melissa barrera

Film Review: Abigail deliciously balances bloody gore and knowing humour

After the underperformance of both Dracula: The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield last year, the vampire-centric subsect of storytelling – especially within the horror genre – seemed, quite fittingly, void of life with audiences.  But seeing as how much new life they injected into the once-dormant Scream series with their one-two punch of…

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Interview: Abigail directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin on the beauty of ballet and bloodshed in their heightened vampire flick

Children can be such monsters. After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight.  In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting…

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Meet Abigail in the first trailer for Radio Silence’s vampiric thriller

Children can be such monsters. After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting…

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The AU Review’s Best Films of 2023

In a year that was ruled by Barbenheimer and mortally wounded the once-unstoppable superhero genre, 2023 definitely saw audiences shift their minds (and money) towards more original content.  Perhaps an indication as to where the industry should place its focus, The AU’s best of list similarly echoes the sentiment that bigger doesn’t always mean better,…

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2024 Sundance Film Festival announces 91 projects for its 40th edition

Today the non-profit Sundance Institute announced the 82 films, eight episodic titles, and a New Frontier interactive experience selected for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival will take place January 18–28, 2024, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, with a selection of titles available online nationwide from January 25–28, 2024. This…

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Film Review: Carmen is a hypnotic romance driven forward by its raw emotion and sexuality

Though the title of Benjamin Millepied‘s feature directorial debut Carmen – the dancer-turned filmmaker having cut his teeth on short films and music videos – suggests a connection to Georges Bizet‘s French opera of the same name, his script – co-written with Alexander Dinelaris Jr. and Loïc Barrere – only mildly references its narrative mentality and…

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Win a double in-season pass to see Carmen starring Melissa Barrera and Paul Mescal

Thanks to Madman we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see the romantic and exhilarating Carmen, starring Melissa Barrera and Academy Award nominee Paul Mescal, in cinemas from July 13th, 2023. Carmen, a captivating and determined young woman, leaves her family and community behind to escape a brutal Mexican cartel. Grief stricken following…

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Carmen is a haunting and isolated tale that will entrance with its unconventional tempo: Sydney Film Festival Review

Though the title of Benjamin Millepied‘s feature directorial debut Carmen – the dancer-turned filmmaker having cut his teeth on short films and music videos – suggests a connection to Georges Bizet‘s French opera of the same name, his script – co-written with Alexander Dinelaris Jr. and Loïc Barrere – only mildly references its narrative mentality and…

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Sydney Film Festival unveils stellar program for its 70th anniversary

“A film festival is a gathering of diverse perspectives that offers a collective snapshot of the global zeitgeist, allowing us to delve deeper into our present reality,” said Sydney Film Festival Director Nashen Moodley as he unveiled this year’s stellar line-up of programming, running from June 7th – 18th. “For 70 years, Sydney Film Festival has…

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Film Review: Melissa Barrera is hauntingly captivating in All the World Is Sleeping, a harrowing drama on addiction and generational abuse

A harrowing tale of addiction, psychological instability, and the humanising of substance abuse, All the World Is Sleeping is a generational drama that provides no easy answers within.  Inspired by the true stories of Carly Hicks, Patricia Marez, Jade Sanchez, Myra Salazar, Kayleigh Smith, Malissa Trujillo, and Doralee Urban, a collective of New Mexico women…

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Film Review: Scream VI is the finest and freshest the series has felt since the original

Given how meta and self-referential the Scream series has become, there’s something kind of brilliant in the familiar Ghostface vocal (again brought to sadistic life by Roger L. Jackson) exclaiming “Who gives a fuck about movies?” as he slices down on his latest victim prior to the Scream VI title card.  The answer, it would…

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Win a major Scream VI prize pack and double in-season passes to witness the return of Ghostface

New city. New rules. New competition. To celebrate the return of Ghostface in Scream VI – the most ruthless yet – with thanks to Paramount Pictures, Spyglass Media Group and Superdream, we are giving away a major Scream VI prize pack for one lucky winner, with 5 additional double in-season passes (Admit 2) as consolation…

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Ghostface is “something different” in first full-length Scream VI trailer

After 27 years of slicing and dicing his (and sometimes her) variety of assorted victims over 5 films, it’s nice to see the iconic Ghostface rebrand themselves as “something different”; at least that’s what’s being promised to returning franchise player Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) in the first full-length trailer for Scream VI, the hotly anticipated…

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Scream VI trailer teases terror in the Big Apple

In a city of millions, no one hears you scream. After re-energising the Scream franchise earlier this year with the fifth installment, Scream, requel rules were very much in effect as the legacy characters of the series – Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, David Arquette’s Dewey Riley and Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers – passed the torch…

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Interview: The cast of Scream on carrying on the iconic horror franchise; “You don’t want to feel as if you’re copying because that can be virtually disrespectful”

As Scream, the hotly anticipated fifth instalment in the acclaimed horror series, arrives in Australian cinemas today (read our review here), Peter Gray sat down (virtually, of course) with the cast of fresh blood.  Melissa Barrera, Jack Quaid, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Sonia Ammar, and Mikey Madison were all on hand to chat with…

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Film Review: Scream is a joyous and violently unpredictable film that honours the spirit of the original series

In 1996, when horror was a bad word and the slasher subsect had been relegated to bargain bins and a straight-to-VHS lifespan, genre maestro Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes) and a (then) relatively unknown Kevin Williamson dared to defy the conventions by creating a film that played into the…

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