Reviews

Operator is a film with a lot to say and a lot more on its mind. It’s a romantic drama that’s sure to resonate as a cautionary tale for SXSW audiences. The film examines the relationship between Joe (Martin Starr), a programmer working on cutting-edge digital customer service software and his wife Emily (Mae Whitman), a hotel concierge who moonlights in a…

Producer J.J Abrams is a big fan of mystery, so the frugal promotional campaign leading up to 10 Cloverfield Lane, a film that is conceptually linked to shaky-cam monster classic Cloverfield, really wasn’t all that surprising. A trailer was randomly sprung upon us featuring serial scene-stealer John Goodman getting smacked over the head with a…

Offensive. Repulsive. Shocking. Unapologetic. These words are always associated with a film starring Sasha Baron Cohen as the lead. Films such as Borat, Bruno and The Dictator have brought levels of laughter due shock and wit, and with his latest film, Grimsby, it is no exception. If you hated any of those movies, punch out…

When it comes to modern crime thrillers, film sometimes has trouble competing with television. Each year sees dozens of TV series – prime-time, cable and otherwise – tackle the genre and for a film to really stand out against this herd and compete with stuff like True Detective or Luther, it has to go big or go home….

In terms of Coen brothers fare, Hail, Caesar! stands as one the duo’s most carefree affairs. Doing away with a cohesive narrative and firing on cylinders that are very much their own, the film is sure to tickle the funny bone of die-hard Coen brothers fans but likely to polarise general audiences who will attend…

Charming, funny, poignant and so very British, The Lady in the Van is a wonderfully entertaining true story (of sorts) anchored by an unrelenting performance from Maggie Smith. Based on the memoir by playwright Alan Bennett, this quirky comedy soars when Smith’s titular lady is at her most cantankerous and the unlikely relationship Bennett shared with her…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when Hollywood is on to a good thing, they will milk the shit out of it and exploit it until audiences are sick of it and then move on to the next “cool” thing. Right now that thing is very much zombies, so don’t be surprised to see…

Clearly a passion project for director Michael Bay, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a far-more restrained feature from the usually excessive filmmaker who (mostly) avoids the political side of things to deliver a factually-based action film. Surprisingly streamlined despite its overblown 144 minute running time, the film is the most disciplined we’ve seen Bay…

Gods of Egypt isn’t bad – but it certainly feels out of place. It feels like an effects-heavy blockbuster from a time before superheroes ruled the box office. With no spandex in sight, the movie stands out like a sore thumb. While this does the movie some favors, there’s plenty of other missteps which act as…

Saul (Géza Röhrig) is a Sonderkommando: a prisoner of Auschwitz who assists in the extermination of his own race. That requires a great deal of work, which, apparently, is far too dirty for the hands of Nazi soldiers. Each day, he ushers the people in and cleans the remains of the showers with hopeless resignation….

Highlighting every little detail from Colm Toibin’s superb novel, screenwriter Nick Hornby’s skilful words effortlessly give life to Brooklyn, a simple story that proves there’s more power in how you tell your tale than the tale itself. An intellectually and emotionally satisfying film, Brooklyn’s best asset is indeed the coming-of-age performance from Saoirse Ronan, the…

It goes without saying that football is a sport that potentially endangers its player’s week in and week out with their bodies constantly put at risk due to the intense contact required for the game to be played. Of course, the money involved in all aspects surrounding the game means everyone involved will do whatever…

Dalton Trumbo was a political activist, a writer, a family man, and a man of principle. In Trumbo, a new film starring Bryan Cranston in the leading role, we’re taken back to a time when going against the grain was grounds for treason and imprisonment.  It’s one of the most intriguing – and ghastly –…

When the first Zoolander film hit the cinema in 2001, the world was a very different place.  Smartphone technology went as far as colour screens (pretty sure we were all still playing that weird snake game on our phones waiting at the bus stop with our travel 10s), but with zero online connectivity.  Social media…

When you hear the words ‘food-critic’, Jonathan Gold is probably the kind of person you imagine and City of Gold is a sprawling documentary that explores what life is like for the Pulitzer-winning restaurant critic. It’s as much a love-letter to Gold and his work as it is the city of LA and Director Laura Gabbert lets City of…

For a while there it looked like the only version of Deadpool we’d ever see on the big screen was the somewhat cringe-inducing one we saw in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Studio execs at Fox were unsure about how to move forward with the character and make it a viable film. But when some test footage…

Internet comedy team Rooster Teeth have been kicking around for over a decade now. They created the cult machinima series Red vs Blue and from there, expanded into a community driven, multi-channel, YouTube sensation. It is with that growth and loyal fan base that they were able to drum up over US$2 million on Indiegogo…

Steve Jobs is the highly anticipated and Oscar nominated film based on the life of the late Apple CEO and co-founder of the same name. It’s the second take at a biopic on the iconic entrepreneur since his death – the first, Jobs (2013) starring Ashton Kutcher was widely panned, and didn’t see the support of…

Best known for co-writing on Sasha Baron Cohen projects (Borat, Ali G), Dan Mazer’s 2013 directorial debut I Give It A Year was a crowd-pleasing, fairly underrated romantic comedy, that brought together a stellar cast and showed Mazer as a Director to watch in the commercial sphere. Fast forward three years and Mazer’s follow up film,…

Adopting a story that tragically resembles real-life accounts, and presenting an opening 40-or-so minutes that prove an uneasy watch, Room is an initially cold but masterful drama all the same.  Describing the film as cold is not a criticism on its part though as director Lenny Abrahamson has displayed such skill in housing the film…

Sometimes a film comes along that challenges your thinking and opinions and leaves you with an emotional suckerpunch. Spotlight is one of those films where the sum of all of its parts results in a perfect film, a balance between emotional drama, gripping suspense, challenging subject matter and all based on a true story. There…

Vanishing before our eyes in a far more detailed manner than what he achieved with his Oscar-winning role of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne’s transformation into The Danish Girl is nothing short of outstanding. A multi-faceted performance that never crosses into parody, Tom Hooper’s subtle drama allows the actor both a…

The Goosebumps novel series was one I read religiously as a child growing up – in fact I don’t know many 90’s children who weren’t invested in this wonderfully ghoulish series – so the idea of a (long overdue) cinematic adaptation of R.L. Stine’s classic tales was one I embraced wholeheartedly.  The type of subject matter…

The Hateful Eight is (fittingly) iconic auteur Quentin Tarantino‘s eighth film, which this week opened in Australian cinemas for a limited 70mm Ultra Panavision release – the first film to do so since 1966’s Khartoum and the first Western since The Hallelujah Trail (1965). For cinephiles around the world, the day couldn’t have come soon enough,…

Carol may look like a film set in the 1950’s but it feels far more modern than its exterior appears. A slow burning love story that refuses to end on a tragic note, performed by two exceptional leads that doesn’t require any loud professions about sexuality or equality or feminism to make its point. We…

You probably already know director Adam McKay from his extensive catalogue of cringe-comedy – Anchorman, Step Brothers, and Talladega Nights, amongst others. The Big Short is the most recent film from McKay, and one that completely redefines the joker perspective that he is often associated with. It’s hilarious, but at its core The Big Short is an intelligent tragedy about the gruelling effects of…

One would think that teaming Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on the big screen would have incredible results. Both are some of the funniest, wittiest, and charming comedians of our time, each scoring big on their respective breakout TV hits, with Fey lighting up 30 Rock and Poehler on Parks & Recreation. Though, their unmistakable…

In this survival and revenge tale set in the wild of the American frontier lands, one man is pitted against the forces of nature, the brutality of man and his own will to live or die in this sometimes graphically violent but consistently visually beautiful film. Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu the man who brought you Birdman…

There are plenty of people who’ve seen the original 1991 Point Break film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. If you’re one of them, and you’re curious about the remake starring Édgar Ramírez as Bodhi and Luke Bracey as Johnny Utah, you might want to leave your expectations at the door and view this film…

When it comes to reviewing a film like Daddy’s Home, one must take a moment to put things in context. You know from the outset – be it the trailer, the poster, the cast, the Director (Sean Anders, Horrible Bosses 2) or any of the other warning signs – that this is going to be…