Ride Like A Girl (2019) - Movie Review

When I was in high school, there were two major events that were deemed so important that our class was halted just so we could crowd around the wheeled-in television to witness them. The first was then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s “Sorry” speech, apologising for the systemic racially-biased treatment of the Indigenous population of Australia. The other was the Melbourne Cup, with all of us taking lots to see if our arbitrarily-chosen horse won.

It’s a sporting event that stops the nation, one of the closest traditions we have to the NFL Superbowl, and it’s one that has continued to sour in my memory over my lifetime, considering how it plays into our cultural history. Today’s film, a biopic about Michelle Payne, the first-ever female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, is the first feature in a while that has outright forced me to consider the real-life side of the story being presented.

Nekrotronic (2019) - Movie Review

From the makers of Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead, which remains one of the most fun movies I’ve covered on this blog, Nekrotronic is another showing of genre pastiche, basically taking everything the Roache-Turner brothers watched and loved growing up and putting their own spin on it. I can’t exactly say what I was expecting out of this, since Wyrmwood is such a weirdly unique film in its vigour and delivery, but I’m happy to report that not only have they stuck to what they know best, they’ve built on their toolkit to bring the same level of fun at a slightly higher polish.

Rambo: Last Blood (2019) - Movie Review

Rambo is one of the most classic action franchises of all time. It is seriously weird thinking about just how influential the first two entries are, setting the tone for a lot of action cinema to come out of post-Vietnam America. The first remains one of the most brutal depictions of PTSD to make it to the big screen, and the second basically set the blueprint for every jungle-set military action-thriller to come after, up to and including the also-highly-influential Predator.

The third film… exists, and even as someone who takes pride in recollecting pop culture minutiae, I can barely remember anything about it. Then there was Rambo ’08, which boosted the gore standard in a way that, given what it was depicting, must’ve hit close to home considering it went on to inspire real-life Burmese freedom fighters. Following any of that up was gonna be a hard ask, and what we get here is… complicated.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile (2019) - Movie Review

In light of certain… takes that have cropped up in regards to Todd Phillip’s Joker, a film we’ll be getting to once it makes it to Aussie cinemas, I want to reiterate something: Films should be allowed to have lead characters that aren’t good people. Narratives about seedier characters, whether they’re born primarily from a writer’s imagination or varyingly based on real-life deplorables, can make for great works of art, let alone film.

Abominable (2019) - Movie Review

Seems like Yetis are making a comeback in the realm of family-friendly cinema. We had the surprisingly challenging Smallfoot last year, and then we had Laika’s latest effort Missing Link earlier this year, both highly effective pieces of animation and some of the better family flicks of late. And now, it looks like Dreamworks is throwing their hat into the ring with this co-production with Pearl Studio, a Chinese animation studio they first collaborated with on the muddled but still entertaining Kung Fu Panda 3. And what we get this time around is a new plateau for the heights that Dreamworks Animation can rise to.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) - Movie Review

This is going to be a difficult film to write about. Not because it’s the latest cinematic addition to a franchise that really shouldn’t exist, given the highly disposable nature of its source video game series. Not because it’s a follow-up to a film that I gave a fair amount of slack to while everyone else was gawking at the utter memeage of its soundtrack (Limp Bizkit’s Behind Blue Eyes is one of those songs that shouldn’t be in any movie). Not even because of my recurring issue with family films about talking animals. Rather, it’s because this film defies any semblance of a ‘good or bad’ binary, as it sits snugly in both at the exact same time. Read on and I’ll try and explain.

Downton Abbey (2019) - Movie Review

In quite a few ways, I was not looking forward to this one. While part of that could be due to my inexperience with the series this film spawned from, it’s not as if that’s been an issue in the past. I haven’t seen any episodes of Dance Academy or Sword Art Online, and yet I left those films quite pleased with the results.

No, my apprehension here is more to do with the genre, as I have stated in previous reviews that costume dramas really aren’t my thing, and the writer and director bringing it together. Between Crooked House, which was less film as it was malformed audiobook, and The Chaperone, which as a possible road-test for Downton Abbey-style storytelling in a feature-length production ended up crashing into a ditch with all its wheels punctured, I wasn’t expecting much out of this. And yet, while still not entirely being on board with it, I walked away from this a lot more chipper than I would’ve guessed.