s been well reported that he and director James…

Monster movies were my jam back when I was a kid. Just seeing two colossal creatures beating each other with whatever environment they are in at their disposal was such an incredible delight. With fantastic examples like the various Godzilla films, King Kong films, Mighty Peking Man, The Host (2006) and War of the Gargantuas,…

Kalinka (Au nom de ma fille) is a French film that is based on the real-life events surrounding the Kalinka Bamberski case. It’s a dark and suspenseful thriller about one man’s dogged determination for justice. It’s a fight that spans multiple decades and traverses a couple of different country’s borders with the pure aim of…

After spending the better part of two years playing musical chairs with the release schedule, Rings arrives with a considerable thud to remind us how unnecessary certain sequels are. Presenting a messy storyline that wants to both adhere to the formula of Gore Verbinski‘s (supremely superior) 2002 original The Ring and place its own stamp on…

David Stratton is the doyen of Australian cinema. He is a respected film critic who has watched in excess of 25,000 films, peed on Fellini and entertained Australians for decades through his movie reviews with sparring partner Margaret Pomeranz. David Stratton: A Cinematic Life is a documentary about his life and brilliant career and is…

Ry Russo-Young’s adaption of Lauren Oliver’s successful 2010 youth-adult novel Before I Fall tells the story of Samantha “Sammy” Kingston (Zoey Deutch), a young woman who has it all; the best group of friends, the perfect guy and what seems to be a very bright future. However, everything changes after the fateful night of February…

Despite not winning anything of its three Oscar Nominations, Hidden Figures still topped the week’s box office ladder, earning $2.75m. Sitting in the top spot for the 2nd week in a row is a good place for this film to be in, as people find out more and more about the three women involved in…

Miss Sloane could be renamed, “Ms Stone.” The film is about an ambitious and icy woman who acts as a lobbyist for a firm that is advocating on behalf of a gun control bill in the States. It’s a tense, political drama with as many power-plays, twists, turns and slights of hand as The Ides…

“…There’s no living with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong. It’s a brand. A brand sticks” 17 years ago, the world was introduced to Bryan Singer’s X-Men Universe and with it came the arrival of Wolverine portrayed by Australia’s own Hugh Jackman. It was his breakout Hollywood role and his…

Obedience and groupthink were cogs of a never-ending machine which kept Nazism running in the sinister era of Hitler. Husbands would churn trough factory work in the name of their Fuhrer, housewives would do all they were allowed to in order to support the regime, and their sons would fight and coldly die, scared and…

We don’t get many films set in small Australian towns in the mid-60s, and though this is the era applied to the story of Jasper Jones, what unfolds is far from exclusive to any one period. Through a cleverly winding and well-paced tale, adapted by director Rachel Perkins from Craig Silvey’s best-selling novel, Jasper Jones…

So it looks as though Australian audiences want more than light S&M in the bedroom, with Hidden Figures, the Taraji P. Henson film about female African-American mathematicians at NASA, taking the top spot this week. In its opening week, it made $3.25m and beat out Fifty Shades Darker for no. 1. Like many of the…

If there’s one thing everybody can say about this film, it is that the film is punchy. Studio comedies have been very underwhelming the past few years, especially from studios like Warner Brothers (the less said about Hot Pursuit, the better), regardless of the comedic talent involved. So when I heard about this film that…

Cameraperson shines a light on the individual behind the camera. In this case it is cinematographer, Kirsten Johnson, a woman with some 25 years’ experience in the movie-making business. She’s also known for having worked on films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Citizenfour, among others. Cameraperson is a documentary that lets the footage speak for itself…

How T2 Trainspotting juggles change and continuity is quite extraordinary. In a world of disappointing reboots and sequels that don’t quite justify their existence, Danny Boyle’s follow-up to his drug-addled 1996 icon is not only good, it’s damn near perfect, complementing the first without repeating it as we catch up with Renton (Ewan McGregor), Sick…

If there’s one filmmaker who, in my opinion, hasn’t made a bad film, that filmmaker would be Martin Scorsese. Venturing from genre to genre with ease (who else can go from the family fantasy Hugo to the dark comedy The Wolf of Wall Street just like that?) and always applying professional care and passion within…

The ills of racial segregation have been well-documented in modern cinema; many pieces set in eras like the 60’s have tackled the absurdity and nonsensical way the division functioned in – mostly American – society even when black populations worked side by side with white populations. This is the core tension of Hidden Figures, the…

You know that the natural order of the world has been restored when a film featuring sexy time does better than a film about a man searching for his birth mother. Fifty Shades Darker, the sequel to 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey, premiered in theatres this weekend and promptly took its place at the top…

“Are you just going to stand there and stare Christian Grey”? Anastasia Steele asks a tall well-dressed Christian Grey. “Yes”, he replies. Cue another sensually slow, but saucy scene where the two embrace and then another few roughly edited scenes later, we’re back at Steele’s work office, or a bar with her friends, as we cut back…

There seems to be no stopping the Lion juggernaut.  It made $3.05m at the box office this week, and sits at no. 1 on the ladder for the third week in a row.  To date, it has made  $16.22m, and if it make over $21m, it will sit alongside Red Dog, Mad Max: Fury Road and Strictly…

Films adapted from a stageplay have always offered mixed results. While we have classics like Chicago, Glengarry Glen Ross and Sweeney Todd, we often have disasters like Rent and Mamma Mia! The reason for this is either because the stories of these plays or musicals do not have enough cinematic potential to succeed as a film-viewing experience or…

Winter at Westbeth is a film that’s all about “the art.” And celebrating it at every age. This documentary looks at three young at heart, elderly, American artists who live in a vibrant, housing complex called Westbeth Artists Housing in New York. It is ultimately a film that is like a love letter to the…

There is no way for Peter Berg’s Patriot’s Day to avoid being labelled as exploitative and “too soon”, if even just for the title. For the past few weeks critics have been piling onto the director’s dramatic retelling of the bombings which took place during the annual Boston Marathon in April of 2013, killing three…

When you take an idea like the story of a dreamer, and mash it together with a cautionary tale about the wolves of Wall Street and big business. With your lead character as that grizzled underdog type, and have it all based loosely on a true story the result you get is Gold. Set in…

Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester By The Sea arrives in Australian cinemas this week, a year after it was the hit of Sundance and not long after it garnered an impressive six Oscar nominations. These accolades include surprise acting nods to Michelle Williams and Lucas Hedges, alongside Casey Affleck, who has already taken…

Hooray for Australian film! Oscar hopeful Lion continued to dominate at the box office this week, bringing in $4.18m.  As an Aussie indie production, it’s doing quite well.  Lion and The Great Gatsby have been the only Australian films to earn more at the box office in its second week in the cinemas. As predicted last week, M. Night Shyamalan’s newest…

National Theatre Live in conjunction with Sharmill Films are once again bringing Australian cinema-goers a chance to experience the magic of the theatre. This time with Harold Pinter’s acclaimed play No Man’s Land, starring the incomparable Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart. After a successful hit run in Broadway USA, the play returns to…

“Kick some ass, get the girl, and try to look dope while doing it” That inane piece of dialogue is essentially what xXx: The Return of Xander Cage bases its existence on. Never a film that was going to be considered good, but at the very least could have been fun, this useless threequel comes…