Seasoned film critic. Gives a great interview. Penchant for horror. Unashamed fan of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jason Momoa.
Part concert film and part road movie celebrating the life and music of multi-award winning and much loved Australian country music artist Lee Kernaghan, Boy From The Bush is a unique and personal insight into one of the country’s most celebrated artists. Ahead of the film’s local release, Peter Gray spoke with its director, Kriv…
Read More
Having directed the landmark 2010 shark thriller The Reef and the similarly themed Blackwater and Blackwater: Abyss, Andrew Traucki is no stranger when it comes to navigating the murky waters of the creature feature. However, for the upcoming sequel The Reef: Stalked, the acclaimed director wanted to do more than just retread similar water, instead…
Read More
It would seem in Hollywood, the nicer you are, the more evil you’re able to play. So, it would make sense that Ethan Hawke, continually referred to as one of the industry’s nicest guys, would excel so at portraying the embodiment of terror. Reuniting with his Sinister director Scott Derrickson, Hawke’s portrayal of child abductor…
Read More
Are you ready to answer the call? Arriving in Australian cinemas this week (you can read our review here), The Black Phone is the latest horror outing from acclaimed genre director Scott Derrickson, a supernaturally inclined chiller about a sadistic child killer (dubbed “The Grabber”) whose latest victim turns the tables on him when the…
Read More
Where the Crawdads Sing seemed like the type of film primed for success before it was even released. Delia Owens‘ 2018 novel was one of those reads that became the prose to intake during its first run (boosted by Reese Witherspoon‘s Hello Sunshine bookclub pick), leading it to be crowned the best-selling fiction title of…
Read More
As cinephiles eagerly await the official schedule on August 23rd, the 47th annual Toronto International Film Festival has announced its first slew of premiere titles for its first in-person celebration following two years of pandemic-disrupted programming. 11 days of international and Canadian cinema, special events featuring some of the biggest names in film, and TIFF’s…
Read More
Thanks to Universal Pictures, we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see the chilling new horror film The Black Phone, starring Ethan Hawke and directed by Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Doctor Strange). The phone is dead. And it’s ringing. Director Scott Derrickson returns to his terror roots and partners again with the foremost brand…
Read More
For the past decade-or-so, Welsh actor/writer/director Craig Roberts has made sure that his career could never be pigeonholed. The darker aspects of comedy have often been his exploration as a filmmaker, having penned and directed the acclaimed duo of 2015’s Just Jim and 2019’s Eternal Beauty, whilst as an actor he’s just as likely to…
Read More
A writer and performer whose resume boasts such acclaimed works as The Mighty Boosh, Horrible Histories, and both Paddington films, Simon Farnaby and the comedy genre practically go hand-in-hand. For his latest big screen outing, the English creative is adapting his own work, bringing his musings on infamous golfer Maurice Flitcroft to life with The…
Read More
Whilst not always the most prevalent sport to celebrate cinematically, golf has had its share of theatrical engagement over the decades; more often than not linked heavily to the comedy genre, too. Caddyshack (1980), Happy Gilmore (1996) and Tin Cup (1996) have arguably courted the most humorous notice, whilst The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)…
Read More
Once Taika Waititi reinvented the Marvel wheel with 2017’s wild Thor: Ragnarok, it made sense that the studio big-wigs would bestow further free licensing in the character’s shift towards a more humorous mentality. And whilst that’s all well and good – we certainly don’t want the character regressing in any manner – Thor: Love and…
Read More
Korean cinema has always been a hub of unmatched quality. Whilst those that have enjoyed the fruits of labour over the decades aren’t remotely surprised at such a statement – and have been waiting for the world to catch up through viewings of I Saw the Devil and Oldboy – the recent successes of the…
Read More
George Clooney and Julia Roberts have reunited for the good of the romantic comedy. In Ticket to Paradise, the Ocean’s Eleven pair play a duo of bitter exes who attempt to put their differences aside for the sake of their daughter, intending to derail her impeding nuptials to stop her from making the love-blinding mistake…
Read More
Scott Derrickson has always found a way to blend his horror sensibilities with a certain sense of emotion. The Exorcism of Emily Rose incorporated the mentality of a legal drama to explore its themes of demonic possession; Deliver Us From Evil unearthed an other worldly entity amongst the trappings of a police-centred thriller; and Sinister…
Read More
Following its successful launch in Canberra earlier this year, the groundbreaking National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) Australians & Hollywood exhibition will remain on show throughout 2023. The blockbuster exhibition, which celebrates Australia’s contemporary cinematic, acting and filmmaking success, opened in January and now its extended run will give Canberra and national audiences an expanded…
Read More
Watching the anti-heroine of Alice Seabright‘s thrilling series Chloe, Becky Green (Erin Doherty, an absolute star-making turn), as she scrolls through the social media lifestyle of the titular Chloe (Poppy Gilbert), a flame-haired femme with a seemingly enviable and lavish existence, the loneliness and self-loathing is palpable. It’s a feeling we’ve probably all experienced, noting…
Read More
Even though 2010’s Despicable Me was centred around Steve Carell‘s Eastern European reformed super-villain Gru, it was his hoard of indecipherable henchmen – his Minions – that stole the film from under his considerably rendered nose. They were funny without really trying to be, so it made perfect sense that subsequent films (Despicable Me birthed…
Read More
When you walk into a room to interview Catherine Martin, a production and costume designer with no less than four Academy Awards to her name (fun fact, she’s the most awarded Australian in Oscar history), you know you’ve chosen the correct shirt when it kicks off an enthusiastic conversation about its origins; to set the…
Read More
To say the excitement in the air was palpable when walking the hotel halls during the Australian press junket of Elvis would be describing it mildly. As director Baz Luhrmann enthusiastically boasted about the late nights had in the lead-up to the film’s premiere, and Tom Hanks so endearingly noting the hotel as “groovy” as…
Read More
Arriving in Australian cinemas this week (you can read our review here) hot off its history-making reception at the Cannes Film Festival, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis brings the life of the king of rock ‘n’ roll to the big screen in predictably lavish fashion. Talking with our own Peter Gray at the Australian premiere, the film’s…
Read More
Executive produced by George R.R. Martin and Robert Redford, Dark Winds is set in 1971 on a remote outpost of the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley, and follows Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) of the Tribal Police as he is besieged by a series of seemingly unrelated crimes. The closer Leaphorn digs to the truth, the more he…
Read More
If Baz Luhrmann is a director whose gaudy, lavish, larger-than-life style has been an aesthetic you haven’t gelled with thus far, his “biopic” Elvis isn’t about to change your mind. The director of Moulin Rouge suitably shakes, rattles, rolls, razzles and dazzles over a sometimes-exhausting 159 minutes, kinetically pacing the king of rock ‘n’ roll’s…
Read More
It was only a matter of time before crypto currency became something of a talking point in films, and in Blowback, an incredibly generic heist actioner, it’s a point of interest for wronged pretty boy Cam Gigandet as he tries to get out alive from a plan that, wait for it, goes fatally wrong for…
Read More
Whilst I’m certainly not suggesting that Fire Island won’t earn some crossover appeal with straight audiences – hell, I even saw this movie with a straight guy – queer audiences are sure to wholeheartedly embrace Joel Kim Booster‘s deliciously funny, at times savage comedy in a manner that’s entirely personal and significantly unique compared to…
Read More
Indian representation in cinema has certainly hit a certain stride over the last few years in moving beyond the character stereotypes and Bollywood-framed imagery that Hollywood so often adhered to. Filmmakers such as Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair have been representing their native communities for over three decades with their various theatrical offerings – the…
Read More
There’s an interesting concept and potentially deep conversation regarding mental illness to be had with Roving Woman, but the execution presented sadly undoes any of the film’s potential, leaving Michal Chmielewski‘s drama a more aimless experience. The roving woman of the title is Sara (Lena Gora), who opens the film in a state of panic…
Read More
When Lightyear was first announced it understandably caused confusion as to how it aligned itself with the Toy Story films its character originated from. Was it a spin-off, something that existed separately from the franchise? Or, did it perhaps focus on a real-life astronaut, suggesting that the Toy Story universe was set in a period…
Read More
The cultural phenomenon that is RuPaul’s Drag Race has made way for otherwise niche performers to breakthrough in a mainstream fashion. Whilst it’s still more likely that queer audiences will recognise their presence in a stronger manner, it must be said that the program knows how to unearth the type of talent that deserves to…
Read More
A gaudy game of cat-and-mouse and pseudo-philosophical musings on sexual orientation and gender sit at the core of Amanda Kramer‘s Please Baby Please, a wild but, sadly, insufferable drama that’s more sleazy than it is stylish. Set in 1950’s New York, the film reveals its bizarre, sexualised tone in its early minutes when bohemian couple…
Read More
The type of filmmaker who’s able to create stories so bombastically silly that they are somewhat brilliant, Quentin Dupieux once again expresses straight-faced frivolity in Incredible But True, a tightly-paced (a lean 74 minutes) twilight-zoned comedy that, somehow, is one of his more level-headed features in spite of its ludicrous plot. Said ludicrous plot revolves…
Read More