First Contact: Rape, Retribution and Colonial Logic in Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest
It may present itself as a gentle comedy of manners, but Days and Nights in the Forest is a deeply confronting film once you peel the layers.…
Reviews
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Salt Along the Tongue is a heady and mysterious Australian Euro folk horror
Parish Malfitano’s horror/melodrama Salt Along the Tongue is made in Australia but its bones are European. Specifically, the bones are primarily Italian, but Malfitano extends the film to the many nat…
Hokum announces Damian McCarthy as a major creative voice and a horror maestro
Hokum /ˈhoʊkəm/ noun. [noncount] informal Chiefly US: foolish or untrue words or ideas. Nonsense. Irish director Damian McCarthy has been refining his craft over his three features. Caveat and Oddi…
Rabbit Trap is narratively uneven but atmospherically effective | Fantastic Film Festival Australia
“Call my name and I’ll come home.” Bryn Chainey’s faerie folk-horror Rabbit Trap is narratively uneven but atmospherically effective. Set in 1973 in Cymru (Wales) a married couple have moved from Lon…
Wolfram provides a window into the past through the eye of one of Australia's best storytellers
Warwick Thornton said that Wolfram acts as an antidote to its stunning forebear Sweet Country – a film that cost the director and his cast and crew a great deal emotionally to make. With the scars of…
Ryan Gosling charts new career territory in 2026’s most unlikely and endearing hit, Project Hail Mary
Who would have guessed that the first blockbuster hit of 2026, and Amazon MGM’s biggest debut yet, would be a story about a man and a rock-shaped alien? Despite remaining culturally dominant through t…
Less hiding, more hunting - Samara Weaving returns in a gory, high-energy sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have stayed busy since Ready or Not, helming both Scream V and Scream VI, as well as the vampire comedy Abigail. It’s been seven years since Samara…
Forbidden Fruits: Glitter, Witchcraft, and Total Girl Gang Energy
Forbidden Fruits feels like someone took the DNA of Mean Girls, filtered it through a Free People catalogue, added a heavy dose of witchcraft, and then let it spiral into full-on slasher chaos. It’s s…
Proclivitas is a triumph of mood and meaning through cinematic language
Miley Tunnecliffe’s debut feature Proclivitas opens with a quote (in Latin then English) by Cicero which is essentially the case of what is good is “inclination” and the case of what is evil is “procl…
Paloma Schneideman's Big Girls Don’t Cry is a Quiet Portrait of Queer Girlhood
Middle school exists in a strange in-between world. You are no longer a child, but adulthood is still miles away. Everything feels heightened: friendships, embarrassment, curiosity, desire. Your body…
The Plague declares itself as a nerve-wracking coming of age classic
When I was quite young a teacher related the story of the practice in some Aboriginal groups known as the “Pointed bone” also known as “Kurdaitcha”. The accused person would have a bone pointed at the…
The Mountain Bride (Vermiglio) is a Rich Tapestry of Human Sensibility
Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio uses Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ as one of its musical motifs. Cesare (Tommaso Ragno) the patriarch of the large Catholic Grazaidei family spends his money on phonograph rec…