The Son (2023) - Movie Review

Following on from their last collaboration The Father, a film so good that it nearly topped my Best Of 2021 list, writer/director Florian Zeller and co-writer Christopher Hampton have now continued their dramatising of the effects of mental illness with a new film, also based on one of Zeller’s stageplays. This one, however, hasn’t been getting the same glowing rapport; in fact, opinions on this film have been middling at best. Now, as I’ll get into, I can definitely see where the negativity is coming from and even agree with some of it… but man, when this film hits its stride, it reminds me of just how hard The Father hit on first watching it.

Missing Link (2019) - Movie Review

I’m starting to get worried about Laika’s foreseeable future in mainstream cinema. Not out of a fear that their work is going to start taking a serious decline any time soon, but out of a worry that there might not be enough people willing to see it. This film came out roughly a month ago, but because of an embarrassingly sparse release schedule over here, I’ve only just now gotten around to it. I know that Kubo And The Two Strings didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, but the reputation the company has garnered as doing far better with critics than general audiences could mean trouble. At any rate, we’re here to look at their latest, and needless to say, it’s another fine entry into their healthy artistic canon.

The Front Runner (2019) - Movie Review

2019 is an election year here in Australia. Knowing the intense makeover that has taken place over the last couple of years in regards to political discourse, largely due to what can charitably be called an unexpected result in the U.S. 2016 election, it seems that the public are more aware than ever of the chicanery that goes down on the party front lines. As such, features like this which delve into the political past are typically done as a means of making some sense of what is happening in the now. The Post managed it, Vice ultimately didn't, and today’s outing? Well, it does technically speak to the current political climate... in the worst way possible.

The Greatest Showman (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: P. T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman), after being laid off from his job, has stumbled onto an idea. He decides to create a show for children of all ages, comprised of the many peculiarities of the world. As his show gets off the ground and New York is shown such oddities as the pint-size General Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey), the bearded lady Lettie Lutz (Keala Settle) and trapeze artist Anne (Zendaya), Barnum starts to lose sight of why he is in “show business” in the first place. Will he stick by his co-stars and his family, or will the spotlight drive to the very people he set out to disrupt?

My first officially published article!

So, a few months back, I did some work experience over at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I wrote up a few lists for them, mainly focusing on highlighting prominent Australian actors and their best respective work, and one of them actually got published on their website Australia Plus.

Words can't really express how amazed I am by this response. I started this blog out as a kid with no formal training in anything to do with films or filmmaking, just rambling about the many sometimes-contradictory thoughts I have about whatever new film I've seen. Now, things are getting more serious. I am deeply thankful to the people at ABC International for giving me the opportunity to write for them, as well as to all of you fine readers whom have stuck with me for all this time.

So, here's my take on the best film roles by perennial Aussie legend Hugh Jackman.

Eddie The Eagle (2016) - Movie Review

Even though buddy cop action films may hold the crown for the most widely recognised clichés, they still don’t hold much of a candle to the oddity that is the inspirational sports movie. The wide-eyed innocent of the genre family, it walks this weird divide where it is often based on actual events and yet is easily one of the most fantastical forms of drama (or dramedy, as a lot of these turn out) out there. Don’t get me wrong, films like the Rocky series show that gritty realism is just as welcome in this sector of filmmaking… when they aren’t inserting helper robots and Russian super soldiers into the narrative, that is. We’ve even looked at a few of these before like Paper Planes and last year’s update of the Rocky canon with Creed; between them, we have a pretty decent spectrum of what could be expected from a film like this. Needless to say, this is very much in the former category this time, but maybe that need not be such a bad thing. This is Eddie The Eagle.

Pan (2015) - Movie Review

In today’s day and age that everyone likes to think is where the practice of rampant recycling of media to create movies started, said recycling can take different forms. One of these is the oh-so-awesome prequel, easily the least successful of all of them. I mean, when online lists of the ‘best’ film prequels frequently bring up Star Wars, you know that the standards for quality aren’t exactly high amongst this pedigree. An offspring of this is the origin story, a film based around a beloved franchise character and how they became the one that we love to this day. Of course, once again, recent examples of this aren’t too promising: X-Men Origins Wolverine managed to ruin the reputation of more than just the title character, Dumb And Dumberer was about as pointless as you can get and Maleficent, while I personally liked it, was a major flop with critics and audiences. Hell, bring up the words ‘horror movie prequel’ in a crowded room and someone is bound to re-enact one of them using you as the victim; some people take this stuff a little too seriously. With all this in mind, ever since today’s film was announced as an origin story for that legendary Lost Boy Peter Pan, I was immediately sceptical (A shocking development, I know) about how well it would work out. And then I actually saw the thing… oh boy.

Chappie (2015) - Movie Review