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…
Cinema, as of late, has really taken advantage of nostalgia and the good faith that audiences will hold onto such and turn out for a years-later legacy sequel. The last few years alone have given us continuations to such once-dormant properties as Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Top Gun, Scream, Halloween, and I Know…
The heist film genre gives itself away to a multiple of mentalities. Yet, whether it adopts a more action-based personality or one more comedic, it ultimately plays very much by the same central narrative of a snatch-and-grab job that, more often than not, has its share of obstacles to overcome. The Pickup, the latest heavy-name…
In her real time crime thriller set in a war zone, The Cranes Call, director Laura Warner embeds with war crimes investigator Anya Neistat and her team as they track down a group of survivors bold enough to take a stand against those accused of committing the most heinous crimes of rape, torture and murder…
Dog owners are all too aware of how inherently special the bond is between themselves and their four-legged friend. Regardless of their size, their age or temperament, it’s a deep connection that forms on either side, and the pooch at the centre of The Friend – a gigantic, droopy-faced Great Dane by the name of…
With such a talented cast and a premise ripe with potential, it truly is a shame that Bride Hard succumbs to Shaina Steinberg‘s lazy, exposition-overloaded script, Andrew MacRitchie‘s inexplicable editing, and Simon West‘s continually pedestrian directing (how he has fallen since Con Air in 1997 should be studied), resulting in an action-comedy that fails on…
Riverside Theatres is currently host to a world-class, spine-tingling production of 1984, an adaptation of George Orwell’s iconic novel by Orson Welles, brought to life by the brilliant Shake & Stir Theatre Co. Even if you’ve never read the book, the themes totalitarian control, surveillance, and the distortion of truth that are so deeply embedded…
It feels inevitable that something like Together will earn comparisons to last year’s The Substance, purely off the fact that the horror it indulges in – that would be the body variety – escalates considerably leading into its wild climax. Sure, The Substance being a great example of body horror is all well and good,…
Set over the course of one day in a dysfunctional office setting, Another Day in America – as much of a generalisation as it may appear as a title – is an apt description for Emilio Mauro‘s commentative dark comedy, which blends situations both mundane and exaggerated across its 112 minutes, resulting in an oft-uncomfortable,…
In the grand design of 90s horror movies that could manage a certain 2025 resurgence, I Know What You Did Last Summer would, arguably, be not placed too high on a list of likelihoods. Thank the lords then that writer/director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) pitched her version to Sony Pictures, as the filmmaker defies…
If you’ve seen the marketing for the latest Smurfs film – which is serving as a soft reboot of the series, disregarding the live-action features from 2011 and 2013, and the animated retooled “sequel” from 2017 – you would notice that they’ve been very much banking on the voice casting of Rihanna as Smurfette. There’s…
A friend coming group together is a tried and true concept when it comes to situational comedy, and whilst writer/director Deena Kashper isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel with her ensemble laugher Nuked, she gives enough of her reflective humour and narrative hook a distinct personality that we’re happy to go along for the ride; which,…
Similar to fellow DC Comic mainstay Batman, the character of Superman has had his share of big screen iterations (one could argue too many at this point) over the years, with no less than four different actors across as many intended franchises; disregarding the Superman serial series of the late 1940s and early 1950s with…
There’s a whole lot of familiarity going on with Heads of State. It’s a tested premise – that of mismatched partners in an action landscape – but screenwriters Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Harrison Query don’t try to pretend it’s anything otherwise, and so with a capable genre director in Ilya Naishuller (Nobody) and both…
Despite the general consensus very much being that the last two Jurassic World features – 2018’s Fallen Kingdom and 2022’s Dominion – were vastly underwhelming in the manner in which they pushed the story forward, audiences pushing each film to over a billion dollars each at the box office meant that they ultimately didn’t seem…
Director Hariharasidhen Nagarajan and writer Anghus Houvouras couldn’t accept “the new normal” of shootings in the United States. Such mass attacks as the Parkland High School shooting and the Pulse Nightclub incident were part of a grim reality that the two weren’t willing to become accustomed to. They thought of not only the victims whose…
Given that Stealing Pulp Fiction very much wears its Tarantino affection openly, you’d be forgiven for expecting director Danny Turkiewicz to have the same kind of flair as the very filmmaker he’s adoring. No, Turkiewicz isn’t replicating that same QT magic, but it would be a heavy ask to expect so, and on its own…
Whilst the original M3GAN was sold as a horror film, its camp sensibilities ultimately shone through, turning its titular killer “doll” from a slayer to an outright slay. It had tense set-pieces and a terrifying mentality, but it found its personality sat more comfortably in the space of a meditation on A.I. and technology through…
In 2022, when cinemas were still largely recovering from the pandemic and blockbuster viewing wasn’t guaranteed, director Joseph Kosinski (and Tom Cruise) revitalized such a brand with Top Gun: Maverick. It was undeniably thrilling popcorn entertainment that, with its heart, humour, action and dramatic stakes, checked all the boxes for each major demographic, ultimately resulting…
As evident by its title, 28 years Later takes up such a time period from the virus that first unleashed itself across Danny Boyle‘s 2002 post-apocalyptic horror effort 28 Days Later. That film centered around the days that followed the actions of a group of animal rights activists who infiltrated a laboratory in Cambridge, where…
A cohesive storyline or if it makes you cry? Sometimes the personal success of a Pixar movie doesn’t always rely on the former, with many taking the latter as enough of a justification for its existence. In such a case, Elio may be enough of a charming win for family audiences who could find themselves…
Whilst there’s a certain unevenness to how writer/director Emily Abt presents her story in Thirsty, there’s no denying it manages to maintain a sense of interest as it navigates the world of politics, domesticity, and the woman trying to perfect both. That woman is Audrey (Jamie Neumann), a sharp, some may say ruthless, defense attorney…
Delighting in the type of self-centred behaviour that more of us are guilty of than not, the character at the core of The Travel Companion, Alex Mallis and Travis Wood’s debut feature, sprouts lyrical to anyone who’ll listen (or tolerate) about his forthcoming directorial feature – an experimental, hybrid docu-fiction-travelogue about the cultural bridges and…
An education is viewed as an important thing. Former British PM, Tony Blair once ran on a platform where his party’s top three priorities were “Education, Education, Education.” The Shadow Scholars is a documentary that looks at the true cost of education and opportunity. First-time director Eloïse King shines a spotlight on the contract cheating…
