Reviews

Whilst the story behind how Whitney Wolfe Herd both co-founded Tinder and its eventual competition, Bumble, is exciting and full of suitable intrigue, Swiped, with its understandable embellishments, never quite graduates beyond surface level interest.  It’s an entertaining film, without question, with another committed Lily James performance at its core, but The Social Network this…

One of the most poignant lines of Eleanor the Great is “Talk about the things that make you sad,” and it’s with such a notion that Scarlett Johansson‘s affecting dramedy takes it on as a throughline.  A film that so easily could have been about deception becomes something far greater and more profound, transforming itself…

There’s a quiet sense of artistic rage that lingers under the surface of Alice Winocour‘s delicate Couture, a small drama that looks at the intersecting lives of a trio of women in Paris, all working in one capacity or another around the fashion industry.  Creation and the unexpected interruptions that can derail one’s own process…

Director Kogonada (After Yang) and screenwriter Seth Reiss (The Menu) ask a lot of their audience with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.  It’s a hopeful romance of sorts that intends to utilise its magical realism to sweep viewers away into its odyssey of fantastical nature, with the added bonus of proven charm inhabitants Colin Farrell…

There’s been no shortage of sequels thus far across cinema screens in 2025. And, for the most part, they’ve all proven themselves worthy of existence (Freakier Friday), been a satisfactory entrant in their franchise (The Final Reckoning), or, at least, gone for broke in their attempt to distance from their predecessor (M3GAN 2.0). So where…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

Taking a break from the horror genre she has so effortlessly cornered over the majority of her exciting career thus far, Samara Weaving exudes her expected charm and badassness as the titular Eenie Meanie in writer/director Shawn Simmons‘ ode to the 70s action movie, an irreverent, fast-paced actioner that blends its comedic thrills with a…

Whilst I absolutely have to hand it to Australian filmmaker Luke Sparke for his inventive genre blend in Primitive War – that being the war-set action film and the dinosaur-centric creature feature – this bloated actioner, overall, never quite finds the right footing in how to successfully execute such a bodacious mash-up. With a requisite…

A pure studio comedy feels like a cinematic rarity these days.  For some reason a genre that no longer feels as if it has confidence in the bigger marketplace that is inside a multiplex, The Naked Gun – the third sequel in the (once again) long running franchise that was birthed nearly 40 years ago…

Forgoing the surrealism that largely laced his previous films (Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid), Ari Aster‘s Eddington is, arguably, his most straightforward film to date.  It’s also likely to be his most divisive. Set in the heat of the pandemic – May 2020, to be exact – the film’s lead focal character, Sherriff Joe Cross…

Despite opening during the pandemic when going to the cinemas wasn’t exactly the easiest excursion, Nobody – released in March of 2021, having been pushed from its original date of August 2020 – managed to (rightfully) fight its way through opposition to relative success; on a $16m budget it earned a solid $57.5m worldwide. It…

On the surface, Hugo Keijzer‘s The Occupant appears as if it’ll be another entrant in the survivalist drama genre, focusing on a young woman, seemingly out of her depth as she battles the elements of an unflinching nature.  The Georgia-Russia border serves as the primary setting, with Ella Balinska‘s Abby serving as Keijzer’s focal point,…

After announcing himself as a horror filmmaker to be reckoned with following his bold 2022 debut Barbarian, it’s understandable that audiences may be entering Zach Cregger‘s sophomore scarer Weapons with a certain level of expectation.  Of course, the rather ambiguous trailers have only added to the overall dread the film suggests, and the trivia nugget…