Film

While she was on the Upper West Side in NYC, filming the second season of Pose for FX, I caught up with Charlayne Woodard to talk about her role as Mrs. Price in the film Glass, which is about to enjoy a home release. It’s a role she first came to perform some 19 years…

Just one week after the superhero genre gave us a Big-style blockbuster with Shazam!, we’re being offered up a by-the-numbers reverse version. Taking inspiration from the Tom Hanks classic, Little flips the age transformation and genre of its protagonist, which, for better or worse, is mildly refreshing.  By all accounts, this was the brainchild of young…

With the final epic season just around the corner, Foxtel is giving Sydney Game of Thrones fans a unique chance to mourn lost characters with a deliciously eerie art installation dubbed ‘Grave of Thrones’. (Oh and, yes, this article will contain spoilers) Situated inside Centennial Park, ‘Grave of Thrones’ features an extraordinary collection of tombstones…

The first trailer for Star Wars Episode IX just dropped and there is a LOT to unpack. Firstly, the title of the film: The Rise of Skywalker. Though both Luke narrates the piece and Leia makes a tearful appearance (cue the tissues), this will no doubt once again enlighten debate as to the lineage of…

One only needs to look at the poster art for James Kent‘s postwar-set romance The Aftermath to gage the triangle of transgression that will unfold over the course of the film’s 108 minute running time.  In fact, the surface level of the Joe Shrapnel/Anna Waterhouse-penned script practically begs you to accept the predictable turn of events,…

“And now…after 25 years in the making…and unmaking” So says the wry on-screen text preceding Terry Gilliam‘s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a near-three decade trek for the eccentric filmmaker whose hope of bringing his off-kilter adventure-comedy to fruition has languished in development hell since its beginnings in 1989. Once intended to be a…

Miranda Tapsell, Gwilym Lee and cast members head to The Ritz, Randwick to walk the red carpet for the Sydney premiere of their new film Top End Wedding directed by Wayne Blair

Currently doing the film festival rounds – with its Australian premiere happening at the Gold Coast Film Festival on Monday – is Waiting: The Van Duren Story, from first time Australian directors Greg Carey and Wade Jackson. The film documents the life of Memphis based songwriter Van Duren, a much loved artist by those in…

It’s been a rocky road for the DC Extended Universe. From the dizzying delights of Wonder Woman to the hyper-colour mess of Suicide Squad. From the delicious ridiculousness of Aquaman to the dark and sloppy disaster of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. And it’s hard to forget what should have been their crowning glory…

The year is 1944. Leyna (Amandla Stenberg), the teenage daughter of a white German factory worker (Abbie Cornish) and a black Senegalese soldier, is dubbed a “Rhineland bastard” and flees for Berlin, hoping to find anonymity and safety in the larger city. But, after she is kicked out of school and is forced to falsify…

2019 is going to be a fairly big slate for the House of Mouse with not one but four “live action adaptations” of their intellectual property hitting cinema screens. The first one out of the gate is the film about a baby elephant with overly large ears who can fly. Originally Dumbo was based on…

Earlier this month at SXSW, I had the chance to sit down with Rebecca Stern, the director of the new film Well Groomed – a surprising documentary about the niche world of competitive dog grooming. Scored by the great Dan Deacon, the film is as engaging as it is entertaining (and garnered four stars from…

We hit the red carpet earlier this month to meet the cast and crew behind the brand new Netflix original film The Highwaymen. Some 15 years in the making, the film’s writer John Fusco, actress Kim Dickens (Fear The Walking Dead), Producer Casey Silver and Director John Lee Hancock, reflect on the journey to bring the film to our…

Based on a true story (well-documented in the Channel 4 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family), born into a tight-knit wrestling family, Paige (Florence Pugh) and her brother Zak (Jack Lowden) are ecstatic when they get the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try out for the WWE. But when only Paige earns a spot in the…

While at SXSW, I sat down with Director Peter Michael Dowd to talk about his new documentary Mr. Jimmy, about Japanese musician Akio Sakurai (aka Mr. Jimmy) who has modeled himself after the legendary Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. We were joined at the interview by the subject himself, as we found out how the pair…

If Love, Actually had a child with Around the World in Eighty Days, The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir would be that child. It throws its trickster and street magician protagonist Aja (Dhanush) into a chain of unexpected adventures. He meets a diverse group of people from a celebrity to mobster-like big guys to a swindling cab…

Adapting tragic events of the world to the cinema screen can be a very risky proposition. There are many ways to get it wrong and very few ways to get it right. The wrong ways can lead the film to be considered exploitative, cheap, insulting, xenophobic and even laughable. It would also depend on the…

Last week at SXSW, Director Jordan Peele was joined by actress Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke to talk about Peele’s anticipated follow-up to Get Out – Us – for a special session with Buzzfeed News. Ahead of the film’s Australian release next week, we attended the panel and here’s some of what we learned from the talk….

While at SXSW, I had the chance to catch up with Aussie director Abe Forsythe (Down Under) and Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyong’o talk talk about their new film Little Monsters – due out later this year. You filmed this in and around Sydney – what was that experience like and Abe, how important was…

From the director of The Blind Side, John Lee Hancock, comes a new telling of the Bonnie and Clyde story; this time told from the perspective of the men who took the criminal pair down. Set for release in on Netflix later this month, the film stars Woody Harrelson, Kevin Costner and Kathy Bates – surely three…

What is it about slasher films that makes them stand out as one of the best horror sub-genres? It is just a person just killing people with a sharp object and that’s it, right? Yes, but, that’s also the very reason why it has succeeded so well. Unlike the other horror sub-genres that involve fantastical…

Cops are tops. But if you’re Erin Bell in Destroyer you’re less tops and more likely to be drinking hops. Nicole Kidman plays a bedraggled and unrecognisable detective in this noir. While there are some moments where it is thrilling, most of it is far too slow-burning and perfunctory to really cut through. This film…

We caught up with legendary actor Kevin Costner at SXSW last week to chat about his role in the new Netflix film The Highwaymen, in which he plays Texas Ranger Frank Haymer as he chases down Bonnie & Clyde alongside Woody Harrelson. The Highwaymen streams worldwide on Netflix from 29th March 2019.

Imagine the photo shoot for Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’ or concerts like: Woodstock, Johnny Cash’s gigs at Folsom and San Quentin, and The Beatles’s last official show at Candlestick Park. Most of us would trade our left hands to have been there. But if you were Jim Marshall, you could boast that you went and shot…

The Titanic had the Unsinkable Molly Brown. Texas meanwhile, had the unstoppable Molly Ivins. This tall, flame-haired woman was an outspoken, political commentator with a razor-sharp wit. Raise Hell is a documentary that covers every inch of this larger-than-life character. This film is the first documentary to be made about this formidable subject. It’s hard…

For Sama is an emotionally gripping diary filmed by journalist Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts. Kateab recorded her life during the Battle of Aleppo (2012-16) in Syria. She had a mission: to bring light on the injustices on Syrians under President Assad’s regime and the fight for freedom. Not only did she cover what was…

Tonight at the Paramount Theatre at SXSW, Long Shot, the new romantic comedy starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, had its first ever public screening. Not due for release until the start of May, the film sees the pair playing something akin to star-crossed lovers, with a political bend; Theron starring as America’s Secretary of…

At SXSW 2017, American biochemist, Jennifer Doudna was telling everybody about CRISPR. Allow me one last Human Nature reference… Doudna was telling the last ones to know about a new technology that has the potential to alter genes. Human Nature is a documentary that takes a deep dive into this fascinating scientific world, and chronicles…

As new dog grooming business owner (and one of Well Groomed‘s fascinating human subjects) Nicole Beckman states during her introduction that competitive dog grooming was always something she thought as being “just silly” before entering the competitive stakes herself, her initial thoughts are likely to be mirrored by many unversed in the ways of competitive…

At the age of 37, Australian writer and director Abe Forsythe has already had a truly impressive output of films. At the age of 21, he put out the memorable (if maligned) Ned, in the same year as the Heath Ledger film, and has since delivered us great comedies in both short and long form, including…