Film & TV

The name Aaron Swartz may not mean an awful lot to some people. But if you’ve ever used Reddit, openlibrary.net or Creative Commons or if you can remember the real reason why there was an Internet black-out in 2012 then you’ve been touched by his work. Swartz was a gifted computer programmer and activist who…

With the Sydney and Canberra events kicking off tomorrow, we have TWO double passes to give away to the Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) in Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne or Adelaide! For dates and details head to: http://koffia.com.au/ The double pass will entitle you and a guest to attend one session and is strictly non-transferable….

It’s always great so see actors take on a project that is out of their comfort zone. Former Saturday Night Live stars Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader are both immensely talented comedic actors, as evidenced during their time on SNL and their successes in comedy classics such as Bridesmaids and Superbad respectively. The Skeleton Twins is a bit of a change of pace…

From John Carney, the writer and director of Once, comes Begin Again – a spiritual follow up to the acclaimed (and Oscar winning) 2006 romantic musical drama. Like his former work, Begin Again focuses on music as something that can represent a moment in your life. In Once, it was about bringing two people together and creating…

A Hitchcockian thriller in the country, Tom At The Farm is a grim exploration of homophobia, secrecy and family sustainability. Directed by Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan (I Killed  My Mother, Heartbeats), the film is based on the play of the same name by Michel Marc Bouchard. Tom – played by Dolan – is a young…

Alex (Natalia Tena) and Sergi (David Verdaguer) are very much in love, living in a poky apartment in Barcelona and planning to have a baby when Alex is offered an un-missable career opportunity. In Los Angeles. Living 10,000 kilometres apart, they make the best use of modern technology to stay in touch – Skype features…

And So It Goes won’t win any points for its name. Nor will it win any prizes for originality. But this rom-com does have a bewildering amount of talent coming together to make a film that’s not great, just nice. This means it is fun and pleasant enough to watch, but it won’t change your…

While any female with internet connection and a love of fashion and style are intimately familiar with street fashion photographer Scott Schuman from The Sartorialist, or fashion blogging powerhouse duo Tash Sefton and Elle Ferguson from They All Hate Us, not many are aware of Ari Seth Cohen’s work on fashion blog Advanced Style. Why?…

Love comes in many forms. It can exist as the experience of first love between a young couple, the frustrating protective love a parent has for their child or the love a couple who have been together for nearly 40 years share. In Love is Strange, we see all three, and director Ira Sachs has…

This year has seen many female-driven films find huge success at the box office. Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz and Shailene Woodley have led Maleficent, The Other Woman and The Fault in Our Stars to becoming huge hits this year in Australia and around the world. We can now add Scarlett Johansson and Lucy to that list, as the high-concept action film took…

The Good Life (La Belle Vie) is a French drama film based on a true story. It’s a delicate, coming of age tale and portrait of paternal love set in the freewheeling countryside. It asks some big questions about love and freedom. But while it is beautiful, it fails to fill in some of the…

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods will screen in theatres across Australia and New Zealand, and tickets are available now! Madman have announced the screenings will take place as a very special Reel Anime event on August 30th. Ticketholders will also receive a free A2 poster from participating cinemas on the day, subject to availability….

Last month, I headed to London to see Monty Python LIVE (Mostly) in action, and now this Wednesday, you’ll get a chance to as well – albeit in Cinemas. Here is my review of the performance that should give you an idea of what to expect from the show! I’ve done my best to keep…

Admit it, you weren’t too confident a buddy cop, action flick could mesh with a supernatural horror film and actually work, at all. I thought the exact same thing. As such, I went into Deliver Us From Evil with unfairly low expectations and walked away feeling defeated; deflated in my ability to judge a film…

Marvel Studios and the Disney team had a huge amount of reputation riding on this film after setting the bar ridiculously high with their ensemble action superhero fest that was The Avengers. With a bunch of characters who are mostly unknowns unless you’re a comic fan, this film would need to pull out some wicked…

Taped is a Dutch thriller that is gripping from the very first frame to the last. Brutal and breathless, it’s not hard to see why director Diedrik Van Rooijen has been chosen to helm the remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds. There are certainly elements of the Hitchcock style in Taped. The film…

We Are The Best! (Vi är bäst!) is a loaded title but this Swedish film is all about challenging your expectations. The movie was written and directed by Lukas Moodysson, who was adapting the graphic novel that his wife, Coco, had penned about her fictionalised teenage years. The result is a feel good, coming-of-age story…

One of the entries in MIFF’s Big Scene – Small Screen program, Doll & Em is an unassuming portrait of a friendship that succeeds with a delightful mix of undeniable heart and unobtrusive style. Doll (Dolly Wells) and Em (Emily Mortimer) have been best friends since childhood. When Doll unceremoniously breaks up with her boyfriend,…

Normally this part of an article is used to give the reader some background to the news item that the article is dealing with. It will serve as a way to get the reader intrigued by the news so that they are actively engaged by the time they read the actual news. But you don’t…

One of the great things about Danny Boyle’s work is that it’s so damned colourful. Even when times are tough and the characters are going through hell, there’s always technicolour and light and thumping music. Ok, maybe not in 28 Days Later, but in the majority of his movies. It helps us digest some of the bleaker…

There’s finally peace in Northern Ireland, but some people have not buried the past.  This is the premise behind first-time director Nathan Todd’s A Belfast Story. Colm Meaney (The Commitments, Layer Cake, Con Air) plays hardened detective James, who, like many of his generation in Northern Ireland, are living in times of “peace”.  In his…

From the man that brought you La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element comes yet another stylised badass individual out to settle some scores whilst simultaneously attempting to advance humankind through a very thinly veiled pseudo-science and psychology subplot. Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is our hapless damsel unwittingly roped into being a drug…

A human eye expert falls for a young French woman at a party. Years later, his lab partner make a dramatic discovery which leads him to put family and career at risk, travelling to India to validate a world-changing theory. This Sundance winner weaves together the emotional and the scientific in an ambitious metaphysical drama….

  Kicking off in Melbourne tomorrow is the annual Melbourne International Film Festival. The Iris will be bringing you tonnes of coverage from the event throughout its two-and-a-bit week run, but before it starts, on the off chance you’re still not sure what you want to see, we bring you our picks of the festival…

A Most Wanted Man is an espionage thriller about terrorists. But despite this genre, the film contains no explosions, gun battles or high-tech special effects. Instead, it has more in common with The Ides Of March, in that it is a tense and dramatic labyrinth of power plays where rivals with competing agendas use political…

Los Angeles based producer Squeak E. Clean and the Brazilian DJ Zegon formed North America/South America (N.A.S.A.) born out their friendship, shared inspiration and love of music from both continents. This documentary looks at the making of their world renowned debut album Spirit Of Apollo with unlikely but brilliant collaborations such as Chuck D +…

To celebrate the release of 20th Century Fox’s masterpiece Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, VICE’s Motherboard has partnered with Fox to produce Island of the Apes – a documentary that travels to Liberia to visit an isolated island that is home to former lab-tested chimpanzees. Here is a synopsis for the documentary: Our crew traveled to…

Continuing a stellar run for Australian cinema in 2014 is the fantastic low-fi apocalypse drama These Final Hours. It’s a brutally honest examination of the human condition when the end is near, that covers every emotion on the spectrum in just under ninety minutes – and a neat reimagining of a well worn genre to boot….

Dwayne Johnson’s big-budget re-imagining of the Hercules legend managed to take the top spot at the Australian box office over the past weekend, taking $3.51 million. This one really could have gone either way. Johnson is as popular as ever and is now considered a bankable leading man. Director Brett Ratner is commonly known as one…

San Diego Comic-Con took place over the last weekend. The biggest pop-culture convention in the world has become the best place for film and TV studios to make their biggest announcements, and fan response within the halls can often gauge how anticipated a certain project is. While there was no massive bombshell dropped this year…