Film

Despite the introduction of dinosaurs, time travelling cyborgs and male strippers, one adorable and very resonant animated film has weathered the storm and secured top spot over the weekend. In its 4th week since opening, Inside Out has been rewarded for its consistency and rose (deservedly so) to the the top of the box office…

Trailing behind the release of the enormous The Avengers: Age of Ultron comes the final film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 2 line up of films, Ant-Man. After much talk surrounding the production prior to its release, and always ongoing questions of ‘what if’ we’re now witness to the final product. It’s surprisingly small…

Paris of the North is director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson‘s second feature film. His first feature was the Icelandic comedy Either Way, which was remade into the US film Prince Avalanche, directed by David Gordon Green. The film was written by Icelandic script writer and novelist Huldar Breidðfjörð. Long time actor and musician Helgi Björnsson plays the father (an unwanted guest); previously…

When faced with the challenge of representing over 20 years of the evolution of “French Touch”, a music genre inspired by American Garage, it can be difficult to know where to start. Directed by french auteur Mia Hansen-Love and co-written with her DJ brother Sven Love, Eden is somewhat an autobiographical film taking inspiration from…

Daft Punk’s 2006 directorial debut Electroma is a step away from previous pop- film collaborations such as Discovery 2003 to a more surreal and conceptual journey. Running for 74 minutes without dialogue, Electroma follows the journey of a robot duo who try to achieve humanness. If there was any doubt that the robots desired to…

So let’s get one thing straight from the get-go with this film, this is a movie about a bunch of “male entertainers” (aka strippers) so it’s a given that it’ll be a basic story and be overloaded with a lot of attractive semi-naked men in it. If you’re coming for anything more meaningful than that,…

Interstella 5555 is the result of a collaboration between french House duo Daft Punk with Anime legend Leiji Matsumoto, and director Kazuhisa Takenouchi. It’s hard to define what makes this eclectic, feature length animated album collaboration so engrossing. Is it the melodramatic narrative with visuals that hit the House beats again and again? The satisfying…

Foul mouthed teddy bears are no match for towering dinosaurs it would seem as Ted 2 comes up short in its opening week. While Seth Macfarlane and Mark Wahlberg’s comedy sequel earned itself $4.2 million over the weekend, it was unable to knock the box office king off its perch. Jurassic World spent its 3rd…

Yes, Terminator Genisys is a robotic movie in more ways than one, often confusing as it appears to be a prequel, a sequel, and a reboot, often all at once. Alan Taylor, the director behind Thor: The Dark World, gives us an inconsistent new entry into this iconic sci-fi film franchise, taking contrived stabs at…

I didn’t like 2012’s Ted. The jokes were as uninspired as the ridiculous plot, relying on the same formula that makes Family Guy a tedious watch and putting too much faith in shots of a teddy bear being crude and smoking bongs being funny. That said, I couldn’t stop laughing during Seth MacFarlane’s Ted 2…

When The Wachowskis make a new film, we take notice. There is this endless desire we have as film fanatics that we’ll see them pull out something as impressive as their classic sci-fi film The Matrix. Time and time again fans and critics are disappointed, as proven by fairly low Rotten Tomatoes scores, poor word…

The first series of Broadchurch was a concise, emotionally-charged thriller that was a huge success both in the United Kingdom and abroad. However, with such a neat ending (the killer caught, Danny’s funeral finally allowed to take place), it was a bit of a headscratcher as to how creator Chris Chibnall would structure series two:…

Grantchester is a quintessentially English crime drama set in an idyllic, small town. You’d be forgiven for thinking that with a description like that it must have a lot in common with Broadchurch. But while the latter is a gripping, dramatic success, the former is a painfully slow period piece that covers too much ground…

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step and so too does a journey of 1770 kilometres and one through a path of self-discovery. The latter is also known as Wild or a film that has been adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling memoir from 2012. One things for certain, this journey is…

What a year! The constant shuffle at the top continues but hey, this one was always bound to happen. It was 22 years ago when Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park became a financial and critical success.  And now with new director Colin Trevorrow and star Chris Pratt, the franchise has done it again with Jurassic World. Earning…

I’m ending my Sydney Film Festival coverage looking at a short film that was a perfect end to the run of incredible cinema at the 62nd annual event. Sari Braithwaite’s Smut Hounds was a nine minute film, screening before the French film Metamorphoses, detailing the festival’s role in bringing the conversation of censorship to the…

From one of the most creative minds working in cinema today, Pete Docter, comes his third feature length film for Disney/Pixar. First, there were the monsters living in our closets in 2001’s Monsters Inc.. Then, in 2009 he brought us the tale of a man, a house, some balloons and a Boy Scout in Up; a…

When Ryan Gosling premiered his Directorial debut Lost River to a packed house at Cannes last year, it’s fair to say the odds were stacked against him. He couldn’t have picked harsher critics to premiere his film to. This is a crowd who have rarely been fans of Actors turned Directors. Do you remember The Brave – Johnny…

Given my past experiences with the horrific disease, I’m one person that finds the deus ex machina of cancer unbearable. It is often done tastelessly, depicting it’s sufferers as people without autonomy or regarded with the self-respect that they deserve – cancer patients are people, not pawns that should be used to explain a protagonist…

Once named “the director of the decade” from the late, iconic film critic Roger Ebert (who, in turn, has this film dedicated to him), Ramin Bahrani’s new film 99 Homes is a self-described “humanist thriller”, which takes us into the realities of the American housing crisis, out of which tragedy and corruption has emerged. Set…

It is only in 1970s Canada where an over-abundance of hippies, draft-dodgers, Buddhists, vegans, nudists, musicians, writers and tree-huggers could meet and create an organisation like Greenpeace. The documentary, How To Change The World looks at the origins of this grassroots, activist movement and shows how it became the enduring institution it is today. The…

The Price of Fame (La rançon de la gloire) has an interesting-enough hook. It is based on some true events that occurred in the seventies when two desperate crooks decided to steal the body of the legendary, Charlie Chaplin and hold it to ransom. The film is ultimately a letdown that is plagued by problems…

In the mid-90’s, Timothy Conigrave published his bestselling memoir, titled Holding the Man, 10 days before his death. It was a story so intimate and full of warmth that it continued to resonate with Australian audiences over the years. Tommy Murphy adapated it into an award-winning stage production in 2006, and now Director Neil Armfield…

Track the movements of several gastronomy-addicted bloggers while they travel around the world and eat at some of the absolute top restaurants, most guided by the holy foodie grail that is the Michelin Star rating system. It seems like a terrible idea when you think about it – food bloggers are notoriously uninteresting – but…

Britain’s worst actor Steven Toast (Matt Berry) is back, in the second season of the hilarious comedy Toast of London. Series two sees Toast moving on to a range of new exploits and acting roles following the surprise success afforded to him by Michael Ball, aided by his eccentric agent Jane Plough (Doon Mackichan) and…

Most of the crew involved in We Are Still Here are veterans to the horror genre, and their collective talents come together beautifully in this half satire, half serious story. Director Ted Geoghegan pays homage to the vintage and slightly cheesy, always stringing a thread of self-awareness through the film while it unfolds with a…

From prolific Oscar Winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Freakonomics and dozens of others) comes the much talked about new film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, one of three films Gibney has showcased at this year’s Sydney Film Festival (the others were Steve Jobs: The Man…

If you didn’t manage to catch British comedy series Toast of London when it first aired on the ABC, you best drop everything you’re doing right now and take a trip to your local shopping centre to grab series one on DVD. Written by Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews, the show centres around Steven Toast,…

East England county Norfolk is a drab, scrappy location for Guy Myhill’s The Goob and it’s got just the atmosphere necessary to tell a tale of one family’s disquieting struggle with abuse and oppression that runs alongside the portrayal of a young boy’s – the family’s youngest – need for identity and a stable role…

To even try and explain a Roy Andersson movie is a mission in itself; his signature absurdist and surreal style is often laced with dark comedy, providing an introspective view into humanity. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch and Reflected on Existence is the third instalment from Andersson’s Living Trilogy –  films about “being a human being” – following…