Within the opening minutes of May December, small-town mother Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) is throwing a community BBQ with all the social niceties we come to see over the future 113 minutes she shrewdly projects. In hoping she has enough food to feed the masses, she opens the refrigerator and questions if she has enough…
Read MoreThe Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF), presented by MINI, has announced its 2023 program with an incredible line-up of Queensland and Australian premiere features, with Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins, starring Michael Fassbender, serving as the Australian premiere and Closing Night event. BIFF’s program is further brimming with Queensland premieres from highly acclaimed and visionary…
Read MoreOnce 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 MoreMarvel have really leaned into their Disney+ products, haven’t they? Following on from the fan-embraced success of WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki, the fresh-but-familiar mentality continues with the animated ambition that is What If…? The notion of a multiverse is something that the MCU have teased and ultimately confirmed throughout their…
Read MoreWhat is it about stories about the rise to stardom that makes it so fascinating to audiences? Is it because it resembles a wish fulfillment fantasy? Or is it because it resembles a cautionary tale? Either way, it is a well-worn formula, that has been the backbone of well-regarded films, including 2018 films A Star…
Read MoreDisney once again brings a visually sumptuous live action adaptation to the big screen in the the lead up to the festive season. This time loosely taking E.T.A Hoffman’s original ‘The Nutcracker And The Mouse King’ story, and also a ballet by Tchaikovsky, and a novel by Dumas, and putting their own spin on it….
Read MoreThe hot weather and sun we’d had on the first two days felt like a distant memory by Sunday afternoon. The temperature dropped 20 degrees overnight, and the cold wind made the light rain feel a million times worse than it was. The weather inspired me to check out The Arena stage, held in a…
Read MoreBoston Calling kicked off the weekend to a mid-sized crowd on a hot, windy day, which gave me major flashbacks to the Big Day Out and Falls Festivals past. Within the first ten minutes I was sweaty, covered in dirt, and had sneezed about a hundred times. But if you don’t get a little grimy and…
Read MoreRousing its fair share of controversy over Paramount Studios’ decision to release it to streaming service Netflix the world over (save for North America and China) instead of in cinemas for which it was initially intended, Alex Garland‘s ambitious Annihilation is certainly a unique production for such a risk-adverse studio. Whilst there’s a certain arthouse…
Read MoreA strong taste of the old is present in Planetarium, as Natalie Portman leads a dual-language spoken film about not only the ghosts of the supernatural around us, but also those which come from within before the dawning of a new war era. Directed and written by French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central) the film follows two…
Read MoreAs the 28th annual Alliance Francaise French Film Festival makes its way across the major Australian states through March and April, the toast of French cinema will be at the ready for audiences seeking a sense of European style. One film sure to hold interest throughout the festival is Planetarium, a lush pre-war drama starring…
Read MoreJacqueline Kennedy (Onassis) has been depicted on the silver and small screens before but Jackie is the first film to really capture the complex nature of this remarkable woman. The film is not strictly a biopic in that it only focuses on a number of key events in Kennedy’s life prior to and in the…
Read MoreAfter premiering at this year’s Venice Film Festival, the first look at Jackie, starring Academy Award winner Natalie Portman as the widowed first lady is mesmerizing. Directed by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (Nasty Baby), the biopic follows both the public and private struggles Kennedy faces in the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The film…
Read MoreAdapted from the first book in science fiction author Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, Alex Garland‘s latest venture, Annihilation, is shaping up to be something great. Written and directed by Garland, the film will center around a biologist (played by Natalie Portman), who is seeking answers to her husband’s tragic disappearance. In a bid to find these answers,…
Read MoreOr, as I like to call it, Special-K. Terrence Malick and his editors have modeled their film on the time and space bending properties of a psychoactive trip. One second you’re in a swanky Los Angeles apartment, the next on the ruins of a burnt-down gas station. Sometimes it’s Rick’s (Christian Bale) voice whispering contemplative…
Read MoreSet in the Wild West, Jane Got a Gun centres around Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman), her outlaw husband Bill (Noah Emmerich) and Jane’s ex-lover Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton). Bill finds himself in a bit of trouble from an outlaw gang and their leader Colin (Ewan McGregor) wants him dead. In a desperate effort to save…
Read MoreIn October, the Jewish International Film Festival returns to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Gold Coast and New Zealand for a run of dates that will feature 60 international premiere features and documentaries. The festival has become known for showcasing diverse cinema and engaging audiences both from the Jewish community and beyond. Every film, selected by Festival…
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