H Is For Happiness (2020) - Movie Review

Well, this sounds familiar: A precocious red-headed girl with unrelenting optimism and a ‘unique’ perspective on the world sets out to basically fix everything around her. Even as someone with a higher-than-usual tolerance for this brand of family-friendly content (chalk that up to growing up with Mara Wilson as Matilda, I guess), there’s something inherently strained about sitting through a story where children have a greater vocabulary and emotional range than the adults. It’s the kind of thing that normally smacks of wish fulfillment for adults more than anything else, letting the older writer(s) live out their own fantasy of how they wish children acted in the real world. But then there are films like this, which undeniably fit into this niche but also feel wholly singular to themselves.

Miss Fisher & The Crypt Of Tears (2020) - Movie Review

Time to get into another cinematic continuation of an Aussie TV show that my overseas readers likely won’t have heard of, and despite me working on more local ground, I’m about as familiar with the source material as they are. Aside from vague memories of seeing my nan watching it out of the corner of my eye, I have no experience with the escapades of 1920s-era detective Phryne Fisher.

However, over the last few years, I’ve taken definite notice of lead actor Essie Davis as one of the best Australian actors working today, between her phenomenal turns in The Babadook and True History Of The Kelly Gang. As such, familiarity or no familiarity, I knew I wanted to check this out.

Maya The Bee Movie (2014) - Movie Review

Starting this habit of seeing every movie available to me has been simultaneously the best and worst idea I’ve ever had. Best because it’s given me a chance to see movies I wouldn’t normally check out and broadening my cinematic horizons; Worst because it frequently puts me into weird positions of being incredibly out of place amongst the audiences for some movies. Today’s film represents one of those situations, where I’m the only guy in the cinema who doesn’t have a child watching the movie with him.