Mike Retter on Pete Williams' Emotion is Dead
This essay was original published on Pure Shit Australian Cinema and is written by Mike Retter. Mike Retter is a film director, of the indie feature Youth On The March, creator of the zine "Ci…
Reviews
1280 posts
Soft is an important coming-of-age story for queer kids that gives its characters space to experience agony and ecstasy
Canadian non-binary writer/director Joseph Amenta’s debut feature Soft explores the lives of three queer tweens over one summer in Toronto as they experience the exuberance of youth and the terrors of…
Primate delivers with rabid chimp savagery and viscous visceral viciousness
Roberts and co-scribe Ernest Riera haven’t gone in for cohesive and logical narrative, they’ve gone for rabid chimp savagery and viscous visceral viciousness.…
There Is No Antimemetics Division is a very modern novel that draws from a long literary and pop-culture legacy
There Is No Antimemetics Division, a science fiction horror novel written by Sam Hughes (aka qntm) and published on November 11 2025, was spun off from an online fiction community but has literary and conceptual roots stretching back over a century.…
The Golden Spurtle Serves Up Warmth, Whimsy, and a Dash of Australia
There’s something quietly magical about a documentary that doesn’t try to dazzle you, but instead invites you in like a warm bowl of something familiar. The Golden Spurtle isn’t loud, flashy, or world…
Maciej J. Drygas' Trains (Pociagi) is a haunting human experience
Although the legend of mass panic in screenings of The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the 50-second film by the Lumière brothers which first screened in 1895 is untrue, it is true that cinem…
Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein pulls influence from the unlikeliest place: The Terminator
James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein film, starring Boris Karloff as a childlike, lumbering brute with bolts in his neck, overshadows Mary Shelley’s foundational 1818 source novel in popular culture. Whal…
Ronan Day-Lewis' cinematic composition isn't enough to save the tonally clumsy Anemone
There’s no doubting Ronan Day-Lewis has an eye for cinematic composition. His debut film Anemone starring his father Daniel Day-Lewis, with Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, and Sean Bottomley looks strikin…
MonsterFest: Good Boy is Best in Show of Doggy Horror
Many of us have heard stories of domestic animals and their uncanny perceptions. The cat in a nursing home or hospice who sits on the bed of the next patient to pass away. The story of dogs knowing wh…
Ron Howard's Eden shows that paradise was never real
There’s something irresistible about the idea of running away from it all, isn’t there? The fantasy of leaving behind the noise, the politics, the mess of modern life, and finding some untouched corne…
Adrian Ortega’s Westgate is an immersively authentic gift of a film
In 1970 the under-construction Westgate Bridge in Melbourne collapsed, the biggest industrial accident to ever occur in Australia. 35 people died. It changed the way the industry approached safety aro…
Queer Screen Review: Lucky, Apartment and the fear of being unseen
South Korean documentarian Kangyu Garam makes her feature-length debut with Lucky, Apartment, a film that feels both intimate and unsettling in the way it threads the ordinary with the unbearable. At…