Chris Messina

Series Review: Based On A True Story is a darkly comic satire on society’s obsession with true crime podcasts

To say society has a fascination with true crime would be putting it mildly.  No longer just contained to a select audience who got their grisly fix on news-skewered programs, true crime – or, more specifically, murder – is now a multi-million dollar business in itself, cornering the market on books, podcasts, docuseries’ and the…

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Film Review: Ben Affleck’s Air; Yes, it’s cliché to say, but it’s a slam dunk!

Telling a story with an ending we’re already aware of and centred around a subject that could be considered mundane to many, Ben Affleck‘s strength as a director – and enthusiastic support player – is on full display in Air, an immensely humorous, consistently riveting and passionate drama about the basketball league’s greatest ever player…

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Call Jane softens its serious subject matter with an entertaining enthusiasm: Brisbane International Film Festival Review

There’s a scene in the first third of Call Jane that I can only imagine would infuriate the female audiences in attendance.  Abortion is not a subject I have any real right to comment on – I am pro choice, for what it’s worth – but, in 2022, it’s almost insulting that sequences taking place…

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Film Review: I Care A Lot is further proof of Rosamund Pike’s devilish star quality

Given just how maliciously magnetic she was in Gone Girl, it makes sense that devoted fans would be awaiting another Rosamund Pike performance that allows the actress to delight in all the dark ambition so evident in her Oscar-nominated turn. That’s certainly not to say she hasn’t been delivering the goods in the years since,…

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Film Review: The Secrets We Keep is a thought-provoking examination on the aftermath of violence

Whilst Yuval Adler‘s The Secrets We Keep has quite a nasty temperament, it’s a testament to his and Ryan Covington‘s script that it never overindulges in its wince-worthy material. Set in a post-WWII America where the horrors of Nazi camps and prisoner brutality are a distant though still painful memory, Maja (Noomi Rapace), a Romani…

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Ben Affleck and Dennis Lehane to pair again for Live By Night

The Boston boys are at it again as Ben Affleck gears up for his second collaboration with the author of Gone Baby Gone, Dennis Lehane, on a film that looks a little bit beer baron meets Mystic River. Oscar winner Ben Affleck has written the screenplay and will star in the crime thriller based on…

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