Rotten Tomatoes-approved Film Critic. Also known as that handsome Asian guy you see in the cinema with a mask on.
Robert Zemeckis is a film-maker that has both enthralled and frustrated me. For the most part, his films can be exciting, fun and incredibly well-told; take the Back to the Future series, Cast Away or the classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But at his worst, his films can be corny and indulgent; What Lies Beneath,…
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Following our review of the film last week, we sat down with US Director Oren Shai to talk about his directorial debut The Frontier, as we delve into the history of the film noir genre, and ask his advice for other first time directors. What attracted you to the film noir genre as a filmmaker?…
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I hate to admit that I do not really know a lot about classical film noir, despite watching many films in the neo-noir genre like Brick, Sin City and of course, Veronica Mars. But what I do know are some of the main tropes of film noir: the femme fatale, the dirty cop and the…
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Director Andrea Arnold is probably one of the most distinct British directors working today. Her visual eye, her ability to capture slice-of-life moments in a compellingly cinematic way, and especially her way of extracting fantastic performances out of non-actors. Her films like Fish Tank (2009) and Wuthering Heights (2011) are true examples of such. Her latest…
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I remember when I first heard of The Da Vinci Code novel by Dan Brown, I couldn’t really understand the hype of it all and how it became a best-seller. The story felt like it was a more mature version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, since they both involve going on a quest…
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Richard Bates Jr. is a film-maker that I’ve admired ever since I saw his first film, the wonderfully acidic and biting Excision. It successfully melded horror elements with a heavy dollop of dark comedy set within a grounded story. Add in a wonderfully talented cast with career-best performances from Traci Lords and AnnaLynne McCord, and…
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Ooo-ooo, witchy woman! Sorry, got the song in my head. After my viewing of Blair Witch, it’s only fitting that my next review will be about The Love Witch. Hearing the incredibly positive buzz from many festivals around the world, especially from the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), I was so excited to see this…
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If there is a film that you can think of the top of your head that had the best marketing strategy, many would say that it would be The Blair Witch Project. With the perfect timing of the internet and it matter-of-fact documentary film-making, it became the trailblazer of the modern viral marketing campaign. So many around the world, including…
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Now I admit I don’t really watch a lot of documentaries, but in recent years I have gotten myself into a good groove when I discovered the work of documentary filmmaker, Louis Theroux. The first documentary I saw of his was The Most Hated Family in America, which was about people in the Westboro Baptist…
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Pain and Gain. The Wolf of Wall Street. Scarface. What do these films have in common? The characters are all on a quest to achieve their own versions of the American Dream. They are all about greed and the seduction of power that shows that absolute power corrupts absolutely. But what makes the first two…
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Laika Studios is an animation studio that is yet to become a household name. I honestly didn’t know them before hearing about their latest film, Kubo and the Two Strings. Though, without knowing it, I had already enjoyed their first studio film, Coraline, immensely. And reading about their other works like The Boxtrolls and Paranorman,…
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Seth Rogen has always been associated with stoner humour and raunchy comedy, but in the case of Sausage Party, he takes it to a whole new level. With animated films that have anthropomorphised objects like toys (i.e. the Toy Story films) and cars (i.e. Cars), Rogen had the idea to anthropomorphise consumer products while retaining…
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When I realized that the directors of this film (also the writers of The Hangover) also directed the awful 2013 teen comedy 21 and Over and contributed screenplays to abysmal comedies like Four Christmases, Ghost of Girlfriends Past and Rebound, it’s fair to say that I went into Bad Moms – out in cinemas tomorrow…
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Tarzan is a character that I have enjoyed over the years. I’m far from a fanatic, but I did like the concept of a man living in the jungle, residing with its inhabitants to become one of them, as well as its fish-out-of-water plot. I grew up watching Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the…
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Like many people in the world, Roald Dahl has been one of my favourite authors during my childhood. His twisted sense of humour, his unique whimsical touch and its warm-hearted tone have delighted kids as well as adults all around the world and even the film adaptations of his works have all been well-regarded by…
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A little bit of a confession before I start this review: I am not overly familiar with Iranian cinema. Apart from films by Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farahdi, I haven’t seen a lot of films from Iran, especially genre films. However, I saw a film called A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, a Persian-language film…
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Satanism has been a film trope in horror films for many years, and it has paid off with fantastic offerings like Rosemary’s Baby, The Devil’s Advocate and The Omen. However, it has also produced some terrible films like End of Days, The Devil Inside and Jennifer’s Body; films that tried to be different but failing for different…
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The dark comedy is, in my opinion, one of the hardest genres to accomplish. To take serious and taboo themes and put a humourous view on it requires an assured hand on all aspects of the storytelling. If the story is shown too serious, the humour will be seen as out of place. If the…
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Pixar Studios has long been regarded as one of the best animation studios in the world today, alongside Studio Ghibli, which in my denial still exists. But ever since the release of Cars 2, a disappointing sequel to a film that wasn’t that good to begin with, the seemingly infallible quality of Pixar has fallen….
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Like many people in the world, Roald Dahl has been one of my favourite authors during my childhood. His twisted sense of humour, his unique whimsical touch and its warm-hearted tone have delighted kids as well as adults all around the world and even the film adaptations of his works have all been well-regarded by…
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What would an Almodovar film be like without the major presence of women? Certainly not an Almodovar film, that’s for sure. And it is a delight to see him back in his normal ways of female-centric stories that made him renowned and acclaimed around the world by audiences and critics over. Films of his like…
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Our own Australian director James Wan has made quite a name for himself in the horror genre. Alongside some mild detours like the revenge-film Death Sentence and the ventriloquist horror Dead Silence, he started off the Saw franchise – which spawned SEVEN films. Next came the Insidious franchise – which spawned another FOUR films. Then all of a…
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It has been a long time coming, but it is here. It is finally here. A brand-spanking new film by renowned action-maestro Shane Black. For those who don’t know, Shane Black is responsible for writing cult-classic 80’s/90’s films like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Last Action Hero and The Monster…
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There are very few sequels that can better the original, and in the case of comedies, even less so. Films like Ghostbusters 2, the Hangover sequels, the American Pie films and others all failed to capture and improve on what made the originals successful in the first place. When I watched Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising,…
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There are a LOT of crazy, yet infuriating stories that happen in Communist China. Some of the stories include an annual dog-eating festival to its catastrophic levels of pollution to hundreds of dead pigs in rivers and many others – but none of them had prepared me for this hard-hitting and shocking documentary. When I first…
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Biographical films, especially ones that revolve around triumphs of the human spirit, can range from the truly inspirational The Pursuit of Happiness to award-bait films like the dull and manipulative The Blind Side to unmitigated disasters like the agonizing Patch Adams. However, very few of those films show the comedic side of life and this is where Eddie the Eagle…
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American nationalism is back on-screen once again in full display in the action sequel to Olympus Has Fallen. On a minor note, Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and others from the previous film are back as well. But seriously, the first film, by director Antoine Fuqua of Training Day fame, was a…
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It must be said before I review this documentary that I know little to nothing about rock ‘n roll. But what compelled me to watch this documentary was that I am a fan of Japanese culture; everything from food to film to settings so their musical culture should be a must see for me. The…
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Offensive. Repulsive. Shocking. Unapologetic. These words are always associated with a film starring Sasha Baron Cohen as the lead. Films such as Borat, Bruno and The Dictator have brought levels of laughter due shock and wit, and with his latest film, Grimsby, it is no exception. If you hated any of those movies, punch out…
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