The Gold Coast turned into Earthrealm this week as fans, gamers and cosplayers packed out the Official Australian Preview of Mortal Kombat II at Event Cinemas Pacific Fair on Tuesday night, welcoming the stars of the blood-soaked blockbuster back to the place where much of the film was brought to life. The event marked something…
Heavy metal has always carried a certain mythology around it, but few bands have embodied that larger-than-life aura quite like Iron Maiden. With their undead mascot Eddie, operatic stage shows, and literary-infused lyrics about war, history and mortality, the British legends have spent five decades building a legacy that stretches far beyond music. Iron Maiden:…
As Earthrealm prepares for its most brutal battle yet in Mortal Kombat II, director Simon McQuoid returns with a sequel determined to go bigger, bloodier and far more ambitious than its predecessor. Bringing the long-awaited tournament to the screen, the film introduces Karl Urban’s swaggering Johnny Cage into a sprawling war against Shao Kahn, while…
In Mortal Kombat II, Earthrealm’s champions return for a bloodier, louder and far more chaotic showdown against the forces of Shao Kahn – this time with Karl Urban’s swaggering Johnny Cage entering the arena. Leaning fully into the outrageous spirit of the iconic video game franchise, the sequel embraces brutal fatalities, self-aware humour and the…
Mortal Kombat II understands exactly what fans wanted more of after the 2021 film: brutal fights, outrageous fatalities, fan-favourite characters, and a stronger sense of the video game’s gleefully excessive identity. While Simon McQuoid’s first film may have been the more technically controlled entry, the sequel is easily the more entertaining one, operating with the…
Set almost entirely within the confines of a luxury penthouse, PH-1 unfolds over one harrowing night as rising politician Payton Burnham watches his carefully constructed public image disintegrate in real time. Held hostage by an unseen force, he’s trapped not just physically, but within a media ecosystem that thrives on speculation, spin, and viral outrage….
In The Sheep Detectives (read our review here), a delightfully offbeat mystery led by Hugh Jackman’s well-meaning shepherd George, it’s not just the sheep quietly observing – it’s also the humans scrambling to keep up. Enter Tim Derry, the endearingly outmatched small-town cop played by Nicholas Braun, who might be more afraid of his own…
Dirty Hands is a bruising, tightly contained crime thriller that turns a botched drug deal into something far more emotionally volatile. On paper, the story is simple: the Denton brothers, Danny and Richie, have one night to survive after everything goes wrong. But writer-director-star Kevin Interdonato is less interested in the mechanics of survival than…
Access can be a dangerous crutch in documentary filmmaking – all the unseen footage and unheard audio in the world won’t save a story that doesn’t know what to do with it. Amy Berg’s It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, however, understands that access is only the starting point. What she builds from it is something…
Office Romance is clocking in – and it’s bringing a whole lot more than coffee runs and calendar invites with it. Jennifer Lopez returns to the genre she helped define, but this isn’t the glossy, safe-for-work flirtation audiences might expect. The first trailer for Office Romance pairs Lopez with Brett Goldstein in a workplace relationship…
A new era of evil has arrived – and if this first teaser is anything to go by, Resident Evil is being dragged back into the shadows where it arguably belongs. Directed by Zach Cregger, the filmmaker behind Weapons, this reinvention of the long-running franchise looks less interested in bombastic action and more committed to…
After the breakout success of both Caveat and Oddity, expectations were understandably high for Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy’s next move. With Hokum, he steps into a more expansive, studio-backed arena – bringing with him the same commitment to atmosphere and unease, but struggling to sustain it across a film that ultimately feels more familiar than…
Two decades after The Devil Wears Prada first carved its place in pop culture, its sequel arrives with both the weight of expectation and the benefit of distance – and against the odds, The Devil Wears Prada 2 proves not only worthy, but surprisingly vital. What could have easily felt like a nostalgic cash-in instead…
High-concept romantic comedies often hinge on a single irresistible “what if,” but One Night Only takes that question and quietly builds an entire world around it. In New York City, where the film unfolds, intimacy is governed by an unusual rule: pre-marital sex is permitted just once a year. It’s a premise that could easily…
At the Queensland premiere of Wolfram during the Gold Coast Film Festival, the conversation around Warwick Thornton’s latest felt as expansive and layered as the film itself. Set against the colonial frontier of the 1930s, Wolfram follows a fragile outback community upended by the arrival of two violent outsiders, triggering a chain of events that…
Few filmmakers working in Australia today understand the land the way Warwick Thornton does. With Wolfram, he once again turns the Central Australian desert into something more than a backdrop – it becomes a living, breathing force that shapes every character, every decision, and every moment of survival. Wolfram unfolds as a loose companion to…
Adapted from the best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover, Verity marks a sharp pivot from the author’s signature romance into darker, more psychologically charged territory. The first trailer leans into that shift, teasing a story where desire and danger are tightly intertwined. Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway stars as Verity Crawford, a celebrated author whose life…
Love in the Moonlight is a romantic ghost story that drifts between modern-day Australia and the golden glow of 1950s Hollywood, drawing inspiration from classic cinema such as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. In the newly released 3-minute proof-of-concept, the film introduces Samantha, a driven event manager who inherits a long-abandoned estate – only to…
Pressure settles in early and never lets up. What begins as a quiet, isolated life on a remote Australian farm quickly tightens into something far more dangerous in the lean, nerve-wracking thriller Seven Snipers. At the centre is Kris “Voodoo Child” Hendricks (Radha Mitchell), a former elite sniper who has spent years trying to outrun…
There’s no point pretending Seven Snipers is aiming for prestige – it knows exactly what it is, and to its credit, it rarely misfires because of that. Director Sandra Sciberras leans into the film’s B-grade action-thriller DNA with confidence, delivering something tight, tense, and just self-aware enough to stay engaging without tipping into parody. The…
The Sheep Detectives is exactly that kind of oddball triumph of a film that feels like it shouldn’t work on paper – until it absolutely does: A murder mystery where the sleuths are a flock of sheep, the victim is their beloved shepherd, and the emotional through-line quietly sneaks up on you when you’re least…
Grief, faith, and folklore collide in The Wolf and the Lamb, a haunting hybrid of western grit and supernatural horror from director Michael Schilf. At its centre is Jo Beckett, a schoolteacher pushed to the brink when her son vanishes, sending her spiralling into a world where belief and paranoia blur. But beneath the film’s…
Grief sits at the centre of Apex, but it’s not the kind that asks for quiet reflection. It’s restless, disorienting, and constantly pushing forward – much like the film itself. What begins as a solitary escape into the wilderness gradually tightens into something far more dangerous, until it snaps into a lean, nerve-rattling game of…
There’s a fine line between connection and performance – and Alphabet Lane walks it with a quietly unnerving confidence. What begins as a joke between two isolated lovers spirals into something far stranger, as invented friends start to feel more real than the relationship they were meant to save. Darkly funny, subtly unsettling, and unexpectedly…
Beast doesn’t pretend to break new ground. It moves along a well-worn path – fall from grace, one last shot, the hope of redemption – but what sets it apart is how seriously it treats that journey. Directed by Tyler Atkins, working off Russell Crowe and David Frigerio‘s script, the film is less interested in…
Beast hits with more than just brute force. Beneath the bone-crunching action is a story about restraint, identity, and the internal battles that don’t end when the fight does. Academy Award winner Russell Crowe steps into the role of a seasoned trainer, guiding Daniel MacPherson’s Patton James – a fighter pulled back into a world…
The 2026 HSBC German Film Festival arrives this May with a program that feels both expansive and sharply curated, bringing a wide spectrum of German-language cinema to screens across the country from 6th to the 27th May. From urgent contemporary dramas to offbeat comedies and family-friendly adventures, this year’s lineup strikes a confident balance between…
In an era where musical biopics arrive with assembly-line regularity, it was only a matter of time before Michael Jackson – arguably the most mythologised pop figure of all – received the full prestige treatment. Backed by his estate and positioned as the definitive cinematic account, Michael has all the makings of something monumental. Instead,…
In Mabel, filmmaker Nicholas Ma crafts a quietly disarming coming-of-age story that finds its emotional roots in an unexpected place: the bond between a fiercely self-possessed young girl and a plant. At its centre is Callie (Lexi Perkel), a prickly, sharp-witted outsider whose love of botany becomes both her shield and her language for navigating…
The red carpet for Peter Farrelly’s latest comedy was less a stroll and more a full-blown warm-up for the chaos to come – fitting for a film that proudly leans into its “balls-to-the-wall” sensibility while still promising a surprising amount of heart. Front and centre was Mark Wahlberg, who didn’t hesitate to set the tone,…
