Film Reviews

You may have heard already but The Marvels is Marvel Studios' worst-performing film at the box office since they started making movies. With the success of films like Oppenheimer and Barbie in the cinemas it's clear Marvel no longer has the pulling power they used to. But why is that?  

The second feature film from award-winning director, writer, actor, and producer Emerald Fennell sucks you in with morbid curiosity. The further it goes the wider that uncomfortable pit in your stomach gets yet your blood pumps with adrenaline urging you to keep watching despite how disgusted you are.

I had zero expectations walking into the cinemas to see Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. All around me, the question on everybody’s lips was, “Are you going to see the Barbie movie?” The perception of what this film would be fell into two categories; blindly optimistic and apathetically judgmental but I ended up pleasantly surprised by the movie we got.

Now it’s probably not as big as Cannes or Sundance but the Sydney Film Festival is a crucial industry event for the Australian film industry in particular.

An anthology series turned feature film Force of Habit combines the work of 6 female directors and 6 different stories of women going about their everyday lives openly revealing the often hidden world of sexual abuse, the male gaze, and power dynamics within society.

A Perfectly Normal Family is the story of 11-year-old Emma whose perfectly “normal” family is turned upside down when her father comes out as transgender. The film was based on debut feature director Malou Reymann’s real-life experiences with her own father as a child and seeks to tell a personal story of a family navigating this change together.

Little Women is a magical journey into the world of Louisa May Alcott's novel of the same name. Feeling like a modern romance film rather than the stuffy period piece it could very easily have been. Gerwig's writing and direction make this the pinnacle of classic adaptation for the 21st century.

The debut directing credit from Rachel Griffiths, Ride Like A Girl is the story of Australian jockey Michelle Payne and her journey towards becoming the first-ever female to win the biggest horse race in the country, The Melbourne Cup.

There is a desperate need for unique storytelling to make a comeback in cinema. This week I got to take a deep breath for the first time in a while when I finally watched Sara Colangelo's The Kindergarten Teacher.

Have you ever laughed so hard that your insides hurt? Well if not I would recommend going to see Booksmart directed by Olivia Wilde.

This is a very colourful film with some great cinematic choices when it comes to shots, and the overall production design really gives each character their own identity and makes each location pop. It’s chaotic and fast and its comical tone is set right from the opening scene.

In today’s media landscape, the concept of immigration fear is prevalent, particularly in Australia. In Iceland, this issue has only recently bubbled to the surface and as such Ásthildur Kjartansdóttir’s feature film debut, The Deposit, is one of the only ones in the country to bring it to the forefront of discussion.

When you think of the zombie apocalypse genre images of rotting corpses lumbering their way through empty streets in a mindless search for brains are probably what you’d picture first along with titles like 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead, or World War Z. Well Endzeit, the second feature from filmmaker Carolina Hellsgard, takes this traditional concept and twists it challenging what we think we know about the disaster film.