Awards Season, Reviews / 29.01.2020

In the horror genre, a sophomore film is the ultimate test for a filmmaker who dazzled with their terrifying debut work. After both Jordan Peele (Get Out) and Ari Aster (Hereditary) respectively knocked it out of the park with Us and Midsommar in 2019, all eyes turn to Robert Eggers, whose tense and disturbing 2016 film The Witch is a mighty tough act to follow. With only his second offering, Eggers stakes his claim as one of the most exciting young filmmakers working today, proving his previous work was only...

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Opinion, Reviews / 21.01.2020

What a decade it was for cinema and the very film industry itself. Think back to 2010 and how much has changed in the last ten years. Way back then, the idea of having an entire catalogue of films at your disposal meant stocking up on DVDs. Movie rental stores still reigned supreme and Netflix was merely a mail-order company that would send them right to your door. If only we knew what lay in store. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was barely getting started and had just been taken...

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Reviews / 17.01.2020

In another case of a major studio dumping a film in January and hoping no one will notice, Underwater finally arrives in cinemas after bizarrely gathering dust in the 20th Century Fox vault since production wrapped way back in May 2017. The problem of what to do with this film obviously now falls to Disney, who've seemingly discarded it at the start of 2020 to clear it off their books. After viewing the film, you begin to understand why. A film that rarely refuses to do little else but...

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Reviews / 16.01.2020

It's been 25 long years since Bad Boys became a surprise hit and, gulp, gave the world its first taste of director Michael Bay. Since then, the filmmaker essentially became a genre all in his own right, with his penchant for tacky dialogue, endless explosions, and calamitous violence. His debut film looks decidedly tame by comparison to his later work, but Bay carved out his cringeworthy niche with Bad Boys and has rarely strayed too far away from it. 17 years after the bloated mess that was Bad Boys...

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Reviews / 16.01.2020

Between The Lion King and Cats, 2019 was not exactly a great year for films featuring talking CGI animals. Sadly, 2020 isn't looking much better, as we begin the year with another disappointing CGI creature fest in the form of Dolittle; Universal's big-budget calamity that's been unceremoniously dumped in January after two previous release date changes. Looks like we're kicking off the year in disastrous fashion. With a cast that inexplicably features five (!) Academy Award winners and three Oscar nominees, a screenplay from an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, a...

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Awards Season, Opinion / 14.01.2020

Well, the 92nd Academy Award nominations have been announced. After such a strong year of contenders, we were bracing for a hefty helping of painful snubs. And they were delivered in spades. Yet again, diversity barely appeared in the acting nominations and a host of non-white performers were overlooked. And while the major categories offered few shocks, the technical categories threw plenty of unexpected curveballs. That being said, plenty still went according to plan. As expected, the Academy showered Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, and...

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Awards Season, Opinion / 13.01.2020

Another madcap Oscar season rolls along. After the absolute chaos of last year, things have been a little more subdued this year. In saying that, the race for Best Picture is still without a solid frontrunner, Best Director is entirely up in the air, and most of the categories are without five true locks for nominations. A few things remain uncertain. A film like Little Women could see six or seven nominations or it could receive as little as two or three. Something like The Two Popes could be...

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Awards Season, Opinion / 05.01.2020

The drunk uncle of awards season is back for another year. But with nomination voting for the Academy Awards closing just two days after the Golden Globes, the ceremony could hold more power than ever before, especially for those Academy members waiting until the last minute to cast their ballots. We awards season pundits say this every year, but predicting what the HFPA will do is basically throwing darts at a dartboard. And it's anyone's guess what the results will ultimately mean for the Academy Awards. They led the...

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Awards Season, Opinion, Reviews / 03.01.2020

Oh, what a year in cinema we had. While the world continued to burn (quite literally in Australia), we film buffs seeking escapism were blessed with a terrific plethora of movies to make us laugh, make us cry, make us wince in terror, make us cheer with delight, and, most importantly, make us feel. From spectacular blockbusters to independent wonders and everything else in between, it's been a magnificent 12 months of movie watching. But it hasn't been all smooth sailing. From Scorsese "criticising" Marvel films as not being...

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Reviews / 19.12.2019

Earlier this year, director Guy Richie took an unexpected swim in the Disney live-action animated remake pool with the over-bloated, CGI calamity that was Aladdin. It made over a billion dollars, naturally, but few walked away feeling like they'd seen anything particularly fresh. Breaking free of the shackles of remake hell with his first piece of wholly original cinema in 11 years, Richie finally gets his groove back by returning to the genre he does best. A riotous, roaring return to form for the writer/director, The Gentlemen is a...

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