A dark thread is strung throughout Devils Knot, the latest feature from Egoyan in which the unnerving act of a real-life case of child murder looms from beginning to end, with the sense of dread carried out well enough for the film to stick with you long after the credits. Unfortunately, awkward pacing speeds through…
With home viewing gradually becoming most viewers preferred way to see movies, digital downloads are understandably increasing in popularity. Two great upcoming options for digital download this month are indie comedy Happy Christmas and Bad Grandpa .5, an unrated and extended version of last year’s Bad Grandpa, with over 40 minutes of extra footage, outtakes and interviews. Happy Christmas boast an incredibly…
Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a huge surprise hit for Fox back in 2011. Tim Burton’s 2001 re-imagining of the 1968 original was a creative disaster, and no-one really expected the reboot to be a success. But the genius decision to cast performance capture legend Andy Serkis in the role of Caesar the…
The Angriest Man In Brooklyn could be dubbed “The Diary Of A Mad Man”. The film is a straight-to-DVD release directed by Phil Alden Robinson and stars comedian, Robin Williams as one obnoxious lawyer. After being told he has 90 minutes left to live the irate curmudgeon engages in a frenzied, amazing race around New…
Director Michael Winterbottom is no stranger to showcasing sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in his work, as one of his most famous films to date is 24 Hour Party People. Four years after that was released came 9 Songs, a movie once described as the most explicit one in British film history. The controversial…
Departures (Okuribito) is a simple, Japanese film about some big subjects: love, life and death. This existential family drama was the winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2009. It is also a subtle and nuanced story where a Zen-like air means that even though the final message is poignant and meaningful, it is…
Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad (Tôkyô tawâ: Okan to boku to, tokidoki, oton) will warm your heart and tug at your heartstrings. The winner of the best film award at the Japanese Academy Awards as well as winning a host of others, is a slow-burning and detailed family drama. It’s also the…
For those who are yet to experience a pop culture convention, The IRIS paid a visit to Oz Comic Con Melbourne this past weekend to experience what a convention is like on-the-ground and in the thick of it.
It is impossible to deny that we are currently experiencing a golden age in television. Viewers can choose from a ridiculous amount of high quality programs, and tv shows seem to be taking over from films as the dominating medium of popular culture. Shows like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and Mad Men have been thrilling audiences for years, and…
Now in its 13th year, the Arab Film Festival is back for 2014 and lucky viewers in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra will get the chance throughout August to see some of the best films coming out of the region. Kicking off in Sydney from August 14th to 17th, the Festival will move to Melbourne from August…
Here it is: the final installment in the Easy Money franchise: Life Deluxe. Old favourites are back, old scores need to be settled, and new players find themselves drawn into Sweden’s dark criminal underbelly. JW (Joel Kinnaman) is on the run after his successful robbery at the conclusion of Hard to Kill, and has made…
After debuting last week with the biggest opening weekend of the year with an incredible $8.80 million, Transformers: Age of Extinction has repeated at the top of the Australian box office by taking another $4.84 million over the past weekend. Even with strong competition from returning hits How to Train Your Dragon 2 and 22 Jump Street and relatively strong openings from Rio…
Thankfully, Disney’s latest installment in the animated Tinker Bell series isn’t lacking the accessible and progressive social commentary like it used to, with Tinker Bell & The Pirate Fairy standing as one very well-crafted, cheeky, and inspired work of art aimed at imbuing young girls with something that has a bit more depth than your…
The Travelling Film Festival, an inititative of Sydney Film Festival, is returning in August. The Festival will be held in the town of Casula in NSW from August 1st until August 3rd and will bring with it five diverse feature films from around the globe, as well as two short films. The program will take…
To say Irreversible is tough viewing is an understatement to say the least. When first released in 2002 the film was both universally acclaimed and condemned due to its confronting nature, and now, 12 years on from its initial release, the film is no less threatening. Given that Irreversible deals with unadulterated violence and brutal…
Recently celebrating the landmark sitcom’s 25th Anniversary, the world has begun to reflect on Seinfeld, a show which has had an unparalleled impact on popular culture. The ‘show about nothing’ got off to a lukewarm start in it’s beginning seasons, but ended with an entire globe of TV addicts in tears as the show came…
2010 film Easy Money was a runaway hit in Sweden (so much so that a US remake with Zac Efron is in the works). The film, based on the novel of the same name by Jens Lapidus, centred on Stockholm’s gangland wars, with multiple stories of the descent into darkness culminating in one fatal, climactic…
The cautionary tale of never taking anything for granted has been featured on film many many times before, but in this feature documentary film, When I Walk, filmmaker Jason DaSilva chronicles his life with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), from the moment his legs failed on him to the present day. And it’s anything but your typical…
Spooks and Spirits is the story of thirty-somethings Ingi (Gísli Örn Garðarsson) and Anna (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir), a happy couple on the verge of starting the next big chapter of their lives together. Anna’s father, Ófeigur (Þórhallur Sigurðsson) is recently deceased and the couple plans to sell his house in favour of somewhere more family-oriented. But when Ófeigur makes an…
The Melbourne CBD is currently hosting a sci-fi/pop culture fan’s wildest dream right now, with the guests of this weekend’s Oz Comic-Con event settling into their hotel rooms and the city they’re calling home for the next few days. The pop culture convention, kicking off at the Royal Exhibition Building over tomorrow and Sunday, is…
I know there are time when you have watched Community and sat there wishing you could talk to Shirley about life, religion, and everything in between (at least I hope I’m not alone on this one). Today from 5:30pm to 6pm (AEST) you’ll get your chance. The bubbly Yvette Nicole Brown – who plays Shirley…
The Possible Worlds Film Festival is coming back in 2014, and this year’s program looks better than ever! Celebrating its ninth year, the Festival presents an incredible selection of the best new independent films from the US and Canada. The Festival is presented by Cosmos Tours and run by non-profit The Festivalists. This year’s Festival…
Well we all knew Transformer: Age of Extinction would open big, but did we know it would open this big? The fourth film in Michael Bay’s action franchise took $8.8 million in its Australian opening weekend, giving it the biggest Aussie opening of the year by overtaking May’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. The film also had the biggest US…
I don’t feel like I’m speaking with a member of a multi-million blockbuster film franchise when I’m speaking with New Zealand’s Dean O’Gorman. His role as Fili in Peter Jackson’s recent film adaptation of the Tolkien-created mythology that is The Hobbit is now golden fodder for fanfic writers around the world and with the…
Fans of Billy Elliot and stage musicals in general will have the incredible chance to see a live performance of the internationally celebrated stage show Billy Elliot the Musical. A special performance of the show will be filmed live on September 28th in London’s West End, and broadcast in cinemas across Australia on Sunday October 5th. The show,…
Community fans rejoice! After hearing the devastating news in May that NBC were cancelling the brilliant and clever Community, things did not look promising. Even though the show was being shopped around various studios in the hope of finding it a new home, it was never certain that we would ever get another season of the show. But…
Horrible Bosses was a huge surprise when it was released in 2011. The film came out of nowhere and ended up being one of the funniest films in recent years, due largely to its creative and somewhat dark premise: what if three friends decided to kill each others bosses? The film was a hit critically and…
So we have come to the end of what was once one of the most popular cable shows on TV. Over the years, the quantity of viewership has regressed right along with the quality of writing, with the show’s relevance relying too much on it’s often likable characters to carry some ridiculously lame plots. Over…
It’s only been a few months since Jason Dohring and I last saw each other. I remember it well. We were both out the front of the beautiful Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. His film, the crowd-funded Veronica Mars movie, was making its world premiere at SXSW and there we were on the red…
Marvel will be taking their biggest cinematic risk so far when they release Guardians of the Galaxy next month. The epic space adventure is set to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the far reaches of space, and looks like the most exciting and different Marvel film to date. Clearly confident of the high quality of the…
