Martha Marcy May Marlene
Writer-director Sean Durkin’s debut feature is subtly, almost perfectly calibrated between idyllic and terrifying, all the way to its chillingly ambiguous... read more...
Weekend
Though it’s a small film, Weekend grabs at a lot of big ideas that will needle you long after it ends. Writer/director Andrew Haigh crafts characters... read more...
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Where Ian Fleming’s espionage is flip and glamorous, John Le Carré’s is dreary and cynical; George Smiley is the anti-James Bond. Still, director... read more...
Young Adult
Some films really get you in the guts, and for me Young Adult was one. At times bitingly funny and achingly sad, Jason Reitman’s dramedy recalls Bad... read more...
The Curse of Grong Grong
The Curse of Grong Grong is a documentary by Rob Wright, who makes a pretty damn fascinating film in the space of ten short minutes. It grabs the smallest... read more...
The Iron Lady
What better traditional holiday entertainment than a rollicking English pantomime? This political fairytale is seasonably hilarious, and ultra-conservative... read more...
The Skin I Live In
Both preposterously serious and blackly playful, Pedro Almodóvar’s melodrama explores how trauma and perversion are literally inscribed on the body.... read more...
Don't Need You - The Herstory Of Riot Grrrl
To understand why Riot Grrrl mattered, you need to know that ’80s punk and hardcore shows were a major sausage fest. Mostly male bands played to... read more...
Attack The Block
English writer-director Joe Cornish (of cult comedy duo Adam and Joe) splashes with a feature film debut that’s just plain fun. It’s the anti-Harry... read more...
Restless
There’s much to hate about Gus Van Sant’s cancer weepie for the Frankie set, but I’ve only got 200 words here. Better spend them unpicking why,... read more...
Melancholia
I feel strongly that Lars von Trier is fucked in the head and that we should condemn his films’ glorying in women’s psychological (and sometimes physical)... read more...
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Okay, here’s what Eva and Franklin (Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly) need to talk about – how they ended up with a Eurasian kid (Ezra Miller; as a... read more...
The Tall Man
It is amusing that, among the many awards and accolades, the book of The Tall Man did not escape winning the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award.... read more...
The Debt
John Madden’s Nazi-hunting spy thriller recalls the aphorism, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The Debt intertwines... read more...
Wholphin No.14 screening, presented by Speakeasy Cinema
Isn’t film best enjoyed with others? Preferably with people just as good-looking and intelligent as yourself and the ready availability of beer,... read more...
Moneyball
Moneyball has all the sports-movie ingredients: an underdog team; a manager haunted by past failures; talented but overlooked players; an amazing true-story... read more...
Drive
Don’t expect a thrill-packed action flick; despite its tautly stylish opening sequence, Drive has a pageant’s processional rhythm. Gosling inhabits... read more...
Autoluminescent: Rowland S Howard
Autoluminescent is a film about Rowland S Howard – guitarist, songwriter, artist and an instrumental figure in the Australian rock scene most notably... read more...
Queen of the Sun
You might have heard of Colony Collapse Disorder – a phenomenon where honeybees vanish from their hives, never to return. Taggart Siegel’s documentary Queen... read more...
Bill Cunningham New York
Over two years, Richard Press tracked the life and work of an impish, bike-riding, octogenarian photographer whose “On the Street” column is a New... read more...
Midnight in Paris
With his wry, bemused patter, affable Owen Wilson makes an excellent Woody stand-in. He’s Gil, a hack screenwriter engaged to Inez (Rachel McAdams)... read more...
Attenberg
It has taken only two films, Dogtooth and, now, Attenberg to inspire murmurings about a new ‘weird wave‘ of Greek cinema. Both films are... read more...
Red State
The most intriguing thing about Kevin Smith’s latest film is how un-Kevin Smith-like it is. Yes, there are extended, static slabs of dialogue… but... read more...
Take Shelter
This powerfully allegorical film is a study in slow-building anxiety. Shannon beautifully dramatises an agonisingly inarticulate man whose only coping... read more...