Despite the fact that the recently released trailer made Nightbitch look more like a quirky comedy – think a female-drive, R-rated take on Tim Allen’s The Shaggy Dog – I can attest that Marielle Heller‘s take on Rachel Yoder‘s seemingly unadaptable 2021 novel of the same name is far from the laughable ridiculousness some may…
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Regardless of how one feels about him personally, you can’t entirely deny that Mel Gibson knows how to direct a movie. Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto are all, at worst, competently made features that speaks to a creative awareness of the craft. The Gibson that made those movies, however, isn’t anywhere to be…
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There was a point when it came to initially reviewing Companion that I was thinking how difficult it would be to navigate around certain plot points, given that Drew Hancock‘s horror-leaning, sci-fi adjacent, romantic thriller bets on a particular narrative reveal. It’s one that I wasn’t dare going to spoil – I had the luck…
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It’s all a little too easy to accuse actor-turned-director Brady Corbet of indulging in his own self given the running time of his third feature The Brutalist; the 215 minute drama following 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader and 2018’s divisive Natalie Portman feature Vox Lux. The length, however, (which also includes a needed 15…
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A more evasive mentality is adhered to in A Complete Unknown and its subject, musician Bob Dylan, than what director James Mangold afforded Johnny Cash in Walk The Line (2005), here, a deliberately distant biopic that dares to keep Dylan as the enigmatic character he is, rather than create anything false and flashy for the…
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It’s been over a decade since we last saw Cameron Diaz grace our screens. Bowing out with a planned retirement from the industry following 2014’s middlingly received musical Annie, Diaz has been lured back to do what she does best, reuniting with Annie cohort Jamie Foxx for Back In Action, a fittingly titled comedic actioner…
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Not to be confused with Denzel Washington’s 2010 runaway train thriller – or the lesser known 2004 outing from Wesley Snipes – Unstoppable, which marks the directorial debut of editor William Goldenberg, whose credits include such titles as Coyote Ugly, Miami Vice and Air, is a by-the-numbers sports drama that lives by its inspirational hook. …
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Similar to how he shifted our expected perspective from predator to prey in 2020’s slick reimagining of The Invisible Man, which layered the tale with a topical #MeToo sheen, Aussie genre helmer Leigh Whannell is, once again, altering the ingredients for what we think a Wolf Man narrative should be. Generational trauma, the uncertain dynamic of a marriage and meditations on…
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Selling itself direct from the off with a title that indicates both the seasonal setting and the supernatural creatures at bay, Monster Summer tries so desperately to align itself with the heavily rotated family-friendly likes of The Goonies, The Sandlot and Hocus Pocus, but its 1990s setting and adventurous personality aren’t able to conjure the…
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Similar to how, in equal measure, the Catholic church is an institution that earns both regard and revile, Conclave, Edward Berger‘s scandalous mystery set within the walls of the Vatican, is, at once, a revealing thriller as much as it is a delicious farce. Made all the more chewable due to Peter Straughan‘s script honing…
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Given the astronomically high bar set by director Paul King and co-writer Simon Farnaby with 2017’s Paddington 2, the 7-year wait for Paddington in Peru only adds to the film’s overall anticipation and, due to both King and Farnaby sitting out their directorial and screenwriting duties, slight trepidation. It goes without saying that very few…
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Despite the fact that Juror #2 is directed Clint Eastwood (reportedly, also, his last feature as a filmmaker) and contains an extended ensemble including, but not limited to, Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland, you’d be rightfully under the impression that such credentials hold no weight given the absolute mistreatment of this…
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Whether you loved him or hated him as part of Take That or on his own accord as a brash soloist, Robbie Williams, particularly in the 1990s, was a figure you couldn’t escape. Similar to the cultural impact of Geri Halliwell exiting the Spice Girls or Zayn Malik bidding adieu to One Direction, Williams’ exit…
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It’s too easy to claim that writer/director Sean Baker makes inaccessible films due to the fact that so many of his narratives centre around the society underrepresented, chief among them being sex workers. As we saw in such previous works as Tangerine and Red Rocket, Baker seeks to remove such a stigma around pornography performers, prostitutes…
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There’s a famous story surrounding when Jim Carrey approached Tommy Lee Jones at a restaurant one night during the production of Batman Forever in 1995. On the eve of the duo filming “their biggest scene together” on the Joel Schumacher sequel, Carrey popped into a diner where Jones happened to be eating. The maitre noted…
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Shifting away from the sibling rivalry at the centre of the modern-set dramedy Scrap, writer/director Vivian Kerr moves into gothic horror territory for her sophomore feature-length project, Séance, a dramatic tale that still admittedly utilises the mentality of rivalry, but does so in a different, more psychological manner. Grief, obsession, and both the fragile and toxic…
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A stunningly haunting reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent expressionist vampire film Nosferatu, itself an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”, Robert Eggers‘ gothic tale (ironically) breathes fresh life into Henrik Galeen‘s original, weaving human obsession and pain in a macabre manner that results in the genre filmmaker delivering possibly his finest craft…
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Though there’s the sense that, initially, the characterisation of Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) in A Real Pain is to purely lean into the personality-driven descriptiveness of such a title, writer/director Jesse Eisenberg has other plans in helping us as an audience empathise with his plight. Benji hones the type of energy that can be described…
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Much like fellow Johnson, Dakota, Aaron Taylor-Johnson has his heroic potential thwarted (and how!) in the long-delayed Kraven the Hunter, a misguided actioner that ends Sony’s Spider-Man Cinematic Universe with the type of whimper we’ve come to expect from this poor Marvel offshoot that wasn’t even allowed to feature the very character it based itself…
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It goes without saying that The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is one that left an impressionable in-print on cinema. Many other films have tried their best to emulate its epic nature in the years since – even director Peter Jackson himself with the shaky Hobbit series – but few have captured correctly, so…
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Over the years LEGO has extended beyond physical building and constructed itself a cinematic universe that includes such figures as Batman, Scooby-Doo, and the Ninjago range. But what about a musical documentary about a multi-faceted performer who’s had his unique hands over everything from hard rock and nu metal to mainstream pop and the Despicable…
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It’s not an uncommon trope for a female character to be introduced to her audience at her lowest moment. She indulges in a sense of self-loathing (we’ve all been there) and through either her friends, her career or a fresh male presence, she builds herself back up and becomes the best version of herself. In…
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The fact that Moana 2 was originally envisioned as a long-form television series for Disney+ (Moana: The Series, for those playing at home) perhaps explains why this sequel – which was only announced as a reworked theatrical effort at the beginning of the year – never quite reaches the emotional heights of its predecessor, and…
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In the last few years Hugh Grant has truly taken pleasure in playing against the grain of expectation he laid upon himself after a career of inhabiting predominantly likeable characters. Arguably starting with his wonderfully committed camp turn as the villainous Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2 in 2017, Grant has been on an incline of…
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Director John Swab, a gritty aesthetic and the gruff likeability of Frank Grillo have proven a welcome parcel over the last few years, and following on from both Body Brokers and Ida Red is Little Dixie, a formulaic but no-less investing thriller that exists in a rough, dirty reality. Though there’s plenty of genre tropes…
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Given her career achievements, and that name alone, it’s quite a surprise that Margaret Moth isn’t more of a well known figure. Working as a full-time camera operator in 1970s New Zealand at a time when no other women held such a position in her homeland, nor Australia, Moth – born Margaret Wilson (she was…
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At 2 hours and 40 minutes, there’s a lot of Wicked. And this is only the first part of the story. Yes, despite the advertisements simply marketing this as “Wicked”, the opening credits inform us that this is the first half of the mammoth Broadway adaptation that expanded the wonderful world of Oz by letting…
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An Australian road movie that wisely operates beyond such genre simplicities, Henry Boffin‘s Strange Creatures finds organic humour in the tragic circumstances of its two main characters – estranged brothers Nate and Ged Taylor (Riley Nottingham and Johnny Carr, respectively) – as they respect the dying wish of their recently deceased mother. The opposing personalities…
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It’s too easy for any British romantic comedy of sorts to be likened to the works of Richard Curtis. With Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary and About Time amongst his credits, we can see why he’s often something of a benchmark for the genre, but whatever formula he established, director…
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Whilst his latest efforts have wavered in their quality and execution, you still have to hand it to director Ridley Scott, who, at almost 87-years-old, is one of the few filmmakers who commits to the notion of epic storytelling to be played out on the format God intended: the cinema screen. And such is the…
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