Film

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…

Despite its incredibly generic title and direct-to-DVD status, No Escape is a surprisingly effective thriller elevated by its above-average cast and fuelled by its ability to maintain tension from start to finish. Director John Erik Dowdle is no stranger to lacing his films with palpable tension (the found-footage horror outing Quarantine and M. Night Shyamalan…

Spectre is the 24th James Bond film, 52 years into a franchise that has defined and redefined espionage thrillers, showing absolutely no signs of stopping both financially and creatively after Skyfall’s overwhelming success in 2012. Sure Daniel Craig’s iteration of Bond has given us some dull moments (see Quantum of Solace), but the 47 year…

When it comes to modern crime thrillers, film sometimes has trouble competing with television. Each year sees dozens of TV series – prime-time, cable and otherwise – tackle the genre and for a film to really stand out against this herd and compete with stuff like True Detective or Luther, it has to go big or go home….

In terms of Coen brothers fare, Hail, Caesar! stands as one the duo’s most carefree affairs. Doing away with a cohesive narrative and firing on cylinders that are very much their own, the film is sure to tickle the funny bone of die-hard Coen brothers fans but likely to polarise general audiences who will attend…

Charming, funny, poignant and so very British, The Lady in the Van is a wonderfully entertaining true story (of sorts) anchored by an unrelenting performance from Maggie Smith. Based on the memoir by playwright Alan Bennett, this quirky comedy soars when Smith’s titular lady is at her most cantankerous and the unlikely relationship Bennett shared with her…

Deadpool clearly doesn’t care what enters the box office at this point. Three new films opened last week but Wade still sits on top, earning another AU$4.4 million. This brings the worldwide gross to $609 million. Deadpool is now the third highest grossing R rated film of all time in the U.S as it draws…

If there is one thing I have always been upfront about, it’s that despite Marvel’s undeniable domination at the box office with their live-action films, DC have always had the animation sector locked down. Since 2007, DC’s stable of ‘Animated Original Movies’ have retold timeless stories first seen in comics (Superman’s death in Doomsday; Batman’s origins…