The second installment in Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 sci-fi novel picks up where Dune (2021) left off. In this chapter, the exiled Duke of House Atreides, Paul (Timothy Chalamet) establishes himself as a leader. You may remember that in Part One, basically the whole House Atreides was massacred by the evil…
You know how siblings can be. When one gets to do something, the other just has to do it too. So when Joel Coen stepped out of the Coen Brothers cocoon in 2021 to direct the brooding, highly stylised The Tragedy of Macbeth, it was only a matter of time before younger brother Ethan Coen…
Sometimes we get two films released around the same time with the same basic concept (eg: Deep Impact and Armageddon both films concerning a giant meteor headed for Earth; or Dante’s Peak and Volcano, both dealing with destructive volcanic eruptions). Another case in point is the new horror film Baghead. A quick skim of the…
The Alliance Française French Film Festival feels like a cultural institution in Australia. But it might be somewhat surprising to learn this is the largest celebration of French cinema outside of France. And even more impressively, this year marks 35 years of the festival bringing the best in French film Down Under. The 2024 edition,…
Birds chirp on a summer’s day. Families enjoy a picnic by a stream. A woman tends to beautiful flowers in her garden… Welcome to the most disturbing film of the year. British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer (probably best known for Under the Skin starring Scarlett Johansson) goes where few have dared to tread in The Zone…
Set in rural Victoria, The Rooster marks a highly imaginative and impactful feature film debut for writer and director Mark Leonard Winter. The double Helpmann Award-winning actor, who featured in Elvis, Balibo and The Dressmaker, drew on personal experience to create something special. The film deals with masculinity, isolation and crisis; and features an introverted…
Jamaican born singer/songwriter Bob Marley was one of the music legends of the 70s, with his fusion of reggae, blues and soul achieving mainstream success. Time Magazine named his seminal 1977 album Exodus as the greatest record of the twentieth century. He has sold over 75 million records and has been inducted into the Rock…
Imagine if you had the ability to see into the future and change the outcome. That idea is at the centre of Marvel’s latest superhero movie, which the studio would like to turn into a franchise. Brought up in foster homes, Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic. All she knows is that her mother…
The latest film from Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki is Fallen Leaves, a deceptively simple and quirky rom-com about two-star crossed lovers in Helsinki. Two lonely down-on-their-luck, working class people meet at a karaoke bar. But they find the path to making a connection and maybe finding happiness is not smooth sailing. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is…
Non-indigenous Australians have often had a rather fraught relationship with the landscape of this continent. On one hand, its “boundless plains” offered a sense of opportunity; a chance to control the environment. But the land is also sometimes perceived as a wild place that can never be controlled. This led to a pervading sense of…
