Charm can be its own form of menace in God Bless You, Mr Kopu, the feature debut of Tongan Kiwi writer-director Alex Liu, a darkly funny, increasingly sinister thriller that uses the seductive promise of success to explore power, race and belonging. Mafu (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a struggling Tongan immigrant whose fortunes seemingly change when…
Community theatre is an inherently strange little ecosystem. It’s a place where people with wildly different levels of talent, ambition and self-awareness come together and, for a few fleeting nights, treat a modest suburban stage as if they’re opening on Broadway. For some it’s a hobby. For others it’s a calling. And for the particularly…
DreamWorks has been enjoying something of a creative renaissance in recent years, but even with the studio increasingly willing to push its visual language, Forgotten Island feels like a particularly special swing. Vibrant, wonderfully strange and ultimately far more emotional than its chaotic adventure initially suggests, Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s Filipino mythology-inspired feature takes…
Hollywood has always been particularly adept at selling dreams whilst quietly destroying the people trying to live them. In Misty Green, Chris Rock turns that contradiction into something funny, furious and increasingly uncomfortable, crafting a showbusiness satire that isn’t afraid to let its laughter curdle. Rock’s latest effort as writer-director centres on Misty Green (Rosalind…
Sometimes horror really doesn’t need to be complicated. Give us a handful of characters we care about, isolate them somewhere they shouldn’t be, introduce something terrifying and let nature take its course. Joshua Giuliano understands this remarkably well with River, his feature directorial debut and a brutally efficient love letter to the kind of slasher…
Even if Jordan Firstman has never particularly been someone you’ve vibed with, Club Kid may completely rearrange your perception of him. Serving as writer, director and star of his feature filmmaking debut, Firstman initially seems determined to test that theory. His Peter Green is a New York club promoter whose existence is fuelled by late…
Following a Best Picture winner is no enviable task, but Siân Heder has never seemed particularly interested in taking the easy route. With Being Heumann, her first feature since CODA, the writer-director turns her attention to disability rights activist Judy Heumann and a landmark moment in American civil rights history, delivering a film that is…
There’s a fascinating film buried somewhere within The Dog Stars. It’s quieter than its marketing suggests, more interested in grief, loneliness and the necessity of human connection than the violent survivalism its trailers have largely sold. And whenever Ridley Scott allows his latest to simply exist in that contemplative space, there are flashes of something…
After more than a decade away from feature filmmaking, Gregg Araki returns with I Want Your Sex, and the wonderfully provocative filmmaker has lost none of his appetite for pushing buttons. Brash, colourful, sexually charged and gleefully inappropriate, this is Araki operating in a considerably more playful register than something like Mysterious Skin, but still…
Jason Statham has built a remarkably durable career out of knowing exactly what audiences want from a Jason Statham movie. Put him in a confined space, surround him with disposable henchmen, give him a vaguely personal reason to be angry, and eventually someone is going to discover just how creatively an everyday object can be…
Anthony Bourdain knew exactly what kind of young man he had been. Tony opens with his own less-than-flattering assessment: “I was – to be frank – a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” It’s both a warning and something of an invitation. Rather than attempting…
There’s a certain honesty in opening your movie with the declaration that it is “based on a pathetic true story.” It’s an immediate indication of the wavelength Jeff Ryan is operating on with Mooch, a scrappy comedy noir that understands there are few things funnier – or, occasionally, sadder – than watching a grown man…
There’s an infectious sincerity running through Nimrods that makes it difficult not to root for. On paper, it’s another coming-of-age road trip about three underdogs chasing an impossible dream. In execution, however, it plays like a love letter to the scrappy youth comedies of decades past, complete with muted colours, fuzzy VHS inserts, a wall-to-wall…
David Robert Mitchell has never seemed particularly interested in giving audiences exactly the movie they think they’re getting. It Follows turned a seemingly simple supernatural curse into an unnerving meditation on intimacy and mortality, while Under the Silver Lake gleefully disappeared down its own paranoid rabbit holes. So perhaps it makes perfect sense that Mitchell’s…
There’s something almost quaint about One Night Only being sold on the promise of sex. Will Gluck’s latest romantic comedy takes place in an alternate United States where premarital sex has been outlawed under a government decree known as “The Mandate.” For 364 days of the year, unmarried citizens are expected to keep their hands…
There’s something almost rebellious about a comedy as proudly, aggressively stupid as Stop! That! Train! In an era where even the lightest studio entertainment can feel burdened by franchise mythology or the need to justify its own existence, Adam Shankman’s disaster-movie spoof has a refreshingly uncomplicated ambition: make people laugh. Preferably with a dirty joke,…
Son of Sara opens with a compelling premise. Sara (Chloe Van Landschoot) is heavily pregnant after a one-night stand and living with her supportive partner, Carol (Tymika Tafari), but increasingly disturbing symptoms – an insatiable appetite for raw meat, violent bouts of sickness and terrifying visions – suggest something far more sinister than a difficult…
Eli Roth has never been a filmmaker I’ve felt compelled to defend. He’s a provocateur whose work often lives or dies by how much you’re willing to embrace outrageous violence, juvenile humour and unapologetic excess. At his best, films like Cabin Fever, Hostel and Thanksgiving understood the particular corner of horror they occupied, balancing their…
There are few comedy franchises as defiantly committed to their own wavelength as Super Troopers. Twenty-five years after the original became an unlikely cult sensation on DVD shelves and dorm-room repeat viewings, the Broken Lizard gang are still making movies that feel as though they were conceived during an extended road trip between lifelong friends;…
For an artist as culturally omnipresent as Charli XCX, Erupcja is a fascinating first major acting vehicle; yes, depending on when you’re seeing this, she has been seen across such features as The Moment (which shouldn’t really count as she was essentially playing herself), Faces of Death and I Want Your Sex, but Erupcja was…
Some films confront difficult subject matter. Blue Film traps you in a room with it and refuses to let you look away. Writer-director Elliot Tuttle‘s feature debut begins with deliberate provocation. Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore), a successful Los Angeles camboy, performs dominance for an online audience, weaponising confidence, humiliation and carefully cultivated bravado as part…
Jane Schoenbrun has always understood that the things we watch can become part of us. In We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, the internet offered both escape and danger. In I Saw the TV Glow, television became a portal into a life its characters could barely admit they wanted. Their latest film, Teenage Sex…
There was a point where every Marvel film seemed determined to convince audiences that the only way to raise the stakes was to threaten the entire universe. Planets collided. Multiverses fractured. Every adventure had to be bigger than the last. Spider-Man: Brand New Day wisely goes in the opposite direction, and in doing so delivers…
There’s a certain comfort in knowing exactly what you’re getting from a killer shark movie. A group of attractive twenty-somethings, a spectacular location, increasingly questionable decisions, and a predator waiting patiently for everyone to separate one by one. The Devil’s Mouth doesn’t pretend to be anything more ambitious than that, and while it never quite…
Some horror films announce their intentions immediately. Others prefer to lure audiences into a false sense of security before revealing what lies beneath. Corpus, the feature debut from writer-director Corrin Evans, firmly belongs in the latter category, delivering an unsettling blend of psychological horror, erotic tension and surreal mystery that asks viewers to surrender to…
There are certain films that feel as though they’re speaking directly to you. Test is one of them. On paper, Sam McConnell‘s drama could easily be dismissed with a glib elevator pitch: the gay bodybuilding movie. But reducing it to that does both the film and its creator a disservice. Yes, bodybuilding is its world….
Some documentaries introduce remarkable people. Others reveal why they became remarkable in the first place. Rebecca Tansley‘s Tenor: My Name Is Pati manages both, crafting a deeply moving portrait of internationally acclaimed Samoan tenor Pene Pati that celebrates not just an extraordinary voice, but the family, culture and unwavering sense of service that continue to…
For all the technological leaps cinema has made over the last century, Christopher Nolan continues to prove that nothing rivals the tangible. The weight of real bodies. The unpredictability of crashing waves. The texture of weathered stone. The immensity of landscapes that actually exist. The Odyssey is perhaps the purest expression yet of Nolan’s filmmaking…
A dinner party where everyone decides to be honest. Is there anything more dangerous? That deceptively simple premise powers The Invite, Olivia Wilde‘s sharply observed adaptation of Cesc Gay’s The People Upstairs, and what initially resembles an awkward comedy of manners gradually evolves into something richer, sadder and surprisingly profound. Restricting itself almost entirely to…
Saccharine arrives with one of the strongest horror premises of the year. In an era where Ozempic, body positivity, calorie counting and algorithm-fuelled beauty standards dominate everyday conversation, a ghost story built around weight-loss pills made from human ashes feels both deliciously grotesque and eerily timely. It’s exactly the sort of concept that seems tailor-made…
