Reviews

There’s no doubt about it, Netflix are on a path to global domination. With a slew of well received original TV programming to their name already, the streaming giant have now turned their attention to taking on the film industry and the Hollywood studio system. The exceptional biopic The Most Hated Woman in America is…

Bonnie is young and worldly, holds a job as an architect and lives in NYC. She has good friends, a pretty good social life and is in a stable relationship with a man who is equally as upwardly mobile, enjoying the same perks as anyone with a career in a city able to hold the…

A delightfully nasty horror movie that draws on real-life inspiration, Lake Bodom hopes to be more than just a Friday The 13th-type slasher, in large part to its true crime connection, but ultimately can’t overcome its conventionality – not that there’s anything wrong with that. What still remains one of Europe’s greatest unsolved mysteries, the…

Porn is a big business. In just six years the planet has watched over a million years’ worth of videos and 100 billion pages are visited and streamed annually. But is there a dark side to the industry? Ovidie, a French journalist and former porn-star attempts to answer this question in her documentary film, Pornocracy,…

A strong taste of the old is present in Planetarium, as Natalie Portman leads a dual-language spoken film about not only the ghosts of the supernatural around us, but also those which come from within before the dawning of a new war era. Directed and written by French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central) the film follows two…

As Donald Trump continues promoting his idea of building a wall between the US and Mexico it’s heartening to see that there are some people taking a different approach. Through The Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film is a documentary about a land art installation that attempted to reinforce the notion that borders are an…

It’s hard not to feel a large sense of relief after reaching the end of Mark Webber‘s latest directorial piece that is Flesh and Blood. Not because the film was a tough watch (which in a way, it is), but rather because you are given the chance to leave the cinema and return to what…

Best known for his contribution to Japanese horror, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa brings an interesting take on a ghost story. Daguerrotype (Le Secret de la Chambre Noire) follows a Parisian named Jean (Tahar Rahim) who is hired to be an assistant to the elusive photographer Stéphane (Olivier Gourmet). With Jean’s help, they create heart-stopping daguerreotypes, an old form of permanent…

When Mara (Jessica Kaye) returns to her childhood home of Belize bringing her lover Aaron (Daniel Ahearn) with the hope to reconnect with her estranged father and brother who live there. After landing, she is met with the heart-breaking news that her father has just passed away, shortly before his 70th birthday. Mara is distraught but does…

From writer, photographer and filmmaker Theo Anthony, Rat Film is a documentary that hooks you in and deserves a pedestal. The feature-length film focuses on rats and their lives as a way to explore Baltimore’s urban history and how humans interact with their world. It is clever yet confronting to see rats up close and…

If there was one thing Jiro Dreams of Sushi did, it was set a precedent that documentaries can be about literally anything. The evidence is in cable broadcasting and the phenomena of reality TV series. There are entire channels dedicated to reality TV programs, filling endless time slots with narratives on cat trainers or house…

Assuredly disturbing and revelling in its ability to flip the conventions of the serial killer genre, Ben Young‘s debut feature Hounds of Love is one for those that appreciate their stories without gloss. Counterbalancing its Christmas setting with a tale unflinching in its disturbing nature, this Australian thriller manages to escape the confinements of the “torture porn”…

Three British lads on holidays in Australia for a wedding face a dilemma that would put a damper on any getaway. One of the groomsmen has died (after a drunken romp through the Australian outback, it seems), and now the two remaining groomsmen and the groom, the dead bloke’s three best mates, make it their…

Monster movies were my jam back when I was a kid. Just seeing two colossal creatures beating each other with whatever environment they are in at their disposal was such an incredible delight. With fantastic examples like the various Godzilla films, King Kong films, Mighty Peking Man, The Host (2006) and War of the Gargantuas,…

Kalinka (Au nom de ma fille) is a French film that is based on the real-life events surrounding the Kalinka Bamberski case. It’s a dark and suspenseful thriller about one man’s dogged determination for justice. It’s a fight that spans multiple decades and traverses a couple of different country’s borders with the pure aim of…

After spending the better part of two years playing musical chairs with the release schedule, Rings arrives with a considerable thud to remind us how unnecessary certain sequels are. Presenting a messy storyline that wants to both adhere to the formula of Gore Verbinski‘s (supremely superior) 2002 original The Ring and place its own stamp on…

David Stratton is the doyen of Australian cinema. He is a respected film critic who has watched in excess of 25,000 films, peed on Fellini and entertained Australians for decades through his movie reviews with sparring partner Margaret Pomeranz. David Stratton: A Cinematic Life is a documentary about his life and brilliant career and is…

Ry Russo-Young’s adaption of Lauren Oliver’s successful 2010 youth-adult novel Before I Fall tells the story of Samantha “Sammy” Kingston (Zoey Deutch), a young woman who has it all; the best group of friends, the perfect guy and what seems to be a very bright future. However, everything changes after the fateful night of February…

Miss Sloane could be renamed, “Ms Stone.” The film is about an ambitious and icy woman who acts as a lobbyist for a firm that is advocating on behalf of a gun control bill in the States. It’s a tense, political drama with as many power-plays, twists, turns and slights of hand as The Ides…

“…There’s no living with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong. It’s a brand. A brand sticks” 17 years ago, the world was introduced to Bryan Singer’s X-Men Universe and with it came the arrival of Wolverine portrayed by Australia’s own Hugh Jackman. It was his breakout Hollywood role and his…

Obedience and groupthink were cogs of a never-ending machine which kept Nazism running in the sinister era of Hitler. Husbands would churn trough factory work in the name of their Fuhrer, housewives would do all they were allowed to in order to support the regime, and their sons would fight and coldly die, scared and…

We don’t get many films set in small Australian towns in the mid-60s, and though this is the era applied to the story of Jasper Jones, what unfolds is far from exclusive to any one period. Through a cleverly winding and well-paced tale, adapted by director Rachel Perkins from Craig Silvey’s best-selling novel, Jasper Jones…

If there’s one thing everybody can say about this film, it is that the film is punchy. Studio comedies have been very underwhelming the past few years, especially from studios like Warner Brothers (the less said about Hot Pursuit, the better), regardless of the comedic talent involved. So when I heard about this film that…

Cameraperson shines a light on the individual behind the camera. In this case it is cinematographer, Kirsten Johnson, a woman with some 25 years’ experience in the movie-making business. She’s also known for having worked on films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Citizenfour, among others. Cameraperson is a documentary that lets the footage speak for itself…

How T2 Trainspotting juggles change and continuity is quite extraordinary. In a world of disappointing reboots and sequels that don’t quite justify their existence, Danny Boyle’s follow-up to his drug-addled 1996 icon is not only good, it’s damn near perfect, complementing the first without repeating it as we catch up with Renton (Ewan McGregor), Sick…

If there’s one filmmaker who, in my opinion, hasn’t made a bad film, that filmmaker would be Martin Scorsese. Venturing from genre to genre with ease (who else can go from the family fantasy Hugo to the dark comedy The Wolf of Wall Street just like that?) and always applying professional care and passion within…

The ills of racial segregation have been well-documented in modern cinema; many pieces set in eras like the 60’s have tackled the absurdity and nonsensical way the division functioned in – mostly American – society even when black populations worked side by side with white populations. This is the core tension of Hidden Figures, the…

“Are you just going to stand there and stare Christian Grey”? Anastasia Steele asks a tall well-dressed Christian Grey. “Yes”, he replies. Cue another sensually slow, but saucy scene where the two embrace and then another few roughly edited scenes later, we’re back at Steele’s work office, or a bar with her friends, as we cut back…

Films adapted from a stageplay have always offered mixed results. While we have classics like Chicago, Glengarry Glen Ross and Sweeney Todd, we often have disasters like Rent and Mamma Mia! The reason for this is either because the stories of these plays or musicals do not have enough cinematic potential to succeed as a film-viewing experience or…

Winter at Westbeth is a film that’s all about “the art.” And celebrating it at every age. This documentary looks at three young at heart, elderly, American artists who live in a vibrant, housing complex called Westbeth Artists Housing in New York. It is ultimately a film that is like a love letter to the…