There are some of us who have been fortunate enough to eat at a fine dining restaurant. But at a place like Japan’s Tokito, this experience is elevated so high it’s almost like a religious experience. The documentary Tokito: The 540-Day Journey of a Culinary Maverick plays out like a real-life example of the TV…
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The age-old question around if a tree falling in the forest makes a sound is asked in quite a compelling, pressure-cooker type of way in A Tree Fell in the Woods, Nora Kirkpatrick‘s debut dramedy about the implosion of relationships between two couples across a New Year’s Eve getaway in the snowy forests of Utah….
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Directed by Alexander Ullom, It Ends was originally a short film that turned into a feature (87 minutes, to be precise), which debuted at SXSW 2025. It tells the story of a group of college kids embarking on a road trip. However, when they miss a turn-off, they realise they are driving directly through a…
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“Are you here for the boat or the tooth?” And with that sentence, writer/director Olivia Accardo welcomes us into the bizarre reality of Baby Tooth, a wild five minute short film screening as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival; it’s set to play before the feature The Trainer, as well as being included in…
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Whilst Everything’s Going to Be Great starts out a bit more eccentric and comedically minded than how it ends, the performances at the core of Jon S. Baird‘s dramedy, and the sense that it celebrates art and those that have always felt a little different in doing so, keeps it continually moving at an enjoyable…
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One of the great things about documentaries such as The Rose: Come Back to Me is that it both provides further insight into a rock outfit for the legions of fans, as well as introducing uninitiated viewers into a world that proves endlessly fascinating. I am personally of the latter, as going into this film,…
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Intentionally testing audience patience across its increasingly bizarre, tension-laced 100 minutes, Lorcan Finnegan‘s Australian thriller The Surfer is more about breaking points than Point Break as it mashes surfing culture localism and toxic masculinity. Thomas Martin‘s script doesn’t give specific names to the majority of its players, instead referring to the film’s protagonist as simply…
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If hearing the title I Was Born This Way immediately brings to mind the Lady Gaga song “Born This Way”, the coincidence is intentional. Gaga, one of the few interviewees featured in Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard‘s beautiful, insightful documentary, talks about how Carl Bean‘s legacy influenced her songwriting, as he did for the likes…
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The female matchmaker. The handsome singleton. And her familiar ex-boyfriend. The set-up feels ripe for the most standard of romantic comedy practices, and perhaps in the hands of a more traditionally-minded writer/director that’s what we would have received. But under Celine Song (Past Lives), Materialists defies genre expectation with a meditation on love and its…
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A self-awareness regarding certain specifications in getting his film made along with a universality in conjunction with its narrative, writer/director Alireza Khatami goes beyond genre conventions with The Things You Kill, a twisted thriller that breaks apart what it is to transform. At one point in the film, the language professor at the centre of…
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As far as hair-brained schemes go, Beat The Lotto has this down pat. The story of how a syndicate in Ireland tried to rig the lotto, this documentary is an absolutely thrilling spectacle that will leave you guessing right up until the very end. Ross Whitaker does an excellent job of telling this stranger than…
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It feels inevitable that something like Together will earn comparisons to last year’s The Substance, purely off the fact that the horror it indulges in – that would be the body variety – escalates considerably leading into its wild climax. Sure, The Substance being a great example of body horror is all well and good,…
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The feeling that your childhood ride-or-die will remain so is something that many of us – if not all – have experienced. But whether it’s through distance or altering priorities, it’s a common practice that adulthood (and everything that comes with growing up) can wedge itself between even the strongest of connections, and it’s that…
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Whilst it’s predominantly the House of Mouse that have been transforming their animated back catalogue into live-action features that have all varied in their quality output, DreamWorks have entered the chat with one of their most ambitious updates in How to Train Your Dragon. Hoping they can avoid a lot of the soulless critiques that…
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A film that embraces a more eclectic hobby over ridiculing its eccentricities, Horsegirls is a sweet natured drama that speaks to the importance of independence and inclusivity. Written and directed by Lauren Meyering, Horsegirls embraces the defiance of its lead character, Margarita (so beautifully embodied by Lillian Carrier), and how her perceived fragility gives way…
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It is incredible to think that Edna O’Brien grew up in a house with no books. It was an oppressive Catholic childhood in a small Irish town, but that didn’t stop this formidable woman from becoming a literary great. Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story is an intimate documentary and portrait of her life, which…
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There’s a lived-in mentality to Poreless that is sure to resonate with certain audiences – it’s lead is a gay Muslim – but the comedic nature of its script, written by director Harris Doran and Fawzia Mirza, is particularly universal, looking at the vapid disconnection of the beauty world, the tightrope many walk when it…
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Screening as part of the ‘Freak Me Out’ programme strand for Sydney Film Festival, Redux Redux is a self-reflexive blend of science fiction and horror, coming in fresh from its 2025 SXSW premiere. Quite simply, the film tells the story of Irene (Michaela McManus), who travels through parallel universes to find her daughter’s killer. Directed…
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What sets itself up as something of a meet-cute between two grieving men who form an unlikely friendship in the midst of their trauma, James Sweeney‘s Twinless ultimately reveals itself as something else – a particularly pitch-black dramedy that asks its audience to stay with its morally bankrupt lead as it shifts from an original…
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Given how she made history as the first deaf person to win an Academy Award for acting, one might think the documentary Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore would be something of a straightforward and celebratory profile on the actress. Shoshannah Stern – who, like her subject, is also a deaf actor and director – certainly…
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In the 1960s models went to deportment school and were all rather alike – read cookie cutter – in appearance. That was until Lesley Hornby a.k.a. Twiggy was discovered. Now known as Dame Lesley Lawson, she was told she was too short and too slim to be a model. Yet, as this eponymous documentary shows,…
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Highlighting the drama behind the for-the-camera-smiles of the 1970s variety show, Kate McCarthy‘s The Hicks Happy Hour is a moment-in-time short feature that escalates with a certain tension, before it ultimately pivots for a more cathartic climax that speaks to one woman’s eventual truth. “Stars stay smiling” is the Hicks family motto, something mother Jill…
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Finding truth in the absurd and writing what you know are so often two rules that filmmakers adhere to, and both apply heartily for writer/director Chris Merola, who speaks his veracity in Lemonade Blessing, a coming-of-age dramedy centred around religion and how one responds to its pressures. Inspired by his own childhood growing up under…
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As ridiculous a sport racewalking may seem – Aussies are sure to have images of Jane Turner and Glenn Robbins powerwalking with all their might come to mind – writing/directing duo Phil Moniz and Kevin Claydon lace such with a tenderness and respect that allows audiences to laugh with the sport’s quirk rather than at…
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Playing with the beats you come to expect from such an exorcism feature, The Ritual sets itself up with two priests – the devotee and the doubter – who go head-to-head on hoping to save a poor soul who has been inhabited by a certain evil. It’s a standard practice, and many films have made…
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There’s a certain frustration felt when watching Predators, a 96 minute documentary centering around the series To Catch a Predator, itself an offshoot from NBC’s Dateline. In the early 2000s, the show lured audiences in as it highlighted online predatory behaviour – primarily older men meeting underage boys and girls for the intention of sexual…
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Author Stephen King and filmmaker Mike Flanagan have made careers predominantly out of their affinity for horror. With The Life of Chuck, they have decidedly pivoted and leaned into another of their shared strengths; broadcasting emotional stories. The result, however schmaltzy it may threaten to be, is a beautiful, weird celebration of life and all…
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It’s been something of an arduous trek to the screen for one Ballerina – or, as it’s been marketed, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina – a serviceable action film that hopes to elevate its own being by attaching itself to a lucrative, acclaimed franchise, even though it originated as something else entirely. To…
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There’s a certain bittersweetness in watching OBEX (the title specifically capitalised) following David Lynch’s sad passing, as Albert Birney‘s truly bizarre odyssey feels like a kindred spirit to Lynch’s Eraserhead, with the hallucinatory anxiety and surrealist mentality playing into a personality that is perversely into its own weirdness. Set in a pre-internet 1987, and expressed…
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Given that it’s merging two proven cinematic killers – one serial, the other a shark – it makes sense that Sean Byrne‘s horror-adjacent thriller is suitably tense and highly aware of its own madness. No stranger to executing unbearable tension and providing an antagonist that we can’t help but be utterly absorbed by (see The…
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