At 91 years of age Clint Eastwood climbs back into the saddle for this elegiac and reflective contemporary western. He plays Mike Milo, a washed-up former rodeo rider with a broken back who has fallen on hard times. He is asked by his former boss Howard (country singer and occasional actor Dwight Yoakam) to travel…
The Power of the Dog is Jane Campion’s first feature film since Bright Star, twelve years ago. Produced under the auspices of streaming giant Netflix, this modern western, set in Montana in 1925, is based on Thomas Savage’s little-known 1967 novel. Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his brother George (Jesse Plemons) work the sprawling family…
Scott Cooper, who directed Jeff Bridges to an Oscar with Crazy Heart, returns with Antlers. This eerie and deeply unsettling horror film set in a small and forgotten mining town in Oregon that has been devastated by the opioid epidemic. The film has been produced under the auspices of horror/fantasy veteran Guillermo del Toro, whose…
Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a cop who has been demoted for some unspecified incident and is now working night shifts at the Los Angeles Police Department’s 911 dispatch call centre fielding calls from the desperate and frightened victims of crime. This is his final shift before a court appearance in the morning that will…
As we approach another hot, dry summer here in Australia, this inspiring documentary is both timely and relevant. A Fire Inside was filmed largely during the bushfires that devastated much of Australia’ east coast in the so-called “Black Summer” of 2019-20, the worst fire season ever recorded. An area the size of the UK was…
Not to be confused with Barry Levinson’s 1994 erotic thriller of the same name, the provocative and intimate drama Disclosure looks at the darker side of suburban life in contemporary Australia. Two sets of parents gather together to discuss an incident involving their children, but things turn ugly as the impromptu meeting progresses. Natasha Bowman,…
Liam Neeson’s new action thriller Ice Road is as a cross between reality series Ice Road Truckers and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s tense 1953 drama The Wages of Fear. If you’re not familiar, in The Wages of Fear, a group of men were hired to transport a shipment of volatile nitroglycerine through treacherous mountain passes and across…
In the 90s Renny Harlin was arguably the premier director of out-and-out action films. Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight are all his. Since then though his reputation has suffered with a succession of lower budget B-grade films and television work. His latest film is unlikely to restore his reputation though. The…
The Steelers were the world’s first gay rugby team, formed in a pub in Kings Cross in London in 1995. At first they found that other rugby teams were reluctant to play against them. But now there are more than 60 gay rugby clubs around the world with over 2000 members. The annual Bingham Cup…
Family connections drive Tim Brown’s Australian-set drama Buckley’s Chance. Following the death of his beloved father, New York teen Ridley (Milan Burch) and his mother Gloria (Victoria Hill) travel across the world to spend time with the grandfather he has never known. Gloria hopes that the change of scenery and the new environment will help…
