Film & TV

The Supanova Pop Culture Expo is soon to be kicking off for another year, hitting up the Gold Coast and Melbourne in April for two massive conventions. Featuring a great line-up of actors, voice artists, authors and more from all over the place, fans of sci-fi, fantasy, graphic novels, manga and everything else in between…

Thursdays come around so quick eh? And with it comes the week’s last episode of The Feed. This episode took a slightly different approach – with a core focus on the third anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake (yes that was somehow three years ago). Before that though- we were treated, if that is the right…

As we come to the end of the January/February “catch up” period for American films that were released at the end of last year in their home country (it could also be called “Oscar fever”, if you’re so inclined), we bring you the 14 films we can’t wait for over the year ahead. There are…

Given the success in recent years of ridiculous Z-Grade giant animal films such as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and giant animal disaster films likeSharknado, the straight-to-DVD market has been flooded with similar titles. The latest is Dracano. As in Dragon Volcano. Get it? Yep, that’s what we’re dealing with here. Dracano introduces us to Professor Simon Lowell (Corin Nemec), who has…

Well, that was surprising. Not the fact that Rake is back on the streets— that was to be expected— but the fact that everything in his outside life has become so egregiously shithouse in such a short amount of jail-time. This is the episode where Cleaver Greene gets thrown into a landfill-sized hole, so that…

The transitional space of the open road appears to be the setting most conducive to good storytelling for director, Alexander Payne. He gave us a disheveled Jack Nicholson on a mission to travel across the US to sabotage his daughter’s approaching wedding in About Schmidt (2002), a heartbroken Paul Giamatti taking a wine connoisseur’s tour…

With the writers seemingly placing character development first, ‘Inmates’ continues the artful slow-burn that worked so well in ‘Alive,’ but this time they have four disparate storylines to play around with. Despite multiple arcs not working so well in previous seasons, ‘Inmates’ handles the situation quite nicely, patching each tale together with not-so-subtle easter eggs,…

It is rare that a film returns to the #1 spot at the box office, and it is even rarer that the film is an R-rated three hour crime epic about stock brokers. But Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street has reclaimed the top spot from the RoboCop remake, which debuted last week. Wolf has been an incredible success, having…

I think we would all agree that the following conditions must be met for a film to be considered a success: it must be entertaining, have a comprehensible plot and be populated with interesting characters. But sometimes a film comes along that fails to meet even one of those conditions.Outpost 3: Rise of the Spetsnaz is…

Fans of Parks and Recreation will be looking forward to this one – a feature film that features both Adam Scott and Amy Poehler – A.C.O.D.! The film, which was a hit at Sundance, is getting an Australian release on Blu-ray and DVD on March 12, 2014 from Paramount Home Media Distribution. Digital and Video…

Today marks the release of the indie film It’s a Disaster on DVD and Blu-Ray in Australia. Before the end of last year, I caught up with David Cross, star of the film – alongside the likes of Julia Stiles and America Ferrera – to talk about the release of the Todd Berger helmed film,…

Armed with the tagline, “A funny thing happened on the way to rehab”, this film tells the story of piano prodigy, Eli Bloom (Jesse Eisenberg) who desperately seeks to get his mother, Penny (Melissa Leo), checked into rehab. And he needs to do this in time to get to a very important audition for a…

The 2012 Academy Award-nominated documentary The Act Of Killing directed by Joshua Oppenheimer has now been released on DVD and Digital thought Madman. This chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) and Errol Morris (The Fog of War), the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads are challenged to re-enact some…

Stylish and brutal, Lone Survivor refuses to hold your hand during its harrowing 121 minutes, while you gasp and squirm at the incredibly uncomfortable fate of four U.S Soldiers deployed in the lonely mountains of Afghanistan. Based on the true story of 2005’s failed Operation Red Wings, this film handles the unquestionable dangers of Navy…

It was one of the most anticipated episodes of the series and for one enormous reason: Prince. All right, maybe two: the “l word” was in there as well. The episode started out strong, laughs right from the get go before Jess and Cece regaled the boys with a curious anecdote, ending in an invitation…

For those of you who haven’t yet hopped on board with Sleepy Hollow I’m here to once again regale you with a recap of episodes to give you a chance to check the series out now that it’s completed all 13 episodes. Episodes 1-5 of Season One introduced us to Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) and…

The Feed kicked off the second week of its second season with what seemed like a cruel tease of Back to the Future technology only to lead us into decidedly heavier news. The riots and breakouts on the Manus Island detention centre are troubling and depressing realities to our current asylum seeker policy are always…

What was probably the heaviest (and last) episode of the week saw the crew from The Feed tackling pig hunting, sexual abuse, Olympic hanky panky and nudist churches. Just another evening on SBS2! The lead headlines are always the least fascinating part of the show, yet Marc Fennell manages to get the show cooking with…

The Iris’ Larry Heath meets Cuban Fury star Nick Frost at the Sydney, Australia premiere on Valentine’s Day, 2014. They talk about Nick’s return to Australia, the film (a dancing romantic comedy!), writing drunk e-mails and potential future films that may or may not involve drinking beer in pools and wrestling… Cuban Fury is released…

The first official trailer for the 2014 USA Comedy Tammy starring Melissa McCarthy has been released and we have it for you on The Iris. The trailer is likely to be a clip they’ve made specifically for a sneak preview like this, and sees McCarthy’s character attempt to rob a fast food outlet with pretty…

If you’re making a film “based on a true story”, what responsibilities do you have to your true story? It’s a question that’s been raised several times over the past year – with several major details of The Butler proving to be fabricated, and the truths of 12 Years A Slave called into question, it bears discussion as to…

When Cleaver Greene was sent to prison at the end of Season 2 of Rake, I have to admit that I was pretty dubious about how the next season would play out. Surely they’d have to think of some legal fandangle that would have Cleaver waking up to find it was all a bad dream— a…

Every year, it seems there is a film that deals with more than its fair share of controversy, and Blue is the Warmest Colour was that film in 2013. A film that needs no introduction if you’ve heard any of the stories; since its Palme d’Or win back in May, it seems Blue has barely…

It’s A Disaster is the black comedy feature film written and directed by Todd Berger. It starts at another Sunday “couples brunch” amongst a group of friends. Not only do the relationships of these couples and the friendships amongst them seem to fall apart, but also a mysterious world disaster occurs outside the home. A…

Piano prodigy Eli Bloom is on his way to the most important audition of his life, but first he has to drop his mother Penny off at drug rehab. Since she has to test positive to be admitted, mother and son end up at the door of her dealer Sprinkles in search of one last…

The remake of 1987’s RoboCop has narrowly won the Australian box office battle over the weekend. Despite its #1 placing, the film has opened to average reviews, and is likely to go down the route of 2012’s Total Recall; another remake that no-one really wanted and therefore did not perform very well. The Wolf of Wall Street continued its successful…

Date movies are a given every Valentine’s Day. Usually doomed romances or wildly unrealistic melodramas, they serve their purpose for that one day of the year and are more often than not instantly forgotten. Despite what its When Harry Met Sally inspired poster suggests, Are We Officially Dating? (aka. That Awkward Moment) is a welcome alternative to the normal Valentine’s…

Any episode entitled “Birthday” is probably going to have an aspect of significance to it, particularly when the birthday in question is that of Jess. Within the very first minute it was established that Jess has unrealistically high expectations for her birthday, evidenced by a flashback of Cece gifting her a sweater made in China,…

Last season The Walking Dead kicked off their second half of season 3 by introducing Tyreese, a character which hasn’t yet made the impact he does in the comics, and hasn’t yet been developed properly. Despite this, it was still a big moment in the series and kicked the mid-season off with a finale-quality feel….

As if it needed anything to prove at all, The Feed easily showed that its success and ease in the half hour format was no flash in the pan with its second 2014 episode. The Feed has clearly got its format down-pat with an opening few minutes dedicated to what’s gone down in the day’s…