Author: Peter Gray

No stranger to helming both action and comedy, director Luke Greenfield (The Girl Next Door, Let’s Be Cops) hilariously collides suburban dad life with high-stakes thrills, transforming an ordinary afternoon into an absurd action-packed adventure where minivan mayhem meets professional hitmen in Play Date, which Prime Video have revealed today through exclusive first-look images ahead…

The Japanese Film Festival (JFF), presented by The Japan Foundation, Sydney, marks its 29th year with a line-up of major new releases, literary adaptations, thrillers and anime features. Touring Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth from 27th October to the 19th December, the festival continues to highlight the best of contemporary and classic Japanese cinema….

Natalie Abbott burst onto the scene as Muriel Heslop in Muriel’s Wedding The Musical, earning Helpmann and Green Room Award nominations in the process.  And now, she brings her comedic brilliance and powerhouse vocals to The Lovers, a popified take on Shakespeare’s classic ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; you can read our review here. As the…

Whether we’ve taken notice or not, but, much like your James Bonds, Jack Ryans and Jack Reachers, the character at the centre of Shane Black‘s Play Dirty – Parker – is a cinematic mainstay who has appeared in films dating back to the 1960s, portrayed either directly or taken inspiration from by a multitude of…

There’s an odd satisfaction that comes from watching genre films that use the narrative of stolen children.  It’s a horrific, harsh reality, but Hollywood knows how to take the weighted drama of such and merge it with a revenge-cum-saviour mentality, creating the type of story where justice prevails in a way to make the escapism…

Global music superstar Louis Tomlinson has released his highly anticipated new single ‘Lemonade’, a mix of tight funkified guitars, shimmering keys, and organic percussion leading to a captivating chorus; “She’s so bitter, she’s so sweet, a little taste is all I need”. Louis shared, “The most important thing was for the first single to sound ambitious sonically. It…

Hugely popular comedian Matt Rife has announced new tour dates for his ‘Stay Golden World Tour’ with nine dates across Australia and New Zealand next year. January and February will see Rife electrify audiences in New Zealand’s Ōtautahi, Christchurch and Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, followed by an Australian run throughout Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth….

Whilst it’s understandable that Glen Powell‘s rise to fame over the last few years has very much leant into his obvious sex appeal, you have to hand it to the actor for not always relying on it within his projects.  Namely his latest effort, Chad Powers, a sports-themed comedy series that he and producer/writer Michael…

Directed by Louis Mandylor and written by and starring Scott Adkins, Prisoner of War tells the story of a soldier captured by the Japanese and held in a Philippine POW camp. Before the entire colony embarks upon the Bataan Death March, Wright and his fellow prisoners are forced to compete in brutal death matches for…

From Oscar winner Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions, producers of the landmark horror films Get Out, Us, Candyman and Nope, comes a chilling journey into the inner sanctum of fame, idolatry and the pursuit of excellence at any cost, Him, featuring an electrifying dramatic performance from Marlon Wayans and a star-making turn from Tyriq Withers….

Much has been said about Jordan Peele‘s attachment to Him.  Though, like Peele’s own directorial efforts (the thematically complex Get Out, Us, and Nope), Justin Tipping‘s film bathes in its horror elements and topical commentary, it’s more in tune with other producorial efforts (Nia DaCosta’s Candyman and Dev Patel’s Monkey Man), proving a feature that…

A two-time UFC Heavyweight Tournament Champion, World Vale Tudo Championship tournament winner, and a PRIDE FC competitor, Mark Kerr, a former wrestler, is one of the greatest mixed martial artists to ever emerge from the sport. Following his coverage as a subject in the documentary The Smashing Machine, which detailed his fighting career, director Benny Safdie adapted…

Despite his absolute monstrous size at the time of his career and just how brutal he proved in the ring of mixed martial arts, Mark Kerr was – and still is – a figure that defied the expectations many would presumably put upon him from a personal standpoint.  Softly spoken, with an emotional sense that…

Proving themselves each other’s muses, Swedish power popstar Zara Larsson and British singer-songwriter-producer MNEK have maintained their musical forces for her latest LP, the euphoric Midnight Sun, a decade after they first struck electropop gold on their 2015 collaboration “Never Forget You”. Their blend of EDM sonics and R&B sensibilities course through the veins of…

With the release of last year’s The Strangers: Chapter 1, a retreading of Bryan Bertino’s 2008 home invasion chiller The Strangers, director Renny Harlin and screenwriters Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland delivered a largely uninspired, familiar horror effort that hoped it would justify its existence by promising to be the essential springboard for a…

And now whatever way our stories end, I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend… Last year’s global cinematic cultural sensation, which became the most successful Broadway film adaptation of all time, now reaches its epic, electrifying, emotional conclusion in Wicked: For Good. Directed once again by award-winning director Jon M. Chu and starring…

Adulthood, directed by Alex Winter, stars Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario as a duo of siblings who uncover a dead body in the basement of their parents’ house.  Understandably, the situation spirals comically out of control, leading the two to resort to desperate, drastic measures to keep things under wraps. Now available on VOD in…

One of the biggest box office hits of the 1990s, and one that instilled a certain paranoia among live-in caretakers and homeowners, Curtis Hanson’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was a terrifying cautionary tale for would-be nannies and the families hoping to hire them.  Starring Annabella Sciorra and Matt McCoy as a loving couple…

Guillermo has his Frankenstein.  Gyllenhaal has her Bride. From Maggie Gyllenhaal (Academy Award-nominated writer/director of The Lost Daughter) and starring Academy Award nominee Jessie Buckley and Academy Award winner Christian Bale comes The Bride! A bold, iconoclastic take on one of the world’s most compelling stories. A lonely Frankenstein (Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to…

Grace Lisa Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer) counts everything – the letters in her name, to the poppy seeds on her orange cake. She counts because numbers hold the world together. But when a chance encounter with Seamus (Joe Dempsie) turns her world upside down, Grace’s meticulously ordered life starts to unravel. A film about accepting who you are and celebrating the…

Following its premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where star Julia Roberts has been praised for her performance – some calling it one of the best of her career – the new trailer for Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt has been released. From the visionary director of Call Me By Your Name and Queer,…

Think of it as Shakespeare for the TikTok generation, The Lovers, courtesy of lyricist Laura Murphy, injects the same type of energy Baz Luhrmann laced his Romeo & Juliet telling with across the Midsummer Night’s Dream narrative, reimagining the classic chaos of the original love story with a serious pop sensibility. The core story itself…

An acquired taste in cinema, but one that proves important regardless of how you personally react to his esoteric, boundary-pushing temperament, Paul Thomas Anderson has been responsible for some of the most important and, arguably, brilliant films across cinema the last four decades; Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Licorice Pizza,…

Five Star Cinemas are proud to announce the program for the 4th annual New Farm Queer Film Festival (NFQFF). Running from October 2nd – 12th at Brisbane’s New Farm Cinemas, the festival will present premiere screenings of award-winning titles from Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and Locarno, and brand-new restorations. The festival will open with the QLD…

The Strangers are back to finish what they started. She survived the first night.  But the real terror is just beginning. Thanks to Kismet Movies, to celebrate the release of The Strangers: Chapter 2, in Australian cinemas from September 25th, 2025, we have three digital double in-seasons to giveaway. THE STRANGERS are back – more brutal…

When it was revealed that Maude Apatow (daughter of filmmaker Judd Apatow and actress Leslie Mann) had helmed her first feature film, and one that starred the likes of Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Nico Parker (daughter of actress Thandiwe Newton and filmmaker Ol Parker) to boot, the “nepo baby”…

Though it’s been a story told countless times before, you can’t help but still be monstrously excited at the prospect of Guillermo del Toro adapting Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein.  His name above the title just feels correct, and not just because the director has been talking about helming his version of the story for close…

Whilst the story behind how Whitney Wolfe Herd both co-founded Tinder and its eventual competition, Bumble, is exciting and full of suitable intrigue, Swiped, with its understandable embellishments, never quite graduates beyond surface level interest.  It’s an entertaining film, without question, with another committed Lily James performance at its core, but The Social Network this…

The Jewish International Film Festival (JIFF) returns from 19th October through to the 21st December 2025, presenting 50 new films, documentaries, shorts and a television series. Screening in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra and Perth, the festival brings together the best Jewish-themed stories from around the world. Together they span history and contemporary life, the…

One of the most poignant lines of Eleanor the Great is “Talk about the things that make you sad,” and it’s with such a notion that Scarlett Johansson‘s affecting dramedy takes it on as a throughline.  A film that so easily could have been about deception becomes something far greater and more profound, transforming itself…