Reviews

Series Review: Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 commits to a darker, more emotional personality

If there’s one thing Nicole Kidman is going to commit wholeheartedly to in any of her multitude of projects, it’s that her character will indulge in a wig or an accent.  In the case of Nine Perfect Strangers, it’s both. Four years ago, hot off the success of her “Big Little Lies” being transformed into…

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Series Review: Tucci In Italy reheats the tested format of the travel and cooking show to grand, charming effect

Furthering his effortless charisma and likeability, Stanley Tucci makes his lifestyle of Italian region hopping and delighting in their signature gastronomic feasts a real treat to behold. Usually having to endure other people – and rich people, at that – having the time of their (and our) lives isn’t the most enjoyable experience, and whilst…

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Series Review: Overcompensating is everything you want in a queer coming of age story…and more

Known for his beloved comedy shorts online, Benito Skinner quickly rose to fame in 2020 with his hilarious celebrity impressions, skits, and original characters. The sense of humour he brought during such (and I hate to say it) unprecedented times made Benny Drama an iconic internet hall of famer, and it doesn’t look like he’ll…

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Series Review: The Four Seasons; Tina Fey’s new Netflix outing is a more dramatic affair than expected

Despite being created by Tina Fey, whose previous television ventures have adhered to a more satirical, exaggerated mentality (see 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), her Netflix offering, The Four Seasons, is considerably more grounded and dramatic.  Sure, there’s genuine bouts of humour peppered across the 8 episodes, but audiences expecting raucous laughter best…

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Film Review: Another Simple Favour is a twisted, delicious black comedy that savours its melodramatic flair

Whilst it shouldn’t have taken as long as 7 years for us to be gifted a sequel to 2018’s comedic thriller A Simple Favour – a quirky piece that played out like Gone Girl rinsed through the cycle of a soap opera – director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Spy) and writers Jessica Sharzer (who also penned…

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Series Review: Étoile is a visually beautiful and wonderful celebration of the world of ballet

Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino, the Emmy winning showrunners and collaborative couple who created shows like the beloved Gilmore Girls and the critically acclaimed The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, are diving into the world of ballet with Étoile. The Palladinos are far from strangers when it comes to world of music and dance, with both aforementioned series…

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Series Review: The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 is a fierce final march

The Handmaid’s Tale has always meant different things to different people; a cautionary tale, a grim prophecy, or a dramatised echo of historical truths. Over its run it’s drawn praise and criticism in equal measure, and now, as it enters its final season, it faces the daunting task of delivering a satisfying conclusion, while also…

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Series Review: The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a towering achievement that revels in its atmospheric brutality

Though there’s usually always a sense of unflinching violence that laces the filmic work of director Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Nitram, The Order), his debut detour into episodic television, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, is considerably more blunt in its brutality.  Perhaps because the prose at the series’ center – Richard Flanagan‘s winning novel…

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Should you stream Netflix’s Ransom Canyon this Easter weekend?

The type of show where the melodrama is ripe, the ranch settings are lush and the aesthetically pleasing cast go by such names as Yancy and Staten, Ransom Canyon has the right temperament to be the next easily digestible Netflix streaming obsession.  The type of generic show people put on to not pay attention to,…

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High Potential Series Review: Why you should be watching Kaitlin Olson’s highly entertaining crime show

[This episode contains spoilers for the final episode of High Potential] If you haven’t been watching High Potential, the latest crime drama out of America created by Drew Goddard, then the good news is, you can now binge-watch all 13 episodes of season one on Disney +. The season finale, which aired on Thursday April…

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The Last of Us Season 2 returns with a compelling first episode

It’s been two years since The Last of Us Season 1 became a cultural phenomenon on HBO. The second season of the show is adapting the video game “The Last of Us Part II”, and strangely enough in the first 5 minutes of the season opener, the show just randomly spoils the big twist from…

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Series Review: Ten Pound Poms Season Two takes us further into 1950s Australia

Having made it to Australia in season one, the characters of Stan and BBC One’s collaborative historical drama series Ten Pound Poms find themselves faced with even more stark realities about their new life as the show returns for a second season. While each of the core characters came to the camp at Galgownie in New…

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Series Review: Love on the Spectrum Season Three will have you crying tears of joy

Love on the Spectrum is back for their third season on Netflix. The Emmy winning documentary-type series, which fittingly premiered worldwide on World Autism Day (April 2nd), is a reality TV show based off of the Australian version of the same name, created and produced by Karina Holden and Cian O’Clery. It follows the lives…

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Series Review: The Bondsman proves the perfect blend of gory horror and situational comedy

The Bondsman is a horror-comedy series that tells the story of Hub Halloran (Kevin Bacon, comical and ever charismatic), a murdered bounty hunter in the south whose bound for Hell due to his own sins, before being brought back to life by the Devil to hunt demons on Earth that have escaped the pits of…

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Series Review: Mid-Century Modern; Hilarious, nostalgic sitcom breaks down queer stereotypes as much as it embraces them

Watching something like Mid-Century Modern you’re reminded of both the golden age of the multi-cam, live audience classicality of a sitcom, as well as the shift in televisual consumption, with this nostalgic itch-scratching firecracker of a show taking advantage of its streaming setting with boundary-pushing humour and considerable profanity; once you hear the stupendous Linda…

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Film Review: Holland; Nicole Kidman anchors ambitious, twisted mystery thriller

If there’s one thing about our Nicole Kidman, it’s that she’s going to work! Fresh off three of last year’s buzziest shows (Expats, Lioness and The Perfect Couple) and a criminally Oscar-oversighted performance in the erotic drama Babygirl, the perennially busy actress/producer is at the centre of another twisted thriller of sorts in Prime Video’s…

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Series Review: The Studio; Seth Rogen’s “inside baseball” series about the film studio scene is perfectly constructed comedy

Whilst there is a certain “inside baseball”-like mentality to The Studio – the Seth Rogen–Evan Goldberg-created comedy series about the moving and shaking of a new film studio head and his attempt to salvage the newly acquired company’s evidently floundering reputation – such is the genius of Rogen and Goldberg’s handling (the duo co-directing each…

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Here’s why you should be making plans to stay at Netflix’s The Residence

A queer President. An occasionally profane Kylie Minogue. An unseen Hugh Jackman. A birder-obsessed detective.  And a murder most foul. An Agatha Christie-meets-Clue-like mystery series from the Shondaland factory (i.e. Shonda Rhimes, the figurehead behind such TV successes as Grey’s Anatomy, How To Get Away With Murder, and Bridgerton), The Residence is an intelligent, witty…

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Film Review: O’Dessa; Post-apocalyptic rock opera delights in its audacious maximalism

Whilst his previous film – 2017’s crowd-pleasing Patti Cake$ – had a scrappiness to it, it beamed with a personality larger than its budget.  For O’Dessa, director Geremy Jasper delights in supreme maximalism, as his post-apocalyptic musical-romance hybrid projects its bigness through both its visuals and its central thematic of how love can transform one’s…

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First impressions: Disney+’s Win or Lose is a home run for Pixar

Animation studio Pixar take on their first Disney+ original animated television show with Win or Lose. In the eight episode series, Pixar return to their roots with a story following a middle-school softball championship league told in an anthology style, with each episode told from a different kid and adult that affects the baseball team’s…

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Run, don’t dribble, to binge Kate Hudson’s Netflix comedy series, Running Point

A starring role with her talents front and centre always suited Kate Hudson, so, immediately, Running Point lands its lay-up, with the Netflix comedy series giving the actress the material needed to flourish. Inspired by Los Angeles Lakers president Jeanie Buss, the Mindy Kaling-produced series subs in the Los Angeles Waves and Hudson’s Isla Gordon,…

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Series Review: Good Cop/Bad Cop is a quirky situational comedy that benefits from its snappy ensemble and lived-in characters

Whilst there’s certainly nothing wrong with the prestige approach to television and treating an entire season as an extended film, essentially, Good Cop/Bad Cop is a welcome example of the type of throwback, one-hour sittings of pure entertainment, riding off the benefits of a snappy ensemble, familiar rhythms and lived-in characters. Set for release locally…

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Film Review: The Gorge; Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller keep firing in a jumble of genres

Given that The Gorge is directed by Scott Derrickson, who has helmed such horror pleasers as Sinister and The Black Phone, penned by an action familiar in Zach Dean (The Tomorrow War, Fast X), and is headlined by the reliable duo of Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller, one would feel safe sitting down to stream…

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Series Review: Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar is a unique telling of Australia’s ill-famed scammer

It’s no secret that Belle Gibson is one of the most infamous scammers in Australia’s history. In the rise of social media in the early 2010s, she used her platform as a space to promote healing and wellness, speaking of her multiple illnesses, inoperable stage 4 brain cancer, and how alternative medicine and healthy eating…

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Hal & Harper is a special, emotionally nuanced series from Cooper Raiff; Sundance Film Festival Review

On the initial surface, Cooper Raiff‘s television series Hal & Harper appears to be a sibling drama about two children and their single father.  And whilst that is the case in the most basic of manners, when the film presents its grown-up cast (Raiff as Hal and Lili Reinhart as Harper) as the seven-and-nine-year-old iterations…

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Film Review: Amy Schumer’s Netflix “comedy” Kinda Pregnant is kinda awful

We’re only a month-and-a-bit into 2025, and it’s possible that Netflix have given birth (pun unintended) to one of the year’s absolute worst filmic offerings in Amy Schumer‘s Kinda Pregnant, an absolutely unfunny “comedy” that wastes the talents of its capable cast. A Happy Madison production – which tells you all you need to know…

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Film Review: The Order is a terrifying, topical thriller that echoes the divisive nature of today’s society

When it comes to depicting real-life violence on screen, Australian director Justin Kurzel has an enviable history of such.  His 2011 debut, Snowtown, was a harrowing re-enactment of the South Australian body-in-a-barrel murders that plagued the 90s for close to a decade.  In 2021 he represented the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre through the psychologically taxing…

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Film Review: You’re Cordially Invited; Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon make for a winning comedic couple in Prime Video laugher

Very much speaking to just how much times have changed in terms of film distribution, a romantic comedy from the director of such acclaimed titles as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Bad Neighbours, and Bros, and starring proven talent as Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon is releasing straight to the streaming service market. Oh, and it’s actually…

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Film Review: Nightbitch is sure to help audiences reflect on their own self worth and identity

Despite the fact that the recently released trailer made Nightbitch look more like a quirky comedy – think a female-drive, R-rated take on Tim Allen’s The Shaggy Dog – I can attest that Marielle Heller‘s take on Rachel Yoder‘s seemingly unadaptable 2021 novel of the same name is far from the laughable ridiculousness some may…

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Cameron Diaz is Back In Action! But is the latest Netflix actioner worth the wait?

It’s been over a decade since we last saw Cameron Diaz grace our screens.  Bowing out with a planned retirement from the industry following 2014’s middlingly received musical Annie, Diaz has been lured back to do what she does best, reuniting with Annie cohort Jamie Foxx for Back In Action, a fittingly titled comedic actioner…

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