Reviews

[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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Not to be confused with Denzel Washington’s 2010 runaway train thriller – or the lesser known 2004 outing from Wesley Snipes – Unstoppable, which marks the directorial debut of editor William Goldenberg, whose credits include such titles as Coyote Ugly, Miami Vice and Air, is a by-the-numbers sports drama that lives by its inspirational hook. …

Arriving just in time for Christmas – though the holiday setting ultimately has no bearing on the show’s intrigue-heavy plotting – Netflix’s British action-thriller series Black Doves has all the surface-level expectation of a classic government conspiracy narrative, before revealing itself as something far deeper, darker, poignant and, surprisingly, humorous. Toplined by Keira Knightley –…

A murder case that remains unsolved some near-three decades on, the slaying of 6-year-old beauty pageant phenomenon JonBenét Ramsey still can’t but help earn speculative interest today.  And it’s through Joe Berlinger‘s three-part docuseries, Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?, that new theories, old wounds and investigative frustrations come to light, resulting in an enveloping, oft-unsettling…

Yet again, the amazing Alice Oseman has teamed up with director Euros Lyn to create the third season of Heartstopper. Previously, the Netflix series was well-known for its gradual approach regarding topics of queerness, health, growing-up, the experiencing of firsts, family dynamics and relationships for a teenage and young-adult audience. However, season 3 takes a…

Continuing his run of releasing movies at a breakneck speed – his fourth directorial effort in three years, with another in post-production – Guy Ritchie‘s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare very much sits in his wheelhouse, for better or worse.  Though a tighter focus on its narrative would’ve ultimately benefitted this brash “based on a…

After tarnishing the one-two punch of 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop and it’s 1987 sequel with the 1994 threequel – one that even the film’s stars have turned against over the years – the Eddie Murphy-led franchise seemed permanently laid to rest. Though there’s been considerable chatter in the three decades since its release, the third…

After finding Oscar glory as a solo filmmaker – with arguably one of the more controversial Best Picture wins in the Academy’s history (see Green Book) – there’s a nice sense of coming back home in the case of Peter Farrelly helming Ricky Stanicky. Now, it does pale in comparison to the comedy works he…

“What is this fucking girl’s problem?” As Jennifer Lopez states in the opening moments of The Greatest Love Story Never Told, she’s highly aware of what the media has pondered about the multitude of marriages (4, to be precise) she’s partaken in over the course of her resilient career. And it’s that self-awareness and hopeful…

“Have you ever heard the story of Alida and Taroo?…” So begins Jennifer Lopez‘s semi autobiographical musical experience This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, a narrative accompaniment to her latest album, This Is Me…Now, an urban pop record that celebrates her reunion with now husband Ben Affleck, following their original romance some two decades prior….