One of Australia’s top leading film and TV actors, Hugo Weaving is not a name you forget. With so much versatility and strength in every role he takes on, it’s hardly surprising he is a household name throughout the world. From his 1994 role as Tick (or Mitzi if you prefer) in Priscilla Queen of The Desert…
It’s the late 1970’s Venice California is the birthplace of a new go-to trend, roller-dancing, and a group of young roller skaters, almost all exclusively African-American, are about to bring it to the people. Documentary film Roller Dreams takes a look at this iconic but short-lived group of skaters, the Venice scene in the 80’s…
Based on the Nikolai Leskov novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, itself inspired by the character in Shakespeare’s classic Macbeth, William Oldroyd‘s daring film is far from the period piece one might expect given its title. Tightly pieced together by Alice Birch‘s bold screenplay via a star-making performance from Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth is a psycho-sexual thriller disguised…
Kiwi filmmaker Florian Habicht jumps from making documentaries about Pulp and demolition derbies to modestly prodding around the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest horror theme park with Spookers, a stylish 85-minute piece that manages to weave together stories of exploitation and therapy amongst a whole heap of (fake) blood, guts and playful vignettes. It’s clear Habicht and…
Steven Spielberg is certainly a busy man. Currently in the midst of a lengthy post-production period for his sci-fi adaptation Ready Player One, the influential director has wasted little time getting his next project off the ground. With Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers film The Papers (previously titled The Post) ambitiously being fast-tracked for an awards-friendly 2017 release. The film has previously…
Whitney Houston was a sure thing, or as sure as the music industry had ever seen. A transcendent talent with pedigree and mentorship to match, she was going to be the greatest female vocalist ever. For a time, she was, and then she all-too-publicly fell short. Documentarian Nick Broomfield and iconic music video director Rudi…
Oz Comic-Con returns with five exciting shows in 2017; the first two earlier this year in Perth and Adelaide being a huge success. And now it’s time for the rest of the country to join in the quest to ‘Unleash Our Inner Geeks’ and celebrate all that is cool, awesome and nerdy at Oz Comic-Con…
Following a packed out screening at last years’ Sydney Film Festival, Hotel Coolgardie garnered national headlines for its depiction of the disturbing experience of two Finnish backpackers who found themselves the latest batch of “fresh meat” sent to work as barmaids at the only pub in a remote Australian mining town. Hotel Coolgardie is a…
Imagine living in a world where you found it impossible to understand your bills, where you couldn’t text people and you had difficulty getting a driver’s licence because you couldn’t pass the Ls test. For around 40-65% of Indigenous Australians this is a reality because they are functionally illiterate. The documentary film, In My Own…
Staying true to their ongoing commitment to acquiring more local content, FX Australia has announced the commission of its first Australian TV series entitled Mr Inbetween. The drama series will be directed by Nash Edgerton (The Square) in his debut as a TV series director. The series is written by Scott Ryan and is based on his critically…
Today marks the Australian release of The Mummy. The Tom Cruise led action flick will be the first film in the newly announced ‘Dark Universe’, a project that will revive Universal’s classic monsters that debuted in the 20’s and 30s’. The likes of Frankenstein’s Monster, Wolf Man and the Invisible Man are all set to…
Right at home in the “Freak Me Out” strand of this year’s Sydney Film Festival, Game of Death is probably more-or-less exactly the film you expect it to be. It’s a simple but fun romp that manages to eke out the most from its wacky premise, despite being held back by structural shortcomings and uneven…
For most things in life we ae encouraged to leave our judgements at the door. But this is not the case for the thrilling, gothic romance, My Cousin Rachel. In this case the lady is a woman of mystery wrapped up in a riddle and topped off by an enigma, which means you are in…
There’s a lot that can happen in 24 hours, and unless you stop and take a moment to let it sink in, you might just miss something magical. From acclaimed actor David Wenham comes his feature film directorial debut with Ellipsis, a film that came together under unusual circumstances but the end result is something…
The prospect of watching a documentary on town planning probably won’t have people tripping over themselves to watch it. But when you realise that the subject of the film, Citizen Jane: Battle For The City helped preserve some significant parts of New York, it’s a different story. This film is a brief but intriguing look…
It’d be an arduous task to contemplate a more significant moment in the history of cinema than that of the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful slasher Psycho. As not only would its value of shock go on to define the representation of violence and sex for years onwards, it has definitively etched itself into…
In many ways, Cãlin Peter Netzer’s latest feature Ana, mon amour provides an elegantly poignant dissection of when solicitude collides with mental illness. It is unflinchingly explicit, raw in its psychoanalysis and mostly effectual to the ideals it is aiming to exude. Although, dissimilar to Netzer’s previous film, the Golden Bear winning Child’s Pose, the…
The Mummy Director Alex Kurtzman sits down in Australia with The Iris’s Larry Heath to talk about bringing Russell Crowe into the Dark Universe, the responsibility on him to launch the new cinematic series, working with Sofia Boutella, *that* airplane scene and more. Watch our full interview here: The Mummy hits Australian cinemas today, Thursday,…
There is certainly something splendid somewhere within Maliglutit, the first collaboration between directors Zacharias Kunuk and Natar Ungallaq, unfortunately, it is all but concealed. The distinguished pair have taken on the task of adapting classic material, and despite the endeavour of imbuing the film with idealism and vigour, Maliglutit can never amount to anything significantly…
After much anticipation, a few misogynistic reports from international screenings and a genuine “please don’t f**k this up” vibe by keen DCEU fans (probably reeling from the Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice debacle), Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot, opened this weekend and promptly moved up to top spot on the box office chart, earning $6.76m….
One could be forgiven for not recollecting that on financial figures, Warner Bros and DC’s anti-hero blockbuster Suicide Squad was an immense commercial success. On the critical spectrum, the film was lambasted by critics and director David Ayer even expressed his own regrets on the final product. However, the film that brought a collective of…
The first official trailer for Tom Cruise’s newest film American Made has arrived. Check it out below. The true story follows an ex-military pilot name Barry Seal (Cruise) who works as a drug runner in the south during the 1980s. American Made is directed by Doug Liman who directed The Bourne Identity and previously worked with Cruise in 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow. American…
In 2015 there was the outstanding film Amy by Asif Kapadia and following on from that comes yet another biopic that examines the life and all too tragically early death of a different powerhouse musical performer. In Whitney ‘Can I Be Me’ we go from the beginning right through to the end of Whitney Houston’s…
In 2014 it was believed that the Luke Evans-led Dracula Untold was going to launch Universal Studios’ proposed shared universe of classic movie monsters. Dubbed Dark Universe, the ambitious project akin to the connected phases of Marvel and DC films ultimately let that idea fall to the wayside when the aforementioned feature was hardly the…
If you’ve ever wondered why Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series sounds kind of like Miss Keane from Powerpuff Girls, it’s probably because they have someone in common: Jennifer Hale. With a career spanning her whole life, and lending her voice to almost 200 video games and countless cartoons, Jennifer is one of the busiest…
Supanova has really upped its game for June, with Sydney fans set to be treated to a special date with a God himself. Recently added to the June 16th-18th event for an exclusive Sydney appearance is Chris Hemsworth. Bringing Thor himself to the Supanova fold is obviously a huge coup and already, photo and autograph…
Neil Finn may have said that history never repeats but former British PM and legendary statesman, Winston Churchill worried that the opposite would happen. During World War II he was concerned that the tragedy of Gallipoli would be repeated. The film Churchill is a dramatic bio-pic that examines this very issue in fine detail but…
As we near the opening night of the 64th Sydney Film Festival a whole stack of new films have been announced as part of the diverse program. Dipping into the Cannes pool, SFF have brought over some of the most talked about pictures, including winner of this year’s Palme d’Or (the biggest prize in world…
The 64th annual Sydney Film Festival shows no signs of slouching on the line-up front this year, with the announcement that star Steven Yuen (TV’s The Walking Dead), 2017 Cannes Palme d’Or contender Bong Joon-ho, and Australian actor Daniel Henshall (Snowtown) will attend for the premiere of their feature Okja, fresh from its controversial showing…
In the second-to-last episode of season four, Orange is the New Black presented the death of one of the show’s main characters in a supremely upsetting, but flawlessly executed scene that referenced America’s senseless police brutality against African Americans. It was in stark contrast to the previous season’s more uplifting closer where the inmates of…
