Packing a full emotional spiral, character study, and sharp comedic pivot into under ten minutes is no small feat, yet General Admission pulls it off with an impressive control and confidence. Writer Sarah Adina and director Kaily Morgan Smith craft a deceptively simple setup – a woman attending a support group to reclaim her sense…
Addiction dramas are rarely designed to be “enjoyable,” and Cotton Fever understands that from its opening moments. Daniel Blake Schwartz’s debut feature is an emotionally heavy, deeply intimate portrait of people trapped in cycles of dependency, survival, and recovery, refusing to romanticise the realities of addiction or soften the damage it leaves behind. The result is…
In an age where a single unread message can trigger a full-blown existential crisis, Drew van Steenbergen‘s Buckets taps into a painfully familiar modern phenomenon. The sharply observed short follows a man whose life begins to unravel after a late-night dating app match leaves him waiting for a follow-up text, spiralling through anxiety, self-doubt, and…
In the age of dating apps, where a single delayed reply can send even the most rational person into a tailspin, Buckets captures a very specific form of modern anxiety with remarkable honesty, humour, and self-awareness. Writer-director-editor Drew van Steenbergen turns the camera on himself as a man who spirals over the course of 48…
With her feature debut Lucy Schulman, writer, director and star Ellie Sachs has crafted a charming, painfully relatable comedy about the dangers of building your identity around other people. Following a devastating breakup, Lucy returns home to live with her eccentric father and begins the messy process of figuring out who she is when she’s…
In one of the earliest moments of Lucy Schulman, Lucy (Ellie Sachs) reflects on her childhood obsession with mallards. While other kids loved trains or Barbies, she was fixated on the idea that these birds seemed to mate for life – and that when one died, the other often wasn’t far behind. To Lucy, that…
Looking at the premise of Carolina Caroline on the surface, it’s all too easy to compare it to something like Bonnie & Clyde. Sure, Adam Carter Rehmeier‘s focuses on a loved-up couple and their cross country crime spree, but Tom Dean‘s script is far deeper than that set-up. For starters, the initial “criminal” of the two, Kyle Gallner‘s Oliver, justifies his…
There was a time when erotic thrillers ruled video store shelves. Sleazy, sweaty and unapologetically pulpy, they thrived on dangerous attraction, moral compromise and characters making terrible decisions while bathed in neon light. Dean Francis‘s Body Blow isn’t simply paying tribute to that era – it dives headfirst into it, embracing every deliciously trashy convention…
Neon lights, sweaty dancefloors, dangerous attraction, and a hero caught between duty and desire – Body Blow proudly wears the DNA of the classic erotic thriller. Yet beneath its stylish noir exterior lies a deeply contemporary exploration of queer identity, masculinity, and the institutions that shape both. Ahead of the film’s Sydney Film Festival premiere,…
Seven years after releasing the Grammy-winning Amidst the Chaos, Sara Bareilles returns to the studio not simply to make another record, but to process a life irrevocably altered by grief, transition, and time. In director Josh Alexander’s deeply moving documentary Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, the creation of an album becomes something far more intimate: a…
Seven years after her last studio album, Sara Bareilles returns to the recording studio surrounded by the friends and collaborators she trusts most. What begins as the creation of a new record soon reveals itself as something far more profound. In Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, director Josh Alexander captures an artist confronting loss in real…
Set against the intensely competitive backdrop of professional tennis, Fault is less interested in the sport itself than the emotional and psychological battles raging beneath the surface. Written and directed by Misha Calvert, this powerful short film delivers an unflinching exploration of abuse, trauma, and the vastly different ways survivors learn to cope with their…
A summer night around a dinner table becomes the launchpad for a murder mystery in Kids Like Me, as 12-year-old Oliver enthusiastically assigns character roles to friends and family with the confidence of a seasoned director. “You’re the jealous mistress, you’re the corrupt cop…” he declares, transforming an ordinary gathering into a sprawling whodunit powered…
Phoebe Tonkin and Brenton Thwaites know a thing or two about on-screen chemistry, but Two Years Later asks a deceptively simple question: what happens when timing gets in the way of true connection? The Paramount+ romantic drama follows Emily and Ryan, whose promising flirtation is cut short by the COVID pandemic, only for fate to…
Thanks to Universal Pictures, we have 5 double digital in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Steven Spielberg‘s new original sci-fi event feature Disclosure Day, in Australian theatres from June 11th, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Colin Firth, and Eve Hewson. If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it…
Most aspiring filmmakers spend years imagining the moment someone finally says “yes.” For Australian filmmaker Anthony Frith, that moment came courtesy of The Asylum, the notorious studio behind Sharknado and countless mockbusters. What followed was an offer to direct a dinosaur adventure in suburban Adelaide with just six days to shoot it. On paper, Mockbuster…
For decades, The Asylum has occupied a peculiar corner of the film industry. The studio responsible for titles like Sharknado, Transmorphers, and countless other opportunistic genre knockoffs has built an empire on speed, thrift, and a keen understanding of audience curiosity. Their films are rarely mistaken for prestige cinema, but they endure because they know…
Masters of the Universe has never been a franchise built on subtlety. It is swords, sorcery, muscles, monsters, skull-faced villains, cosmic castles, absurd character names and declarations of power shouted toward the heavens. The smartest thing Travis Knight’s live-action reboot does is understand that trying to sand down that ridiculousness would be a mistake. Instead,…
If your ever-growing “to be read” pile is competing with your streaming watchlist, Netflix has a new feature designed to bridge the gap between the two. Launching globally on June 2, Watch Your Favourite Books is a dedicated destination within Netflix that curates the platform’s extensive collection of literary adaptations, helping viewers discover films and…
The toys that once fuelled Masters of the Universe director Travis Knight’s imagination as a child have now become the foundation for one of the year’s most ambitious fantasy spectacles. In Knight’s live-action reimagining, Prince Adam returns to Eternia after 15 years away to find his kingdom shattered under Skeletor’s rule, forcing him to embrace…
Thanks to Paramount Pictures Australia, we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see every line crossed in Scary Movie, in Australian cinemas June 4th, 2026, starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Damon Wayans Jr., Gregg Wayans, Kim Wayans, Benny Zielke, Cameron Scott Roberts, Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott, Dave Sheridan, Heidi…
John Carney has spent much of his career proving that music in film works best when it feels lived-in rather than manufactured. From Once to Sing Street and Begin Again, his stories understand how songs can become emotional lifelines, time capsules, or the language people use when words fail them. With Power Ballad, Carney once…
There’s a certain exhaustion that comes with modern film discourse. Open any social media app after a major release and you’ll inevitably see somebody proclaiming a film the “best movie ever made” or the “worst thing ever created” within approximately six minutes of leaving the cinema. Every reaction has become immediate hyperbole. Every opinion has…
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms understands something many horror films about internet mythology completely miss: the fear was never just the monster. It was the feeling. The wrongness. The sense that you’ve stepped somewhere familiar that suddenly no longer obeys reality. Expanding a concept as abstract and collaborative as the Backrooms into a feature-length narrative was always…
Virgin Australia is bringing a little infinity – and beyond – to the skies. Ahead of the release of Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 on June 18th, Virgin Australia has unveiled a brand-new themed Boeing 737-800 decked out with some of animation’s most beloved faces, including Woody, Jessie and Buzz Lightyear. It’s the airline’s…
A doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, but what lies beyond it in Backrooms is far more unnerving than a simple descent into another space. Expanding on the internet-born phenomenon that has fascinated audiences for years, filmmaker Kane Parsons transforms familiar environments into something deeply alien – endless corridors of fluorescent-lit emptiness…
Thanks to Madman Films, we have 10 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas in the feel-good story about music, self-respect, friendship, and the price of ambition, Power Ballad, in Australian cinemas from May 28th, 2026. When Rick (Paul Rudd), a past-his-prime wedding singer, meets fading boy-band star Danny (Nick Jonas)…
For all the moral panic that surrounded Jackass in the early 2000s – the think pieces about stupidity, the copycat fears, the handwringing over masculinity run amok – the franchise has quietly aged into something far more fascinating than anyone could have predicted. Rewatch it now – which you may well do in the lead-up…
June on Prime Video arrives with a packed slate spanning live sport, romance, fantasy, horror and prestige drama. Leading the month is every match of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 streaming live, exclusive and free for Australian audiences from June 13, while BookTok-fuelled romance adaptations Every Year After and Your Fault: London promise…
The 2026 HSBC Spanish & Latin American Film Festival is ready to sweep Australian audiences away on a vibrant cinematic journey this winter, returning with a line-up bursting with passion, rhythm, heartbreak, suspense and soul. Running across Palace Cinemas, Palace Nova and Luna Palace Cinemas from June to July, the festival’s 29th edition brings together…
