Film

Kangaroo is a heart-warming family comedy about ex TV personality Chris Masterman, who becomes stranded in an Outback town outside Alice Springs. There, he teams up with 12-year-old Indigenous girl Charlie. The pair form an unlikely friendship and work together to rescue and rehabilitate orphaned joeys in the remote but stunning Outback community – an…

Skilled filmmaker and whodunnit expert Rian Johnson has, once again, subverted the expectation of what should constitute a Knives Out mystery.  Whereas the first film in this now continuing franchise was a tight riddle and the sequel (Glass Onion) indulged in its vacation villainy, Wake Up Dead Man takes its cues from such gothic fiction…

Selected for the Toronto International Film Festival’s Short Cuts program, Dust to Dreams, courtesy of actor Idris Elba flexing his directorial muscle once more, is a soft meditation on on love, music, and reconciliation, set against the backdrop of Lagos, Nigeria. There’s such a rich tapestry of narrative and the emotional outlay that comes from…

Inspired by Adam Baldwin’s song “Lighthouse in Little Lorraine”, and based upon on a true story of a cocaine smuggling ring that ran through the eponymous small Nova Scotian town in the 80s, Little Lorraine is a harrowing dramatic thriller that served as one of the prime Canadian spotlight titles at this year’s Toronto International…

Despite his absolute monstrous size at the time of his career and just how brutal he proved in the ring of mixed martial arts, Mark Kerr was – and still is – a figure that defied the expectations many would presumably put upon him from a personal standpoint.  Softly spoken, with an emotional sense that…

There’s something rather amusing about what constitutes an “A24” movie.  There’s an expectation placed upon the studio as of late regarding the type of film it releases into theatres, and within its own genre, the A24 comedy has rarely been as wholesome as what Eternity projects.  Between the the darker fare of Sorry, Baby and…

A white-knuckle ride through one of America’s deadliest wildfires, The Lost Bus is the real-life story of a wayward school bus driver and a dedicated teacher who battled the elements to save 22 children from a terrifying inferno. Starring Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey and Academy Award nominee America Ferrera, The Lost Bus – a…

She’s a lesbian.  She’s in space.  She’s also a princess.  And she’s voiced by Shabana Azeez. After surviving the bachelor party weekend from beyond hell in Birdeater, and navigating the ins and outs of the medical world in HBO’s relentless new series The Pitt, Australian actress Shabana Azeez is, once again, throwing herself in a…

Paul Greengrass is a filmmaker who over the course of his career has quite masterfully tackled both the action and biographical genres; The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum and Captain Phillips just a slew of examples.  For his latest, The Lost Bus, he comes close to blending the two together, looking at the everyday man…

As confident as it is a little unsure of its tone, California Schemin’ serves as the directorial debut of James McAvoy, who takes the rather wilder-than-fiction tale of a duo of Scottish rappers (Silibil N’ Brains) who faked American accents in a bid to secure a record deal that they believed they wouldn’t have secured…

A rougher slog to get to his directorial “debut” as a feature filmmaker than he would have liked, Aziz Ansari – seven years after he was accused of sexual misconduct and three years after his planned first feature, Being Mortal, was shut down over the inappropriate behaviour of its lead actor, Bill Murray – finally…

Despite being headlined by Seann William Scott (best known as Stifler from the American Pie films) and advertising itself as an action-comedy, Michael Diliberti‘s Bad Man leans into more of a sense of seriousness overall.  It isn’t without its chuckles, but it doesn’t have quite an entire hold of blending both genres, leaving the film…

Looking at the premise of Carolina Caroline on the surface, it’s all too easy to compare it to something like Bonnie & Clyde.  Sure, Adam Carter Rehmeier‘s focuses on a loved-up couple and their cross country crime spree, but Tom Dean‘s script is far deeper than that set-up.  For starters, the initial “criminal” of the…

Sydney Sweeney has really been doing a commendable job of proving that, as an actress, she’s so much more than what we see on Euphoria.  Whilst there have been the expected streaming filmic choices (a Netflix horror effort, an Amazon sex thriller) and a dip into the superhero subsect (farewell Madame Web, we hardly knew…

In a time when so many action movies have a sense of the recycled about them, you have to admire the approach taken with Motor City.  It’s working off a gimmick, sure, and that in itself means Potsy Ponciroli‘s gritty, violent actioner won’t be for everyone, but if you want a genre feature that embraces…

Set in 1916 during World War I, The Choral takes a look at a certain group of community who, in their time of hardship, come together to uphold a tradition that serves as a spiritual lifting. The choral society at the centre of the film have come to a crossroads.  Their choral director has been…

Young love and all the amazing, traumatic things that come with such are explored in Charlie Harper, Mac Eldridge and Tom Dean‘s emotional, non-linear romance dramedy, anchored by the moving performances – and palpable chemistry – of its leads, Emilia Jones and Nick Robinson. Centering around the two halves of its titular coupling (so no,…

From the opening sequence of Aneil Karia‘s Hamlet it’s evident that the Shakespeare tale we know won’t be simply rehashed on screen.  This isn’t your school production or even Broadway, with Karia maintaining the classic tongue of the prose, but bringing its setting to modern day London within the South Asian community. Following the moment…

If you are one of the many audience members seemingly disappointed that Dakota Johnson‘s love triangle with Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal’s in Materialists earlier in the year wasn’t as romantic as you were led to believe, then it’s possible that Michael Angelo Covino‘s Splitsville may be the antidote.  Of course, this self advertised “unromantic…

Embracing the “unromantic comedy”, writer/director Michael Angelo Covino assembles one of this year’s finest ensembles for Splitsville, a riotous, emotional dramedy about the perils of honesty and intimacy within relationships. When Ashley (Adria Arjona) asks for a divorce, the good-natured Carey (Kyle Marvin) runs to his friends, Julie (Dakota Johnson) and Paul (Covino) for support….

From relatively humble horror beginnings, The Conjuring Universe – as it was so dubbed the more sequels it garnered – is coming to a close after over a decade of mixed scares and box office bullion. And whilst The Conjuring: Last Rites, the ninth installment in the franchise overall (following the previous three Conjuring films,…

When trauma is experienced, how does one move on with a semblance of normalcy? That is the question indirectly asked at the centre of Eva Victor‘s stunning Sorry, Baby, a darkly comedic, at times devastating drama that unfolds in the more mundane moments that follow an act of sexual assault; in a wisely unseen moment,…

Eva Victor is a writer-director and actor whose fearless character-forward comedic sensibility has cemented them as an undeniable triple threat to watch. Victor has boldly established themself as a singular emerging cinematic voice with their feature directorial debut Sorry, Baby, which world premiered to massive acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, before closing the Director’s…

Three years ago, The AU Review’s Peter Gray spoke with author Aaron Blabey about seeing the first book in his Bad Guys series come to life on the big screen.  Now, The Bad Guys 2 has arrived, and Blabey is once again chatting with us – and, if it’s possible, even more enthused – about…

After wowing audiences out of Sundance earlier this year, where the Oscar campaign for Jennifer Lopez officially started, Australia will now have their chance to see the triple threat in action herself, with Kiss of the Spider Woman set for a local release in theatres from October. Dreamgirls and Beauty and the Beast director Bill…

Survival is the only victory. The trailer for Beast of War has dropped, marking the arrival of one of the biggest and boldest Australian films of the year – a high stakes thriller that cranks up the genre into a brutal fight for life – where the enemy isn’t just in the skies, but circling beneath…

The Conjuring: Last Rites delivers another thrilling chapter of the iconic Conjuring cinematic universe. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson return as Lorraine and Ed Warren in a powerful and spine-chilling addition to the global box office-breaking franchise, directed by Michael Chaves, who has helmed such Conjuring cinematic universe titles as The Curse of La Llorona,…

Based on Warren Adler’s classic 1981 novel The War of the Roses, Jay Roach’s black, satirical comedy The Roses is the second filmic adaptation, following the film of the same name helmed by Danny DeVito in 1989, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a warring couple determined to destroy the other by any…

Based on Warren Adler’s classic 1981 novel The War of the Roses, Jay Roach’s black, satirical comedy The Roses is the second filmic adaptation, following the film of the same name helmed by Danny DeVito in 1989, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a warring couple determined to destroy the other by any…

There’s something rather ironic in Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn describing Warren Adler‘s novel The War of the Roses as “Terrifying, black-humored, black-hearted and bristling,” something that many would liken to her own works.  She isn’t wrong, and she would certainly know a thing or two about detailing the deterioration of a once-loving marriage, but…