Reviews

Lights Out was, initially, an extremely well made and creepy short film. Created for the ‘Who’s There Film Challenge 2013’, it was directed by David Sandberg and starred Lotta Losten. Check out the original short: If you’re still breathing, you can then check out the film’s trailer here: When a mother, Sophie (Maria Bello), comes to…

We’ve now reached the third installment in what’s known as the ‘Kelvin Universe’ of the Star Trek film franchise. In Star Trek Beyond director/writer JJ Abrams ops to take a backseat this time switching gears and letting one of the stars, Simon Pegg, co-write and director of Fast And The Furious Justin Lin to steer….

The 2016 return of Ghostbusters has been copping almost non-stop criticism from the moment it was announced, from its first trailer drop, right up to its theatrical release. Because of this, it’s hard to escape any negative or foreshadowing thought going into this. But upon stepping out of the cinema after the screening finished, I…

There’s something an uncanny quality to Our Kind of Traitor. It looks like cold war thriller, sounds like a cold war thriller but, when you get down to it, it’s not. Not really. It wears the trappings of the genre with pride but, by taking place in modern times, fails to do much beyond wear them….

Tarzan is a character that I have enjoyed over the years. I’m far from a fanatic, but I did like the concept of a man living in the jungle, residing with its inhabitants to become one of them, as well as its fish-out-of-water plot. I grew up watching Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the…

There’s an ancient proverb: when you place two of the most charismatic actors in Hollywood in the same room together, they’re either going to carry the movie or destroy it. Or at least, that’s roughly how it goes. In the case of Central Intelligence, placing comedy’s new golden boy Kevin Hart in a suit alongside…

Like many people in the world, Roald Dahl has been one of my favourite authors during my childhood. His twisted sense of humour, his unique whimsical touch and its warm-hearted tone have delighted kids as well as adults all around the world and even the film adaptations of his works have all been well-regarded by…

There’s an extended sequence in Independence Day: Resurgence where an all-powerful queen-bee alien is chasing a Jeff Goldblum-driven school bus across the desert, somehow finding itself unable to keep up with his wild driving skills despite swatting down fighter-jets only moments earlier with unspoiled precision. It’s one of the many moments this large, loud sequel…

Viggo Mortensen is no stranger to portraying a damaged father in a journey to protect his children à la The Road, but Matt Ross’ quirky tale has a lot more than just Aragon to draw in audiences. A quick glance at Ross’ resume won’t inspire confidence because of its relative shortness, however, Captain Fantastic flew…

Dubbed the “spiritual predecessor” to his classic film Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater’s new film Everybody Wants Some!! takes us from the 70s to the 80s, and from the last days of high school to the first days of college in Texas. Much like in Dazed, we meet a group of young people about to…

A journey following little more than what the title suggests, director Liza Johnson takes on her biggest task yet with Elvis & Nixon. It’s not easy to be trusted with the reigns of puppeteering acting powerhouses Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon. It’s an even tougher responsibility to direct them embodying two of the Twentieth Century’s…

One part coming of age tale, one part family drama and two parts fish out of water story, Morris from America is the third feature film from Indie Writer/Director Chad Hartigan, which had its Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival. The film stars comedian Craig Robinson alongside newcomer Markees Christmas, as Curtis Gentry and 13 year…

Following on from his recent slew of American indie movies, Jake Gyllenhaal attempts his best to command the screen in what can only be described as the standout aspect in the labourious study of grief that is, Demolition. Having celebrated recent acclaim with titles such as Dallas Buyers Club and Wild, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition sees…

Richard Kuipers, Programmer of the “Freak Me Out” program strain for Sydney Film Festival preceded a recent screening of The Eyes of My Mother with a fairly apt description: “the point where extreme art house and extreme horror meet”. While art house may outweigh horror here, Kuipers primed viewers correctly, Nicolas Pesce disturbing feature playing…

Sophisticated and Austen-worthy, Love and Friendship is a must see. Based on Jane Austen’s epistolary novella Lady Susan, the film centres on the original story’s namesake, played by Kate Beckinsale, a widow with a chain of scandals following her. She arrives at her in-laws’ home and is in search of husbands for her and her daughter. And…

Gimme Danger turns the amp up to 11 and never turns down for a second in its nearly two hour running time. Super loud, super charged, and super excellent, this documentary charting the rise, quick demise, and subsequent reunion of The Stooges is one hell of a good time. Written and directed by super fan…

Dark and clever, What’s in the Darkness is in a league of its own being a mixture of crime and coming of age story. Directed by first-time director Wang Yichuan, the story follows teenager Jing (Su Xiaotong) who’s discovering her identity and sexuality. Soon she gets tangled up with a case involving a serial killer…

A little bit of a confession before I start this review: I am not overly familiar with Iranian cinema. Apart from films by Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farahdi, I haven’t seen a lot of films from Iran, especially genre films. However, I saw a film called A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, a Persian-language film…

Satanism has been a film trope in horror films for many years, and it has paid off with fantastic offerings like Rosemary’s Baby, The Devil’s Advocate and The Omen. However, it has also produced some terrible films like End of Days, The Devil Inside and Jennifer’s Body; films that tried to be different but failing for different…

Unapologetic, bold Australian “black comedy” Down Under had its world premiere this past week at the 63rd annual Sydney Film Festival, the only logical platform for Writer/Director Abe Forsythe to debut his second feature film seeing as it concerns one of the most talked about and shameful moments in the city’s history. This inevitably controversial…

The dark comedy is, in my opinion, one of the hardest genres to accomplish. To take serious and taboo themes and put a humourous view on it requires an assured hand on all aspects of the storytelling. If the story is shown too serious, the humour will be seen as out of place. If the…

Director Argyris Papadimitropoulos has a darkly comical voice with which he approaches his new film Suntan, willing to lighten the mood with a playful, enjoyable middle but never quite losing focus of the uncomfortable message at the end of it all. His style is most evident in the cautionary tale of Kostis (Makis Papadimitriou), a…

Rock & roll conquers all in John Carney‘s latest film, Sing Street, where the young and introverted Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) starts a band in order to impress a girl (Lucy Boynton). It’s to the film’s credit, however, that this is only the spark that sets off the movie and there’s a lot more going on here than just…

Miles Ahead might have a few tricks (and some strong casting) up its sleeve, but it never quite manages to triumph. Set in the late 1970s, the very-loose biopic introduces us a disillusioned and drug-addled Davis (Don Cheadle)who hasn’t made music in almost five years – despite the best efforts of his label. When a recording of…

Even at just a surface level, Me Before You feels like a movie that’s just ticking boxes than it is engaging heartstrings. You’ve got three big franchise stars (from Game of Thrones, Doctor Who and The Hunger Games, respectively), a picturesque British backdrop and premise that all-but-guarantees a tragic end. However, it never really feels like the film is genuinely leveraging…

Defusing an explosive in western cinema is very rarely as tense as it should be. With the exception of brilliant films The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow) and Gallipoli (Peter Weir), the suspense surrounding characters handling something so volatile, which with the slightest fault could literally blow them apart in an instant, is often suppressed by…

Paterson is the new film from acclaimed auteur (and Iggy Pop fan) Jim Jarmusch. A man who enjoys character studies that are never rushed for the sake of plot progression, existing in some semblance of real time, watching a Jarmusch film involves a lot of patience on behalf of the viewer. If you’re a fan of…

Sharon Jones isn’t a household name, nor an artist with a breakout radio hit. But those who do know of her and her talent, will attest to her brilliance. She has been likened to a female James Brown, belting out soul and funk tunes and thrashing and shimmying like a pint sized Tina Turner. However…

Pixar Studios has long been regarded as one of the best animation studios in the world today, alongside Studio Ghibli, which in my denial still exists. But ever since the release of Cars 2, a disappointing sequel to a film that wasn’t that good to begin with, the seemingly infallible quality of Pixar has fallen….

Quietly unnerving films like The Loved Ones and Wolf Creek (the first one, not the horrendous sequel) have come to define Australian horror to an international audience, but this country has produced just as many louder, bloodier, and faster entries into the often overcrowded genre, and most of that quality is found on the lower…