By Simon Miraudo September 23, 2014 Jason Bateman bets on himself in Bad Words, his feature directorial debut and understandable attempt to solidify his forever-on-the-cusp-of-assured career. Longevity is not promised to anyone in Hollywood, and Bateman’s pre-Arrested Development, post-Teen Wolf Too work is a testament to that. Take solace, sir. If the flame of stardom […]
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There’s something about Amy – ‘They Came Together’ Review
September 22, 2014 
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By Simon Miraudo September 22, 2014 They Came Together is here to kill romantic comedies, and yet, it’s five years too late, like a Terminator who hasn’t accounted for daylight savings. The ugly truth, ahem, is that it was beaten to the punch by Katherine Heigl, who, either through her own hubris or for some […]
Continue readingSemi-charmed life – ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ Review
August 25, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 25, 2014 Magic in the Moonlight sees Woody Allen putting the least amount of effort into enchanting audiences at a time when he really needs to work a little harder for their love. The public perception of Allen takes a trip on the Ferris wheel each year, and though he’s coming […]
Continue readingPlay It Again – The Birdcage
August 25, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 25, 2014 Play It Again is a weekly feature in which our classic-film connoisseurs revisit a revered motion picture from the annals of movie history, to see if it holds up… or if it has aged terribly. And yes, it takes its name from a famously misquoted Casablanca line. Hey, whatever. It […]
Continue readingTelevision Revision: ‘Hannibal’ – Season 1
August 19, 2014 0 Comments
By Andrew Williams August 20, 2014 Television Revision is a weekly feature in which our tuned in TV critic trawls through the best the box has to offer, giving you a primer on some of history’s finest shows (and the rest). Now, this is a story all about how… Deeply troubled criminal profiler Will Graham […]
Continue readingPlay It Again – Awakenings
August 18, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 18, 2014 Play It Again is a weekly feature in which our classic-film connoisseurs revisit a revered motion picture from the annals of movie history, to see if it holds up… or if it has aged terribly. And yes, it takes its name from a famously misquoted Casablanca line. Hey, whatever. It […]
Continue readingMan, Cave – ‘20,000 Days on Earth’ Review
August 15, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 15, 2014 Nick Cave, the man, the myth, the legend, reaffirms his status as those last two things, at least, in 20,000 Days on Earth. It’s a convention-busting documentary that follows the inscrutable artist on a fictionalised day in the life; his 20,000th, actually. Well, that’s what directors Iain Forsyth and […]
Continue readingLight as a feather – ‘All Cheerleaders Die’ Review
August 13, 2014 0 Comments
By Glenn Dunks August 13, 2014 Directors Lucky McKee (May) and Chris Sivertson (I Know Who Killed Me) have fashioned a gory take on the mythos of American high school life in All Cheerleaders Die, a witchy horror comedy that acts somewhat like a pick-and-mix cross between The Craft, Jennifer’s Body, Jawbreaker, and Bring It […]
Continue readingHot air guitar – ‘Jimi: All is by My Side’ Review
August 13, 2014 0 Comments
By Jess Lomas August 13, 2014 Before Jimi Hendrix (Andre Benjamin) lit his guitar on fire at Monterey Pop Festival, or played Woodstock, he wore cheetah-print shirts in a struggling R&B band. So says John Ridley’s Jimi: All Is by My Side, a biopic that tries to be as independent and free spirited as its […]
Continue readingBrooklyn’s finest – ‘Appropriate Behavior’ Review
August 8, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 8, 2014 Getting over an ex by getting under some strangers? That’s how Shirin plans to mourn the end of her last major relationship, although “plan” suggests there is some order to the chaos of her often disastrous rebounds. Appropriate Behavior is the sexy, soulful, snarky directorial debut of writer and […]
Continue readingVideo games – ‘Sex Tape’ Review
August 7, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 7, 2014 Sex Tape tells the harrowing story of a man with such wanton disregard for his family’s financial well-being he regularly buys two iPads at a time and re-gifts the newly-obsolete models to acquaintances. There is also a subplot about the man and his wife frantically scrambling to erase their […]
Continue readingTelevision Revision: Sherlock – Season 3
August 7, 2014 0 Comments
By Andrew Williams August 7, 2014 Television Revision is a weekly feature in which our tuned in TV critic trawls through the best the box has to offer, giving you a primer on some of history’s finest shows (and the rest). Now, this is a story all about how… Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman) has […]
Continue readingThey’re a weird mob – ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Review
August 6, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 6, 2014 Even the most casual fan could name Marvel Studios’ ten features, starting with 2008 trend-setter Iron Man and arriving at 2014’s not-so-surprise hit Guardians of the Galaxy. Where they’d be reasonably stumped is correctly identifying the villains. Names like Malekith the Dark Elf, Aldrich Killian, and now, Ronan the […]
Continue readingDo it again – ‘The Infinite Man’ Review
August 5, 2014 0 Comments
By Richard Haridy August 5, 2014 The Infinite Man is a remarkably assured debut Australian feature that perfectly balances character and concept to give us not only one of the most tightly controlled time travel narratives ever conceived but also a genuinely sweet romantic comedy. Dean (Josh McConville) just wants to recreate the perfect anniversary […]
Continue readingPlay It Again – Sophie’s Choice
August 5, 2014 0 Comments
By Glenn Dunks August 5, 2014 Play It Again is a weekly feature in which our classic-film connoisseurs revisit a revered motion picture from the annals of movie history, to see if it holds up… or if it has aged terribly. And yes, it takes its name from a famously misquoted Casablanca line. Hey, whatever. It […]
Continue readingBrain candy – ‘Lucy’ Review
August 1, 2014 1 Comment
By Simon Miraudo August 1, 2014 God is a woman. Well, she is now anyway. In Luc Besson‘s Lucy, Scarlett Johansson goes from doe-eyed mafia pawn to all-powerful superbeing, and all it took was accidentally absorbing the intellect-enhancing drug placed beside her abdomen by a Korean cartel. The rest of us, meanwhile, have to choke […]
Continue readingRound the twist – ‘Predestination’ Review
August 1, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 1, 2014 “Smart” movies can be dumb fun (Inception, Shutter Island), and “dumb” movies can be secretly smart (22 Jump Street, Spring Breakers), but movies about time travel… mostly just frustrate. They exist in some sort of netherworld, caught between smartness and dumbness, kind of like this sentence. They require rigorous […]
Continue readingFolman and Robin – ‘The Congress’ Review
August 1, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo August 1, 2014 The Congress is where brutal reality meets impossible fantasy, Tex Avery meets Studio Ghibli, and director Ari Folman meets actress Robin Wright, resulting in, at the very least, a truly unique cinematic experience, and inspiring one genius headline. (See above.) Set in a near-future Hollywood that has no further […]
Continue readingTelevision Revision: ‘The West Wing’ – Season 7
July 29, 2014 0 Comments
By Andrew Williams July 29, 2014 Television Revision is a weekly feature in which our tuned in TV critic trawls through the best the box has to offer, giving you a primer on some of history’s finest shows (and the rest). Now, this is a story all about how… The Bartlet White House has to […]
Continue readingAnarchy in the W.A. – ‘These Final Hours’ Review
July 29, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo July 29, 2014 There’s never been an end-of-days movie quite like These Final Hours before, an anything-goes orgy of grief, savagery, and sex, with just enough humanity to remind us why maybe farewelling mankind would be a shame after all. Zak Hilditch‘s major feature debut makes Perth the final destination for an […]
Continue readingPlay It Again – Blue Velvet
July 25, 2014 0 Comments
By Glenn Dunks July 25, 2014 Play It Again is a weekly feature in which our classic-film connoisseurs revisit a revered motion picture from the annals of movie history, to see if it holds up… or if it has aged terribly. And yes, it takes its name from a famously misquoted Casablanca line. Hey, whatever. It […]
Continue readingTelevision Revision: The West Wing – Season 6
July 23, 2014 0 Comments
By Andrew Williams July 23, 2014 Television Revision is a weekly feature in which our tuned in TV critic trawls through the best the box has to offer, giving you a primer on some of history’s finest shows (and the rest). Now, this is a story all about how… President Bartlet’s presidency begins to wind […]
Continue readingGame of stones – Pompeii review
July 23, 2014 0 Comments
By Richard Haridy July 23, 2014 Pompeii is what some critics will label a “guilty pleasure.” It’s trash. Unadulterated, cliché-ridden junk that is also simply damn fun to watch. I tend to rail against the term “guilty pleasure” as one should never feel guilty about enjoying something. Pompeii is a grand B-grade mash up of […]
Continue readingDeath takes a holiday – Still Life review
July 22, 2014 0 Comments
By Glenn Dunks July 22, 2014 The life of a man with what could surely be described as one of the most depressing jobs in England is examined with fine precision in Uberto Pasolini’s Still Life. The subject matter may appear overly dour for the man who was Oscar-nominated for producing feel-good comedy The Full […]
Continue readingDevil may care – Deliver Us From Evil review
July 21, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo July 21, 2014 Deliver Us From Evil is this year’s exorcism movie. (Hollywood is considerate in few ways, but at least it knows to spread these things out every twelve months.) To spare us from boredom, writer-director Scott Derrickson adds the crinkle of it also being a police-on-the-beat movie, with Eric Bana […]
Continue readingApe expectations – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes review
July 9, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo July 9, 2014 If we should take anything away from the terse title characters of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, it’s the power of brevity. So, here’s my review: Apes together strong. Sequel merely solid. (The rest is for the human readers, sticklers for protraction.) This laboriously-titled follow up to […]
Continue readingPublic frenemies – Lawrence and Holloman review
July 9, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo July 9, 2014 More anti-human than Antichrist, Matthew Kowalchuck‘s beyond-black comedy Lawrence & Holloman asks us to revel in the largely-unsuccessful emotional torture of a jerk by a sociopath. And they said cinema had run out of heroes. Based on the stage play by Canadian Morris Panych – a fan of Neil […]
Continue readingSoul food – The Lunchbox review
July 8, 2014 0 Comments
By Jess Lomas July 8, 2014 Sometimes the wrong train will get you to the right station, and sometimes the wrong lunchbox will lead you to the right person. Writer-director Ritesh Batra makes his feature debut with The Lunchbox, an impressive romantic drama in the vein of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (or […]
Continue readingTelevision Revision: The West Wing – Season 5
July 8, 2014 0 Comments
By Andrew Williams July 8, 2014 Television Revision is a weekly feature in which our tuned in TV critic trawls through the best the box has to offer, giving you a primer on some of history’s finest shows (and the rest). Now, this is a story all about how… the kidnapping of Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth […]
Continue readingGirl, incubated – Wetlands review
July 7, 2014 0 Comments
By Simon Miraudo July 7, 2014 Wetlands takes a gross thing, teenagerdom, and makes it grosser, which is like setting out to make an especially revolting movie about your last bout of conjunctivitis: any memory of the experience is probably potent enough. Still, credit to director David Wnendt, adapting Charlotte Roche’s controversial, conservative-enraging novel, for […]
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